#The Illegal Regime of Apartheid And Terrorist War Criminal Isra-hell

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People have the first Fast-Breaking Dinner (Iftar) of the Muslim Holy Month of Ramadan among the rubbles of destroyed buildings in Rafah on May 11, 2024 amid ongoing “Terrorist, War Criminal, Fascist, Apartheid and Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗 Isra-hell’s” attacks on “Forever Palestine’s Gaza.”

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A new poll has found that a majority of voters in the UK support a ban on British arms sales to “Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, Apartheid, War Criminal Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗, Isra-hell,” while a similar majority believe that “Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, Apartheid, War Criminal Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗 Isra-hell’s” actions in Gaza are violating human rights.

The poll, commissioned by Action for Humanity and conducted by YouGov, found that 56 percent of UK voters are in favour of banning the export of arms to Israel, while only 17 percent are against such a ban.

59 percent of voters also believe “Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, Apartheid, War Criminal Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗 Isra-hell” is violating human rights in Gaza.

Among voters who plan to vote for the Labour Party, 71 percent back a ban on arms exports to Israel. For Conservative Party voters, that number is 38 percent - this is still larger than the number of Conservative voters who want to keep exporting arms to Israel, which was 36 percent.

On Wednesday, more than 600 prominent lawyers, academics and former judges signed a letter warning the UK government that its continued arming of Israel is breaching international law.

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A Palestinian Family Breaks Iftar at the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound in Occupied East Jerusalem, Forever Palestine 🇵🇸, During the Holy Month of Ramadan, Where the “Terrorist, Fascist, War Criminal, Genocidal Isra-helli” Offensive on Palestine's Gaza has Silenced all the Festivities of the Holy Month, Leaving Only Space for Worship and Prayer.

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Students St Two Universities Strongly Associated With Lord Arthur Balfour Have Launched Pro-Palestinian Encampments On Campus To Protest “The Terrorist, Fascist, Apartheid, War Criminal, Illegally Occupier of Palestine and The Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell’s War On Gaza.”

The protests at Edinburgh and Cambridge are part of a growing movement on campuses across the world, which involves students setting up protest camps to demand that their institutions break off ties with Israeli institutions, as well as companies involved in supplying arms to the state.

At Edinburgh, students wearing Palestinian scarves made their demands clear at the start of their protest at the university's Old College .

In one video taken on Monday and provided to Middle East Eye by activists, a student with a loudspeaker is seen addressing fellow protesters.

"We demand that the University of Edinburgh divest entirely from companies tied to Israel and complicit in the globally acknowledged genocide of the Palestinian people," the speaker says.

Middle East Eye has asked both universities for comment, while Edinburgh Univeristy has not yet responded, a spokesperson for the University of Cambridge said: "The University is fully committed to academic freedom and freedom of speech within the law and we acknowledge the right to protest.

"We will not tolerate antisemitism, Islamophobia and any other form of racial or religious hatred, or other unlawful activity."

Balfour is infamous in the Middle East and beyond for his eponymous declaration, which paved the way for the Zionist settlement of historic Palestine and the eventual expulsion of its native Arab people.

He also served as British prime minister and was foreign secretary when he issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917 promising Jews a homeland in Palestine.

The decision paved the way for the mass migration of European Jews to Palestine under the British Mandate, culminating in the Nakba of 1948, which saw the establishment of the Israeli state and expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes.

Many of those expelled found refuge in the Palestinian territory of Gaza, where their descendants remain today.

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Graffiti Artists in Egypt have adorned the streets of the Al Matareya district of Cairo with artwork showing their solidarity with the people of Palestine, as “Illegal Regime of Terrorist, Fascist, War Criminal, Apartheid, Genocidal and the Bastard Child of the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Australia and the European Union: Isra-hell” continues its genocidal war on besieged Gaza. The graffiti contained praise for the people of Palestine and their resilience in the face of Israeli atrocities.

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“On War Criminal, Terrorist Apartheid and Illegal Regime of Isra-hell,” Trump Is Even Worse Than ‘Genocidal Joe’ Biden

Donald Trump and his MAGA Cult of Christian Nationalists Would Never Force Isra-hell to Accept a Ceasefire — or a Palestinian State

— James Risen | March 4 2024 | The Intercept

Former U.S. President Donald Trump arrives during a “Get Out the Vote” rally in Greensboro, N.C., on March 2, 2024. Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

To Understand The State of American Politics today when it comes to Gaza, Israel, and Palestine, just look at the very different ways in which the House of Representatives handled the cases of Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat, and Rep. Brian Mast, a Florida Republican.

Tlaib was punished for her views on Israel and the war in Gaza. Mast was not.

It’s not hard to figure out why.

