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Palestinians and their attorneys have presented a case before a federal court in Oakland accusing President Joe Biden of complicity in genoc

"Palestinian plaintiffs and their legal representatives on Friday [January 26, 2024] presented a powerful case in federal court accusing President Joe Biden and other top US officials of complicity in Israel's genocide in Gaza.

People around the world tuned in for the long-awaited hearing in Oakland, with plaintiffs appearing in person and over Zoom in an unprecedented effort to hold the Biden administration accountable for its actions in Gaza.

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed the lawsuit in November 2023 on behalf of Defense for Children International–Palestine, Al-Haq, and eight Palestinians in the US and Palestine. The complaint accuses President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin of failing to live up to their legal responsibilities under the 1948 Genocide Convention and the 1988 Genocide Convention Implementation Act.

The United Nations convention classifies complicity in genocide, or the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part, as a crime under international law and requires that states take measures to prevent such atrocities.

[Note: This is a big reason why politicians almost never call it a genocide, btw. Because if a country recognizes that it's a genocide, then they actually are legally required to do a bunch of things to stop it, under international law.]

The historic lawsuit contends that the Biden administration has failed to uphold its obligations by continuing to provide diplomatic and military support for Israel's brutal campaign in Gaza. Plaintiffs are asking the court to stop Biden from sending more weapons and munitions to Israel that are being used to kill Palestinians en masse.

The hearing before the US District Court for the Northern District of California took place just hours after the International Court of Justice issued provisional measures against Israel in a landmark case brought by South Africa.

-via TAG24, January 26, 2024. Article continues below.

northgazaupdates

12 January 2024

Journalist Abed Alqadr Sabbah documents horrendous conditions in shelter centers throughout northern Gaza. He discusses the suffering caused by flooding, and the diseases caused by the accumulation of trash. The IOF deliberately targeted Gaza’s waste management infrastructure, in addition to its carpet-bombing campaign. These factors make it impossible for waste management technicians to operate, leading to the massive accumulation of trash in homes, businesses, streets, and public spaces. Abed discusses the consequences of the accumulation in the video. Instagram user faridaek kindly provides a full English translation:

People in areas of displacement are experiencing immense suffering and living conditions are becoming exceedingly challenging. The rainwater is flooding these centres, and while people often say rain is a blessing, it has become a curse here in Gaza. There are no pumps, and no efficient means to redirect the water/drain this water elsewhere. Not to mention, the area has accumulated so much garbage. We've witnessed a large number of children suffering from diarrhea and gastrointestinal illnesses, leading to overcrowding in hospitals. We hope for a solution to these alarming conditions, as the situation is truly catastrophic right now, particularly on the health and environmental fronts.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by عبد القادر صباح (@abd.sabbah)

tortiefrancis

In almost a week of relentless violence, Palestinian authorities had already recorded 20 families completely wiped out from civil registry, meaning all living members of that family, of all generations, had been killed. It has been three months, and this number only grows. This, along with many of the war crimes Israel commits daily against Palestinians, is a form of genocide.

To kill entire families is to kill their stories, it is to burn a page of a people's history, their roots. It's deliberate.

"As the number of victims rises and more and more families disappear from Palestine’s rich tapestry of history and culture, there is a bewildered note to the mourning as people try to come to grips with what these disappearances mean."

- Mohammed R. Marwish, October 13th, 2023, Al-Jazeera

Palestinian Ministry of Health reports at least 20 families have been killed, and entire neighbourhoods lie in ruins.

antifainternational

January 13 - Global Day of Action for Palestine

Here is a list of protests in solidarity with Palestine for January 13th. If there's no protest on saturday near you, take a look at this site (where we got this list from) to see if there is one near you on another day.

