Israel's mistreatment of detainees called ‘war crimes'
21 Feb 2025
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Qatar Tribune
3 hours ago
- Qatar Tribune
Iran ready for war with Israel: Pezeshkian
Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian has said his country is prepared for any war Israel might wage against it, adding he was not optimistic about the ceasefire between the countries, while confirming Tehran is committed to continuing its nuclear programme for peaceful purposes. Pezeshkian made the comments in an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera aired on Wednesday, one of his first since the end of the 12-day conflict with Israel last month, in which the United States intervened on Israel's behalf, launching strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. The comments come as Western nations say they are seeking a solution to Iran's ongoing nuclear ambitions in the wake of the conflict, amid reports that strikes on its nuclear facilities were less damaging than claimed by Washington. 'We are fully prepared for any new Israeli military move, and our armed forces are ready to strike deep inside Israel again,' Pezeshkian told Al Jazeera. Iran was not relying on the ceasefire that ended the 12-day war to hold, he said. 'We are not very optimistic about it,' said Pezeshkian. 'That is why we have prepared ourselves for any possible scenario and any potential response. Israel has harmed us, and we have also harmed it. It has dealt us powerful blows, and we have struck it hard in its depths, but it is concealing its losses.' He added that Israel's strikes, which assassinated leading military figures and nuclear scientists, and damaged nuclear facilities, had sought to 'eliminate' Iran's hierarchy, 'but it has completely failed to do so'. More than 900 people were killed in Iran, large numbers of them civilians, and at least 28 people were killed in Israel before a ceasefire took hold on June 24. Pezeshkian said Iran would continue its uranium enrichment programme despite international opposition, saying the development of its nuclear abilities would be carried out 'within the framework of international laws'. '[US President Donald] Trump says that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon and we accept this because we reject nuclear weapons and this is our political, religious, humanitarian and strategic position,' he said. 'We believe in diplomacy, so any future negotiations must be according to a win-win logic, and we will not accept threats and dictates.' He said the claim from Trump 'that our nuclear programme is over is just an illusion'. 'Our nuclear capabilities are in the minds of our scientists and not in the facilities,' he said. Pezeshkian's comments echoed earlier remarks by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who said in an interview with US broadcaster Fox News aired Monday that Tehran would never abandon its uranium enrichment programme, but was open to a negotiated solution to its nuclear ambitions, in which it would guarantee that the programme was for peaceful purposes in response for the lifting of sanctions. Pezeshkian also addressed an attempt by Israel to assassinate him at a meeting of the Supreme National Security Council in Tehran on June 15, which was reported to have left him with minor injuries. Asked about the assassination attempt, he said it had been part of a plan by Israeli commanders to target Iran's political leadership in the wake of its assassination of senior military figures, in a bid 'to put the country into chaos in order to overthrow it completely'. But the plan had failed, he said. Araghchi said on Monday that Iran's Atomic Energy Organization is still evaluating how the attacks last month had affected Iran's enriched material, saying Tehran would soon inform the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of its findings. He said Iran had not stopped cooperation with the IAEA, adding that any request for the IAEA to send inspectors back to Iran would be 'carefully considered'. IAEA inspectors left Iran earlier this month after Pezeshkian signed a law suspending cooperation with the agency. (Source: Al Jazeera)
Qatar Tribune
3 hours ago
- Qatar Tribune
Israel's starvation of Gaza is a cruel display of impunity of power
Ammiel Alcalay A grim and powerful act of protest has taken place in Gaza. In the midst of the Israeli-US-imposed blockade on food and humanitarian aid - a policy that has already caused many Palestinians to die - a significant public figure has himself gone on hunger strike. On Sunday, 20 July, Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza and long persecuted by the Israeli occupation for documenting conditions on the ground, announced a hunger strike. 'I am Mahmoud Basal, a Palestinian citizen, a free human being,' he declared. 