Tlaib, the Only Palestinian American in Congress, was censured by the Republican-controlled House in November after she posted a video of protesters in Michigan chanting “From The River To The Sea, Palestine Will Be Free.” Israel’s supporters claim the chant is code for a desire to wipe the Jewish state off the map, but Tlaib responded that it was just “an aspirational call for freedom, human rights and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction or hate.”

“I Can’t Believe I Have To Say This,” she added, “But Palestinian People Are Not Disposable.”

Tlaib’s censure was a symbolic act that has no substantive impact on her ability to function in Congress, but that wasn’t the point. House Republicans just wanted to embarrass her and politically marginalize any congressional support for the Palestinian people. House Democrats briefly sought to censure Mast for comparing Palestinians to the hundreds of thousands of German civilians carpet bombed into oblivion by the Allies in Nazi Germany during World War II. His implication was that Palestinians deserve to be obliterated for the crimes of Hamas, just as German civilians were annihilated for the crimes of Hitler and the Third Reich. “I would encourage the other side to not so lightly throw around the idea of innocent Palestinian civilians,” he said. “I don’t think we would so lightly throw around the term ‘innocent Nazi civilians’ during World War II.”

The motion to censure Mast was introduced in the House last November, at the same time the Republicans were going after Tlaib. But while the censure motion against Tlaib succeeded, the motion against Mast was quietly withdrawn.

Ever since, Mast has doubled down on his anti-Palestinian rhetoric without facing any consequences. He even wore an Israeli military uniform to a Republican conference meeting on Capitol Hill. When questioned about it by reporters, he said that since Tlaib displays a Palestinian flag outside her office, he thought he should wear his old Israel Defense Forces uniform. A U.S. Army veteran who lost both of his legs in Afghanistan in 2010, Mast briefly volunteered with the IDF in January 2015, performing support functions like packing medical kits. Virtually every other Republican in Congress shares Mast’s views and would gladly don an IDF uniform if they had one.

Earlier this year, Mast expanded on his comments about Palestinian civilians, saying that even Palestinian babies are not innocent and are thus legitimate targets. “It would be better if you kill all the terrorists and kill everyone who are supporters,” he told Code Pink protesters. When asked about images of Palestinian infants being killed in Israeli attacks, he said “these are not innocent Palestinian civilians.”

“From The River To The Sea, Palestine 🇵🇸 Will Be Free.”

The Contrasting Outcomes of the Tlaib and Mast cases highlight an undeniable fact: The American political establishment still strongly favors Israel over the Palestinians. But if Donald Trump gets back into the Oval Office, he and his MAGA Republicans like Brian Mast will be even worse.

Trump is a big fan of war crimes, especially against Muslims. During his first term, he intervened on behalf of Special Operations Chief Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL platoon leader convicted of posing for a photo with the body of dead Iraqi; another SEAL team member told investigators that Gallagher was “freaking evil,” but Trump said at a political rally that he was one of “our great fighters.” Trump also pardoned Blackwater contractors convicted of killing Iraqi civilians in a wild shooting spree in Baghdad’s Nisour Square. There is no chance that he would try to stop Israel from indiscriminately killing Palestinians.

After the October 7 Hamas attack, Trump was briefly critical of Netanyahu and blurted out that Hezbollah was “very smart.” Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed group designated a terrorist organization by the United States, has battled Israel on its northern border with Lebanon. Trump was immediately and roundly attacked by other Republicans for his comments, and he quickly renewed his long-standing pledge to align the United States fully with Israel. If he’s reelected, he will give Israel unalloyed support for all-out war, and he will do so with the wholehearted backing of the Republican Party.

Republicans’ support for Israel is matched or exceeded by their hatred for Palestinians. Rep. Ryan Zinke, a Montana Republican who was secretary of the interior in the Trump administration, has proposed legislation that would prevent Palestinians from entering the United States and trigger the mass deportation of those already here. It would ban those holding passports issued by the Palestinian Authority from obtaining U.S. visas, while mandating the removal of Palestinian passport holders already living here.

Many Republicans express their unwavering support for Israel in biblical and apocalyptic terms. Rep. Mike Johnson, a Christian evangelical, made his first public appearance after being elected House speaker last October at a conference of the Republican Jewish Coalition, where he said that “God is not done with Israel.”

It is dangerous to get between evangelicals and their theology. Trump recognizes their importance to his political success, and his support for Israel is a way to satisfy his evangelical Christian base. “No president has done more for Israel than I have,” Trump claimed in 2022. “Our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S.”

At the 2016 Republican convention, Trump pushed through a provision in the party platform ending GOP support for a two-state solution and a Palestinian state. Now, Trump and Republicans agree with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he says that Israel can no longer agree to a two-state solution. “In any future arrangement … Israel needs security control over all territory west of the Jordan,” Netanyahu said in January. “This collides with the idea of sovereignty. What can you do? This truth I tell to our American friends, and I put the brakes on the attempt to coerce us to a reality that would endanger the state of Israel.”