It's a looong list so it's under the cut here:

fairuzfan

From the article:

The idea of the erasure, the annihilation, of Palestinians is being clearly articulated by Israeli political and military officials. A US lawyer who has brought a case against the Biden administration for its “failure to prevent genocide”—which is a crime, too—spoke of how rare it is for genocidal intent to be so clearly and publicly articulated. Once they have achieved that goal, perhaps the plan is to have museums showcasing Palestinian culture and handicrafts, restaurants serving ethnic Palestinian food, maybe a Sound and Light show of how lively Old Gaza used to be—in the new Gaza Harbour at the head of the Ben Gurion canal project, which is supposedly being planned to rival the Suez Canal. Allegedly contracts for offshore drilling are already being signed.

thefirsthogokage

I've seen many journalists with the same thoughts the past few days. Many are stopping their press coverage. I feel like Hamza's murder contributed to this.

It might have achieved exactly what the occupation wanted.

Motaz appears to be thinking of stopping...

...and Ismail announced he's ceasing his coverage.

I can't remember the others I've seen make this announcement the past few days.

northgazaupdates

11 January 2024

Journalist Anas Al-Sharif documents conditions in Beit Hanoun after the withdrawal of IOF from most areas. Many families from Beit Hanoun and surrounding areas families who evacuated to shelters have gone back to their homes, but often they have to return because their homes are completely gone. Similarly, families from Beit Hanoun who fled to shelters in other areas are starting to return, but many are still forced to stay in shelters. When Anas asks one man why he and his family returned to Beit Hanoun despite the destruction, the man replied “One yearns for their land…We want to return to our homeland.” English subtitles graciously provided by translating_gaza on Instagram

intersectionalpraxis

I also learned this today about her:

Palestine will be free!

synapseoftheark

friends that get you injected with every disease possible if you look them in the eyes

yessoupy

GOD I just want to be CREATIVE but all my energy is being used to survive

cries-havoc

this is one of those "you put it into words" kind of posts. right on.

enki2

bkimmyz

let 👏 boys 👏 be 👏 little 👏 spoon 👏 🥄

sohorny-weaver

Me, forgetting about straight boys: “uhh yeah, one of them has to be???”

nihonutsukushi

Kagawa, Japan

evilbuildingsblog

Imagine seeing this place with no prior knowledge of Christianity

ilovecats4ever

thegaymertrainer

👑

kianspo

Random things. What happens when you protest in Russia? You are immediately arrested. It’s not a game of chance, it’s a guarantee. All protests are forbidden. We are not allowed to call the war – the war, you’ll be fined at best, arrested at worst if you do. In fact, as of today, if you’re caught at an anti-war protest, you’re considered a member of a radical extremist group and are facing 6 years in jail. People “detained” for protesting are invariably beaten. Concussions, contusions, broken bones. Men more so than women, though women can’t rely on it. You can be asked to strip since they “need” to check your underwear. You’ll be verbally abused and threatened the entire time. And yes, of course, it doesn’t stop there, since they now know you and your family and where you all work and live. In this country, there is nothing truly independent, there never was. If the words “1937” mean nothing to you, you are very, very fortunate. For us, it’s this again, only a thousand times worse because now it’s empowered by technology.

The other day they arrested a bunch of kids. Literally kids, four of them, aged seven to eleven. They, along with their mothers were carrying flowers to the Ukrainian embassy and a small simple poster “No to War”. They were all detained and immediately separated, kept locked up for the night. We don’t know how the kids were treated. Mothers had their possessions confiscated, not allowed to call anyone, stripped, yelled at, threatened. The harshest threat was to be stripped of parental rights on the spot, never see their kids again. The kids were released closer to morning when a lawyer from a group that helps people in these situations arrived. I have no idea how these lawyers are still allowed to function. Small mercies. (Support them here: https://donate.ovdinfo.org/)

But it’s not just the pain of punishment or jail sentence. It’s the utter uselessness of it all. He won’t care if half the population comes out to say “No to War”. He won’t care if it’s all of us.

A few days ago, every school in the country received instructions to hold special classes to explain to kids why “the liberating military operation” was necessary and what happens now. The teachers have been given manuals on what to say and how to answer the kids’ questions. Some of the answers include: “Don’t worry if you hear that some countries don’t want to be friends with us anymore. There are other countries who do, and besides, Russia is a very big country, so we have everything you can possibly need right here.” By “other countries”, my guess is, they mean North Korea. After the class, the kids are supposed to take a test. It’s electronic, entered through a QR code, and the answers are automatically logged in. Questions include: “Explain why the liberating military operation was necessary” and “Expand on what the Russian government is doing to help people of Lugansk and Donetsk.” The results of the test are tallied, and if some kid doesn’t give the right ones, their parents are called in for “a talk”.