'For days now, I have been living on scraps of food, like more than two million citizens. Due to the lack of basic food in the Gaza Strip, I declare a full hunger strike in protest against the catastrophic famine striking Gaza, and in solidarity with more than two million people who have been left to face death by starvation amid shameful global silence.' While Israel has long used food as a weapon – measuring out the bare minimum number of calories required to keep Gaza's population on the brink of malnutrition – we are now witnessing the radical consequences of restrictions and blockades that have been normalised over decades. This strategy was infamously outlined in a 2008 Israeli position paper, Food Consumption in the Gaza Strip - Red Lines. 'Unbearable loss' Incremental yet relentless waves of dehumanising propaganda in western media and political discourse, reinforced by repeated Israeli assaults on Gaza that leave mass death and devastation in their wake, have brought us to the horrific present reality. Now, Israeli forces target unarmed, starving people in search of food using snipers, artillery and drones - people who are then presented not as victims, but as trespassers on their own land. Relentless propaganda and repeated Israeli assaults have brought us to this horrific present reality On the same day Basal announced his hunger strike, poet and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Mosab Abu Toha – displaced from his destroyed home in Beit Lahia to Egypt and, eventually, the US - posted on X: 'Today was a day of unbearable loss. My cousin was killed, my wife's brother and another cousin were wounded, and many of my friends from the neighbourhood returned with amputated limbs. These were young men –sons, fathers –who had to set out, desperate to bring back even a little food for their families.' While Israel foments further chaos in Syria and Lebanon to divert attention and consolidate territorial control – part of a meticulously planned attempt to fully dominate the region - British surgeon Nick Maynard has reported consistent patterns of gunshot injuries at newly established aid distribution sites. Noting 'clear patterns of injury', Dr Maynard described victims –mainly teenage boys - as being deliberately targeted in different parts of the body, depending on the day. 'On one day they'll all be abdominal gunshot wounds, on another they'll all be head or neck gunshot wounds, on another they'll be arm or leg gunshot almost as if a game is being played, that they're deciding to shoot the head today, the neck tomorrow, the testicles the day after,' he said. Campus complicity Meanwhile, in the US, the news cycle functions as a constant distraction - through contrived political scandals, economic chaos driven by the tariff mood of the day, or congressional hearings on 'antisemitism' at US universities. At these show trials, the university administrators summoned for questioning are themselves among the institutional actors who have hollowed out academia to its core. Research fields that develop the technical means to kill and control populations that resist, while manufacturing consent for those very policies, receive institutional priority due to corporate sponsorship. Yet these same administrators stand accused of not doing enough to ban, silence, arrest, or otherwise suppress any expression of free speech on campus - so long as that speech supports Palestinian liberation or criticises US or Israeli policy. All of this reinforces the false dichotomies of US institutional discourse – as if most, if not all, institutions were not aligned with the bipartisan consensus on foreign policy. Like a deer in headlights, Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez of the City University of New York (CUNY) feigned ignorance under Congresswoman Elise Stefanik's relentless interrogation, repeatedly claiming he 'wasn't aware of' or 'did not know about' this or that individual or event. Yet even before the hearings, and in hopes of appeasing the insatiable bloodlust of genocide denial, Rodriguez had already offered up four contingent CUNY professors – the most precarious segment of academic labour – as sacrificial lambs, ensuring their dismissal without cause due to their involvement in Palestine-related activism. How did we get here? Fading empires The famine in Yemen was neither live-streamed nor regarded as a significant component of US foreign policy. Thus, the steadfast support of Ansar Allah, Yemen's armed Houthi movement, for Gaza and Palestine can be made to seem 'irrational' – as though there were no link between past atrocities and present resistance. As global power shifts towards multipolarity, and new alliances form along emergent trade routes, the US and EU have entered a phase of panic familiar to fading empires. The years leading up to the sudden outbreak of the coronavirus in 2020 were characterised by some of the most massive public displays of political protest across the globe since the 1960s. From the Great March of Return in Gaza and the Algerian Hirak, to mass uprisings in Iraq, Lebanon's 17 October popular uprising, the Yellow Vests in France, and demonstrations in Catalonia, Chile, Hong Kong and beyond, the world seemed on fire. But those determined to maintain power were often more attuned to the global resonances between these movements than many of the participants themselves. New feudal order As with the post-9/11 moment, the policies enacted in response to the pandemic reshaped societies almost overnight: restricting basic human rituals, from funerals