That’s fine with Trump and Republicans like Brian Mast.

Although the Biden administration has bent over backward to support Israel, the president has said repeatedly in recent weeks that an independent Palestinian state is still possible. What’s more, political unrest within the Democratic Party is starting to have an impact on Biden, forcing changes in the White House’s approach to Israel. Over the weekend, Vice President Kamala Harris called for an immediate ceasefire; such new pressure from the Biden administration appears to be working, as Israel and Hamas now seem closer to an agreement.

Trump would never face such pro-Palestinian pressure from within the Republican Party. He and his MAGA cult of Christian nationalists would never force Israel to accept a ceasefire — or a Palestinian state. Mast has harshly attacked Biden for continuing to support a two-state solution, dismissing the idea by saying that “a Palestinian state would be run by terrorists.”

There are limits to Biden’s support for Netanyahu. Trump and the Republican Party have none.

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An Isra-helli Terrorist Soldier Kneels on the Chest of a Palestinian Protester on the Streets of Hebron, in the Occupied West Bank, in October 2022. Photo: Mosab Shawer/AFP/Getty Images

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) Ruling Confirms What Palestinians Hav Been Saying For 57 Years

War Criminal, Terrorist, Genocidal, Apartheid and The Illegal Regime of The Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗, Isra-hell’s Occupation of Palestinian Territories is Illegal, a Form of Apartheid, and Must End, Says the U.N.’s High Court at The Hague, The Netherlands.

— Jonah Valdez | July 19, 2024

The United Nations’ Top Court Filed a Ruling Friday that echoed what Palestinian advocates have been saying for decades: Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, including its Settlements in the West Bank, is Illegal and Must End.

The International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion also called for reparations for Palestinians who have lived under Israel’s occupation since it began in 1967, an unprecedented step for the court. The court also notably declared Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians to be a form of segregation and apartheid. It further ruled that nations cannot offer aid in support of the illegal occupation without violating international law, and upheld the Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

Advisory opinions from the ICJ are not legally binding and cannot, in itself, force a country to act. But their legal and moral weight can have significant influence on countries’ decisions and foreign policy.

Jessica Peake, an International Law Professor at UCLA Law, said the ruling has the potential to shift the international community’s ability to push for Palestinian statehood. She added that the ruling exceeded her expectations, specifically around the issue of the Israeli government’s systemic abuses toward Palestinians.

“What was particularly surprising was that they basically made a finding that Israel is creating a situation of apartheid against Palestinians within Israel,” Peake said, “because of the racially discriminatory laws and policies in place that basically treat Palestinians as second-class citizens.”

But some advocates for Palestinians living within the occupied territories are less enthusiastic about the ruling.

“In The West Bank, It’s Business As Usual.”

Eitay Mack, an Israeli attorney and advocate for Palestinians in the West Bank, said the ruling does little to immediately change the lived reality for Palestinians. While ICJ officials read out their ruling on Friday from the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands, Mack received new reports of Israeli settlers attacking Palestinians in the West Bank.

“The court just said the obvious,” Mack told The Intercept. “In the West Bank, it’s business as usual unless governments have the political will to force both Israelis and Palestinians” into implementing a two-state solution that gives Palestine sovereignty.

Amid the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, Israel began its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and annexed East Jerusalem. Soon after, Israel began to establish settlements inside the occupied territories, supporting Israeli civilians as they built communities atop land taken from Palestinians. While Israel withdrew its troops and settlements from Gaza in 2005, it continued to promote and expand its settlements in the West Bank. And in recent months, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government has used its war in Gaza as a cover to expand its settlements at a rate faster than previous decades.

The Isra-helli government immediately dismissed the ICJ ruling, with a defiant Satan-Yahu calling Jerusalem “Our Eternal Capital 😂” and referred to the West Bank as “the land of our ancestors,” using the biblical names “Judea and Samaria.”

“No false decision in The Hague will distort this historical truth,” he said in a statement, “and likewise the legality of Israeli settlement in all the territories of our homeland cannot be contested.”

B’Tselem, an Israeli-based human rights group, was among a host of organizations that welcomed Friday’s ruling after decades of their own advocacy calling for an end to Israel’s occupation. They said the international community has been avoiding the issue by buying Israel’s claim that its occupation is temporary and that it is engaged in negotiations and diplomacy toward a solution.

“The release of the ICJ’s advisory opinion puts an end to these justifications, and now the international community must use every tool — criminal, diplomatic and economic — to force Israeli decision-makers to end the occupation,” the group said on Friday.