We will either end up with a bunch of really smart kids or another generation of completely deluded people. The last time something like this had happened was in 1991, when the Soviet Union was falling, and my classmates and I were asked to make a choice of do we want to pledge allegiance to the communist party or not. I was ten. My class, as I remember, was split roughly in two. The kids who voted “yes” looked at the rest of us with teary eyes and whispered “our parents told us to do it, they are too afraid.” And we got it. We all got it. Nobody hated anybody for the choice, because we all knew that fear and we all knew what it was like, to be hostage of the regime. We who voted “no” knew what we were risking. At ten years old, we were more politically savvy than a lot of full-grown adults across the ocean. It’s not a good thing.

For roughly twenty-something years, we lived in the illusion that we were out of that prison. Sure, our democracy was not perfect, but whose is? It was maybe incredibly naïve of us, but can you blame us that we wanted to believe it? That we still desperately want to, which is why there are a lot of really confused people in the country right now who still can’t grasp that their leadership has betrayed them?They will, in fact, believe anything but this. They will sooner believe him and ignore the facts, because a) they’re not getting the facts, and b) the truth is terrifying.

Nothing has changed. We’re still in the USSR. Yesterday, in Nalchik, students of the local university were ordered to go out and express their support for the president. They had no warning. At some point the university staff members entered their classrooms, handed out banners and t-shirts, and ordered them to go outside “to stand in solidarity” with the president. Refusal was not an option on pain of expulsion. Among other statements, they were made to hold up banners saying #wearenotashamed which should tell you everything you need to know about how the Russian people really feel.

I’m not going to talk about the independent media, because the last survivors of this extremely rare breed are being shut down as we speak. Meduza is still holding up by some miracle, but their turn can be any hour. They have been declared “a foreign agent” some years back, which means that they can no longer be properly financed and have to preface every single post and article with a huge all-caps statement that this information was created by a foreign agent, presumably to turn “loyal citizens” away. They have been subsiding on crowd-funding this whole time, can’t imagine how, since all transactions are now traceable and giving them money is not without consequences. (Support them here: https://support.meduza.io/)

The world has turned away from us, and I get it, but they don’t understand what they’re doing. Or maybe they do but don’t care. I don’t mean this on an emotional level, but purely practical. The more they punish the Russian people, the more, unfortunately but sadly naturally, the Russian people will unite in their support of He Who Must Not Be Named. He will feel even more legitimate in his actions and he won’t stop. Not that I can imagine anything that could make him stop now but… It’s not helping. It might make a lot of people out there feel better about themselves, but it’s not helping.

Worst of all, we can’t help Ukraine. So much as saying that we’re fighting a war or that we are losing that war can earn you up to 15 years in prison for “spreading misinformation.” It’s impossible to send over money, and as for supplies we can only gather those for the refugees that are fleeing to Russia. Our economy is on the brink of collapse, and the people that are running from the war and come here will have to share it with us. We’re doing what we can for them. It’s not enough.

And personally… My mornings these days start like this. I wake up. I don’t want to get up. I do eventually. Splash water on my face etc. Take my heart medication. Wait for it to take effect. Then I open Telegram and see if Meduza is still broadcasting. Read the overnight update. Learn that the horror continues in a multitude of fresh new horrifying ways. Remind myself that I have no right to sympathy or feeling sorry for myself or any of that. I was not the one who spent the night in a bomb shelter. I was not the one whose house was destroyed. I wish I was but I’m not. I’m just a useless spectator who’s too chickenshit to even go get beaten up and who rationalizes her cowardice any way she knows how. I want you to know this about me before you decide to continue knowing me. I am unaccountably grateful having known all of you.

I don’t know what else to say except maybe this. Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.

dankmemesreasonforliving

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