to visiting the sick and elderly, while enabling massive wealth transfers. People were taught to fear one another - to fear contact, proximity and community. New digital powers and the complete relativising of the principles of free speech and unrestrained movement transformed societies almost overnight. Changes in civil liberties, economies, supply chains, trade routes - and almost every aspect of life - seemed to bring the future, so to speak, back to the past. There is no justification for starving and killing Palestinians in Gaza - and claiming it can't be stopped is a lie of the highest magnitude That past is also the Cold War past that liberal democracies and a fading US empire continue to cling to, propped up by the perpetual manufacture of existential enemies. In 1944, anthropologist Gregory Bateson - then working for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), precursor to the CIA - remarked: 'It is very important to sponsor spectatorship among the superiors and exhibitionism among the inferiors.' Historically denied the means to defend themselves by far more powerful states, the present anguish of unarmed Palestinians searching for food to survive yet another day - in a world that has betrayed them on every front - is a harbinger to all rational people with eyes to see, ears to hear, and minds to think, as we enter a new feudal order. There is no justification whatsoever for the forced starvation and wanton killing of Palestinians in Gaza, now or ever. And the idea that mechanisms to stop it are unavailable or do not exist is a lie of the highest magnitude. The day after Basal's declaration, a young Egyptian activist at the Hague chained shut the Egyptian embassy gates, scattered flour across the pavement, and smashed eggs against the entrance in protest. In that moment of small, defiant spectacle, a whole edifice of lies appeared to fall apart. The only conclusion we can draw is that we are witnessing a deliberate effort to showcase the impunity of power, an effort designed to annihilate the very possibility of political reciprocity, justice and law. This monstrosity must be defeated, at any cost - and everything must be remembered, in fine detail, to hold those responsible to account. (Ammiel Alcalay is a poet, novelist, translator, essayist, critic and scholar. He is the author of more than 25 books, most recently Controlled Demolition: a work in four books, and his co-translation of Nasser Rabah's Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece.)
Qatar Tribune
3 hours ago
- Qatar Tribune
Al Jazeera calls for global action to protect Gaza's journalists
Agencies Al Jazeera Media Network has called upon the journalistic community, press freedom organisations, and relevant legal bodies to take decisive action to halt the forced starvation and crimes against journalists and media professionals in Gaza. For over 21 months, the Israeli bombardment and the systematic starvation of the nearly two million people of Gaza have pushed an entire population to the brink of survival. The journalists on the ground, who have courageously reported on this ongoing genocide, have risked their lives and the safety of their families to shed light on these atrocities. However, they now find themselves fighting for their own survival. On 19 July, Al Jazeera journalists began posting heart wrenching messages on social media, signalling that their capacity to continue was waning. One powerful post by Anas AlShariff, Al Jazeera Arabic channel correspondent in Gaza stated, 'I haven't stopped covering for a moment in 21 months, and today, I say it outright…And with indescribable pain. I am drowning in hunger, trembling in exhaustion, and resisting the fainting that follows me every moment… Gaza is dying. And we die with it.' As these brave journalists continue to document the harrowing realities in Gaza, they are often overlooked, reduced to mere informants rather than being acknowledged as witnesses to their own stories. Dr. Mostefa Souag, Director General of Al Jazeera Media Network, commenting on the plight of journalists in Gaza, stated, 'We owe it to the courageous journalists in Gaza to amplify their voices and put an end to the unbearable suffering they are enduring due to forced starvation and targeted killings by Israeli occupation forces.' Dr. Souag further added, 'The journalistic community and the world bear an immense responsibility; it is our duty to raise our voices and mobilise all available means to support our colleagues in this noble profession. If we fail to act now, we risk a future where there may be no one left to tell our stories. 'Our inaction will be recorded in history as a monumental failure to protect our fellow journalists and a betrayal of the principles that every journalist strives to uphold.' Since October 2023, the Israeli occupation forces have killed five Al Jazeera journalists, Samer Abudaqqa, Hamza AlDahdouh, Ismael Al-Ghoul, Ahmed Al-Louh, and Hossam Shabat, and many of the family members of Al Jazeera and other journalists. Yet, these courageous journalists, along with their colleagues, refuse to succumb to the threats and pressure tactics employed by the Israeli authorities to silence them.