In recent months, more nations have officially recognized Palestine as a state, with Norway, Spain, and Ireland joining 143 other nations in recognition. The ICJ ruling, which declares Israel’s occupation an obstacle to Palestinian statehood, may embolden more nations to follow suit. In April, the U.S. vetoed a measure in the U.N. Security Council, that would have recognized Palestine as a member of the U.N. At the time, the U.S. said Palestinian statehood could only come from direct negotiations between Palestine and Israel. The United States sends billions of dollars of military aid to Israel each year.

Israel made similar arguments in the lead-up to the ICJ decision, stating that the ruling would interfere with ongoing negotiations. Separately, Israel’s Parliament this week also passed a resolution that rejects Palestinian statehood, calling it “an existential danger to the State of Israel and its citizens.” Friday’s ICJ decision, Peake noted, undercuts that notion and upholds Palestine’s right to self-determination.

“The ICJ decision, I think really will give states the legal backing or the legal cover that they need to recognize Palestine,” Peake said, “and insulate them a little bit from some of the political pressure that would come from the United States and Israel.”

Peake acknowledged that the U.N. has made declarations in the past condemning Israeli occupation. But most of those were issued by U.N. bodies that were organized to specifically address Palestine. A separate ICJ advisory opinion, issued in 2004, declared Israel’s 400-mile wall in the West Bank illegal.

But the U.N.’s top court has never before issued such strong language about the occupation with the backing of the majority of U.N. membership.

“I don’t think this is going to change everything tomorrow,” Peake said. “Hopefully what this does do is provide an even stronger set of tools to states and to the international community to try and address some of what is going on in occupied Palestine.”

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Why Are America’s Elite Universities So Afraid Of This Scholar’s Paper?

The Columbia Law Review Website Was Temporarily Shut Down After It Published a Palestinian Human Rights Lawyer’s Article Proposing a New Way to Understand Palestinian Life Under “The Terrorist, Fascist, War Criminal, Apartheid, Liar, Conspirator and the Zionist Isra-helli 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Rule”

— Jonathan Guyer | Sunday 9 June 2024

The Palestinian Human Rights Lawyer Rabea Eghbariah. Photograph: Courtesy Rabea Eghbariah

When the Palestinian human rights lawyer Rabea Eghbariah arrived at a Manhattan cafe on Thursday afternoon, he had just learned that his article had been reinstated in the Columbia Law Review. After a weeklong censorship controversy, the prestigious journal’s website was back online, too.

The law school journal’s faculty and alumni board had shuttered the website for most of the week rather than publicize Eghbariah’s 105-page article, titled Toward the Nakba as a Legal Concept. In it, he proposed a new framework to explain the complex, fragmented legal regimes governing Palestinians. He wanted to bring the word Nakba – which translates from the Arabic as catastrophe, and is better known for describing the displacement and dispossession of Palestinians in 1948 – to the center of a new legal conversation.

Wearing a white T-shirt and linen pants and sipping iced coffee, he reflected on an extraordinary week that saw his legal theories – ordinarily the stuff of arcane law school debates – ignite emotive conversations about the legitimate bounds of debate about Israel and Palestine.

What’s more, it wasn’t the first time his ideas were deemed too dangerous to publish by the Ivy League.

He had worked on his contribution for almost half a year, finding a home for it at the Columbia Law Review after a shorter web piece he had written for the Harvard Law Review had been blocked at the last minute.

He was proud of his scholarship but found it dangerous that the content of his article had become secondary to what he saw as the manufactured controversy of its censorship. “Now, we have to debate about my right to say what I want to say instead of debating about what I actually said,” he told the Guardian.

“I felt convinced by my work if it’s generating this repression,” he said. Ultimately, the story led to headlines in major newspapers, and a PDF of the article was posted widely on social media, getting far more readers than is typical for legal scholarship. “People can see through these authoritarian tactics and reject them. The censorship in this case is actually counterproductive.”

When Eghbariah woke up on Monday morning, his article was online. “It was supposed to be a very exciting moment,” he recalled.

But soon, the journal’s website was inaccessible – “under maintenance”, it said. It turned out the law review board had taken it down. “It was very alarming that they would go to that extent,” he said.

“What Is So Scary About Palestinians Having The Right To Narrate Their Own Realities?” — Rabea Eghbariah

Eghbariah, a Harvard Law School doctoral candidate, had been splitting his time between Massachusetts and Haifa, Israel, when he formulated the ideas driving his scholarship. He was working for the legal organization Adalah, where he has represented Palestinian clients in the Israeli judicial system – some in Gaza, others in the West Bank or East Jerusalem, still others citizens of Israel. He has worked on a landmark case about Israel’s cyber unit, which works with social media platforms to censor speech, and fought to reunite families separated by these different legal regimes. He realized that each time he and colleagues brought a case forward, they had to figure out which legal framework applied.

It is variegated, by design. “You have an invisible map in your head where you know what laws to invoke depending on the case,” Eghbariah said, “and this is not intuitive at all.”

Different legal systems apply to Palestinians living under Israeli rule or in neighboring Arab states or elsewhere. “It’s kind of a system of domination by fragmentation,” he explained. “We become trained in doing these legal gymnastics, and flipping from one framework to the other, without sometimes even reflecting about the nature of this.”

To articulate that fragmentation in his legal research, he realized he needed a new terminology. Just as the genocide convention emerged after the Holocaust, and the word apartheid entered everyday speech amid South Africa’s systemized segregation, Eghbariah was finding that analogies to other seemingly comparable situations were insufficient. In the article, he argues that the term Nakba, in use by Palestinians for decades, encapsulates the layered and overlapping legal entanglements of Palestinian life in the absence of self-determination.

The Nakba of 1948, he says, is not a historical artefact. His grandparents survived the Nakba and it informs Eghbariah’s research. Like many Palestinian scholars, he views Israel’s war on Gaza as part of a continuing Nakba to destroy Palestinian life on the land Israel seeks to control. “It’s an organic framework that has been developed in Palestine to reference the ramifications and ongoing nature of the Nakba of 1948,” Eghbariah said. “What the genocide moment and discourse did to that is that it actually made me think about it in legal terms.”

The article lays out the concept, and as he develops the idea further in his dissertation, he hopes it could have practical ramifications for outstanding disputes over matters like Palestinian property rights and the status of refugees. This is how laws in the US have often developed: scholars put out a new approach in a law review, practitioners try it out, and it can lead to case law or legislative efforts. “Those ideas get refined in the process,” Diala Shamas, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, told the Guardian. “It’s provocative, and it’s exactly what scholarship should be doing. It’s exactly what Palestinian scholars need to be doing.”

The campus of Harvard Law School. The Harvard Law Review blocked publication of an early version of the article. Photograph: Chitose Suzuki/AP

After Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel and amid Israel’s military campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, the student editors at the Columbia Law Review contacted Eghbariah. No Palestinian author had previously contributed to the journal.

His draft went through “at least” five edits, he says, with extensive feedback from about a dozen editors at the student-run journal, as he added 427 footnotes to the piece. But in early June, on the eve of the article’s publication, the publication’s alumni and faculty board urged the student editors to postpone Eghbariah’s piece or pull it from the journal entirely.

Student editors told the Intercept that the article had been extensively vetted according to procedure. Some, however, “expressed concerns about threats to their careers and safety if it were to be published”, the Associated Press reported. The students went ahead with publication against the board’s wishes. The board said in a statement published when it restored the website that it had “received multiple credible reports that a secretive process was used to edit” the article, and that was its reasoning for taking the journal offline.

Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at the university, wrote that “nuking the website is a drastic, extraordinary step that requires much more justification than has been supplied by the directors thus far”.

The board never spelled out why it pulled the piece, beyond what it called an opaque editorial process – a description the student editors disputed. But for non-scholarly audiences, Eghbariah’s word choice may have seemed inflammatory. In the piece, he defines Zionism as inextricable from the Nakba and builds on the legal scholarship of apartheid and genocide. Its table of contents was itself arguably provocative, with the header “Zionism as Nakba”.

It echoed another episode from November, when the Harvard Law Review blocked publication of an earlier version of the article that it had commissioned from Eghbariah, after the law review president reportedly expressed safety concerns tied to the piece. That version of the piece later appeared in the Nation magazine.

“What is so scary about Palestinians having the right to narrate their own realities?” Eghbariah said. Student-run law review journals rarely if ever hear from their outside boards. “It’s unprecedented to even interfere in editorial processes,” he said. There have been no substantive or factual contestations of the claims of the Columbia Law Review article.

One of Eghbariah’s advisers at Harvard Law School is the prominent academic Noah Feldman, author of the new book To Be a Jew Today. He has called Eghbariah “one of the most brilliant students I’ve taught in 20 years as a law professor”. He declined to provide comment on the law review article, but said he “certainly” stood by his assessment of Eghbariah’s talents.

Eghbariah hopes the fracas around his article could bring more attention to the violence against Palestinians and what he describes as a genocidal campaign.

“There is a continuum between the material reality in Gaza and shutting down these debates,” he said. “They’re not separate issues.”

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Sheikh Zayed Towers, Which Were Destroyed By The Terrorist, Fascist, War Criminal, Apartheid, Liar, Conspirator and the Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-helli Attacks in Gaza City, seen on June 4, 2024. Photo: Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images

A Federal Judge Visited “The Terrorist, Fascist, War Criminal, Apartheid, Liar, Conspirator and the Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell” On A Junket Designed To Sway Public Opinion. Now He’s Hearing A Gaza Case.

Activists Suing The Biden Administration Over Gaza Policy Are Demanding The Judge Recuse Himself Over The Sponsored Trip.

— Shawn Musgrave | June 5 2024

Plaintiffs Suing The Biden Administration Over Gaza Policy have asked a federal appellate judge to recuse himself because of a trip he took to Israel in March. The World Jewish Congress, which sponsored the junket for 14 federal judges, framed the delegation as part of Israel’s “fight in the international court of public opinion.”

In an emergency motion filed Tuesday, the plaintiffs’ lawyers argued they were “ethically compelled” to ask Judge Ryan Nelson of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to recuse himself because the WJC trip was “explicitly designed to influence U.S. judicial opinion regarding the legality of ongoing Israeli military action against Palestinians.”

The plaintiffs are a mix of Palestinian human rights organizations and individual Palestinians, including Dr. Omar Al-Najjar, who has written about his experiences working in the decimated health infrastructure in Gaza. In November, they filed a complaint in federal court against President Joe Biden and other top officials, seeking “an injunction requiring the United States to fulfill its international law duty to prevent and cease being complicit — through unconditional financial and diplomatic support — in the unfolding genocide in Gaza.”

The district court dismissed the case in late January but urged the administration “to examine the results of their unflagging support of the military siege against the Palestinians in Gaza.” The plaintiffs appealed to the 9th Circuit, which is scheduled to hear oral arguments next week. Nelson’s selection for the three-judge argument panel was announced on Monday.

In March, Nelson joined 13 colleagues from the federal bench on the WJC-sponsored trip. Like Nelson, many of the judges on the trip were appointed by former President Donald Trump.

According to a disclosure about the trip, the judges met with high-ranking members of the Israel Defense Forces about “Operation Swords of Iron” — what Israel calls its current military operation in Gaza — and the application of international humanitarian law during war. The trip also included sessions with one of the attorneys defending Israel before the International Court of Justice, Tal Becker; former Israeli President Reuven Rivlin; and members of Israel’s Supreme Court and Knesset, the disclosure shows.

The judges met with a high-ranking official at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, to get the “American perspective,” one judge told the Jerusalem Post. State Department Secretary Antony Blinken is one of the defendants in the case before the 9th Circuit.

In a LinkedIn post summarizing lessons from the trip, Judge Matthew Solomson of the Federal Court of Claims, who helped organized the delegation, wrote, “Israel’s military culture is very attuned to international law; commanders consult lawyers at every step and the lawyers have veto power. We watched many video clips of Israeli military lawyers stopping strikes based on proportionality and collateral damage assessments. Their enemy doesn’t play by such rules.”

In late March, Nelson and Solomson spoke about the trip at a lunch talk hosted by Harvard Law School’s chapters of the Federalist Society and the Jewish Law Students Association. Their remarks were not made public, but Solomson wrote in a LinkedIn post that Nelson “expressed his inspiring faith in God and, concomitantly, an optimistic view of the future.”

Kath Hochul’s Trip of “The Terrorist, Fascist, War Criminal, Apartheid, Liar, Conspirator and the Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell” Bankrolled By Group Funding Illegal Settlements! New York Disgusting Governor Kathy Hochul Visits “The Terrorist, Fascist, War Criminal, Apartheid, Liar, Conspirator and the Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell” on October 19, 2023. Photo: Shlomi Amsalem/Office of Gov. Kathy Hochul

UJA-Federation of New York, A Tax-Exempt Nonprofit, Has Sent More Than Half a Million Dollars to Groups Supporting “The Terrorist, Fascist, War Criminal, Apartheid, Liar, Conspirator and the Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-helli” Settlements.

“The UJA Has Helped Destroy Any Semblance of a ‘Peace Process’ or Possibility of a Two State Solution.”

In their recusal motion, the plaintiffs highlight coverage of the trip in the Israeli press, particularly by the English-language ILTV. “This invaluable experience allowed them to delve deeper into the legality of Israel’s conduct in the operation,” ILTV said of the trip in an Instagram post.

“At this time, when Israel is facing so much in the court of public opinion and in the courts around the world,” WJC’s chief marketing officer, Sara Friedman, told ILTV in March, “it’s so important for people who understand the judicial system, who understand the laws of war, to come here.”

“The World Jewish Congress is sending a message by bringing these groups that we are supporting the state of Israel,” Friedman told ILTV. “By bringing these groups here and showing them the truth about what is going on, it’s the best diplomacy we can do.”

Friedman did not immediately respond to The Intercept’s request for comment about the trip. The Intercept also asked WJC for copies of materials given to the judges during the trip.

An anonymous statement by federal judicial clerks last month criticized the Israel trip.

Peter Joy, who studies legal ethics at Washington University in St. Louis, said it is often difficult to predict how judges will rule on recusal.

“They make a strong case for the judge to step down,” said Joy. “Here’s somebody who went on a trip, the explicit purpose of which was to try to get Israel’s point of view across.”

Cassandra Burke Robertson, director of the Center for Professional Ethics at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, did not think it was a clear-cut case for recusal.

“The closest issue here is that it sounds like officials on the trip may have been providing specific information about the legality of the operation,” Robertson said. “But if the information was more general, then I don’t think it would be disqualifying.”

“Although Judge Nelson certainly COULD recuse, I don’t think recusal is required under the statute or Judicial Canons,” Rory Little, a professor at UC Law San Francisco, told The Intercept in an email. “He might recuse; it’s not a clear case in either direction.”

Arguments are scheduled for June 10, and the plaintiffs asked the 9th Circuit to rule on their emergency recusal motion by Thursday. A spokesperson for the 9th Circuit said the panel will address the motion, “presumably before Monday.”

The Justice Department, which did not oppose the recusal motion, declined to discuss the case.

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Spain 🇪🇸 will request to participate in South Africa's 🇿🇦 Genocide Case Against The Terrorist, Fascist, War Criminal, Liar, Conspirator, Apartheid and the Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell's actions in Palestine's Gaza before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Country's Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said on June 6, 2024. Spain is the second European nation after Ireland to join the case, which has also been joined by Chile 🇨🇱 and 🇲🇽.

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The Terrorist, Fascist, War Criminal, Apartheid, Illegal Occupier, Liar, Conspirator and The Illegal Regime of The Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell's bombardment of Palestine's Gaza since October 7 has exceeded 70,000 tons of bombs as estimated by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, far surpassing the devastation of World War Il's worst bombings.

Over 98% of Bakeries in Palestine's Gaza have stopped operating due to severe gas shortages caused by Israel's crippling siege on the besieged enclave, the Gaza Government Media Office said on May 31.

"The food, water and medicine crises are intensifying, exacerbating famine and thirst in the Gaza Strip," the media office warned in a statement. The Terrorist, Fascist, War Criminal, Apartheid, Illegal Occupier, Liar, Conspirator and The Illegal Regime of The Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-helli Occupation's Blockade on fuel, cooking gas and medicine has halted over 98% of Gaza's bakeries and more than 700 water wells," it added.

The media office blamed The Terrorist, Fascist, War Criminal, Apartheid, Illegal Occupier, Liar, Conspirator and The Illegal Regime of The Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-helli Occupation and the American administration's blockade on aid and fuel entry" for the worsening conditions, holding them "fully accountable for the looming humanitarian catastrophe."

"For 24 days, The Terrorist, Fascist, War Criminal, Apartheid, Illegal Occupier, Liar, Conspirator and The Illegal Regime of The Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-helli Occupation Army has controlled the Rafah land crossing and closed the Kerem Shalom crossing, preventing 22,000 patients from seeking medical treatment outside the Gaza Strip, and blocked the entry of humanitarian aid and food supplies," the statement said.

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How “Germany, The Fascist And The Complicit in Gaza Genocide” Lost The Middle East

Berlin’s Unequivocal Support For “The Terrorist, Fascist, War Criminal, Liar, Conspirator, Apartheid And The Illegal Regime Of The Zionist 🐖 Isra-hell” Has Eroded Its Soft-Power Footprint In The Region.

— May 24, 2024 | By Ruairí Casey

The Isra-helli flag is projected onto the Brandenburg Gate as part of the Festival of Lights and a show of solidarity in Berlin on October 7, 2023. Fabian Sommer/Picture Alliance Via Getty Images

Last October, Germany’s ambassador to Tunisia, Peter Prügel, sparked controversy while speaking at the opening of a new secondary school in the suburbs of Tunis. After Tunisia’s education minister expressed solidarity with Gaza during the event, Prügel described Israelis as victims of “Palestinian terror,” a reference to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack that killed around 1,200 people in southern Israel.

The education minister angrily objected, asserting that the ambassador’s words ran contrary to Tunisia’s position on the Israel-Hamas war, and Prügel left the event in a hurry. Online, some Tunisians soon claimed that Prügel had justified Israel’s killing of civilians in Gaza. The embassy insisted that Prügel had expressed sympathy for all victims, but said that “we could not ignore that this escalation was caused by Hamas’s barbaric terror attack on Israel.”

Days later, demonstrators gathered outside the German Embassy to demand Prügel’s resignation. Protests against Israel’s war in Gaza had already targeted the U.S. and French embassies in Tunis, but this was the first time they had turned their ire toward Germany. German tabloid Bild described criticism of Prügel as a “hate attack” and reminded its readers that the new school, partly funded by Germany’s development bank, was only opened thanks to the country’s generosity.

For decades, Germany has sought to reconcile a perceived historic responsibility to Israel with a cordial relationship toward the Arab world. Berlin developed a major soft-power footprint and was long seen as an honest broker in trade and economic relations. Organizations financed largely by the German government—such as the Goethe Institute, development agency GIZ, and foundations linked to the country’s main political parties—are major funders of various programs across the Middle East.

Since Oct. 7, this balancing act has faltered. Across the Middle East, there is growing support for Palestinian resistance—and condemnation of what many Arabs consider a genocidal war by Israel. Germany, shocked by the worst single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, initially backed Israel’s assault in Gaza largely without qualification, though some officials have taken a more critical position in recent weeks.

Still, Berlin continues to assert itself as one of Israel’s closest political and military allies, even as—after more than seven months of Israeli bombardment—more than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, and the enclave is experiencing widespread famine. Germany’s uncompromising reaction to the war has rapidly tarnished its reputation across the Middle East.

Protesters march past a vandalized campaign banner of the German Social Democratic Party, which shows an image of The Terrorist and The Complicit in Gaza Genocide Chancellor Olaf Scholz and European Parliament candidate Katarina Barley covered with the graffitied word “Warmongers,” seen in Berlin on May 1. Omer Messinger/Getty Images

Germany’s Image Is Suffering Across The Arab World. A 2020 Survey By The Arab Center Washington DC found that a slight majority of the Arab public had positive views of German foreign policy. This January, by contrast, a poll of residents of 16 Arab countries published by the Doha Institute showed that 75 percent of respondents had a negative opinion of the country’s stance on the Israel-Hamas war.

Morocco-based sociologist Amro Ali, who studies the relationship between Germany and the Arab world, described this as a 180-degree turn in public opinion.

Positive impressions of Germany had long dominated in the Middle East: The country was associated with fast cars, high-tech products, and friendly tourists. The German government refused to take part in the Iraq War and welcomed more than 1 million Syrian refugees in 2015 and 2016. Berlin, home to Europe’s largest Palestinian diaspora, has become a hub for Arab culture and intellectual life. Germany also lacks the direct colonial legacy in the Middle East that still feeds regional distrust of powers such as France and the United Kingdom.

Five days after Oct. 7, in a speech that established Germany’s tone toward the nascent Israel-Hamas war, Chancellor Olaf Scholz told the Bundestag that “[in] this moment, there is only one place for Germany: the place by Israel’s side.” By November 2023, Germany had licensed a nearly tenfold increase in arms exports to Israel, becoming the second-biggest arms supplier to the country since the war’s start, after the United States.

The World’s Most Wanted War Criminal, Terrorist, Liar, Conspirator and The Zionist Satan 🐖 Isra-helli Prime Minister Benjamin Satan-Yahu (left) speaks during a joint press conference with The Fascist and The Complicit in Genocide in Gaza German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Jerusalem on March 17, 2024. Leo Correa/AFP Via Getty Images

As public figures in Germany expressed solidarity with Israel, police cracked down on pro-Palestinian demonstrations, violently dispersing them or banning them on grounds of antisemitism. Artists and intellectuals who are critical of Israel, including Jews and Arabs, have warned of a wave of silencing across German society; many have seen awards and funding revoked or events canceled. Among them are Palestinian author Adania Shibli, whose award ceremony was called off by the Frankfurt Book Fair in October, and Lebanese-Egyptian anthropologist Ghassan Hage, who was fired in February by the prestigious Max Planck Institute, which said views that Hage had shared on social media were “incompatible” with its values.

On social media, Ali noticed something he had never seen before: Young people across the Arab world were posting daily about Germany—and none of their impressions were positive. He links the changing perceptions of the country to a reorientation of global politics, in which Western support for Israel has become a source of unbearable hypocrisy for many in the global south.

“We really see some big shifts happening, and one of the key players that’s contributing to this is Germany,” Ali said.

This change in public opinion is unlikely to affect Germany’s political or economic relations with Arab states. Yet it has the potential to undercut Berlin’s soft power in the region.

Foreign Policy spoke with nine current and former staff of six German institutions that do work across five Middle Eastern countries. They said that Germany’s hard-line position on the Israel-Hamas war has jeopardized their work with local partners and communities—damaging trust and credibility that have taken years or decades to develop. All spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their careers.

Then-Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (Now Rotting and Burning 🔥 in Hell Forever, left) and then-West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer meet in New York in 1960. Bettmann Archive/Via Getty Images

The West German government first sought to build relations with Israel when it agreed to pay Holocaust reparations to the young state in 1952. Then-Chancellor Konrad Adenauer saw reparations as a means to restore Germany’s reputation and reintegrate itself with Western powers. The Arab League objected to Adenauer’s plan, arguing that Germany should not financially support a state that was at war with its Arab neighbors and had refused to take responsibility for the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948.

The Arab League “stated that Germany should not solve its problem on the backs of Arabs or Palestinians,” said Daniel Marwecki, a historian of Germany’s relations with Israel and lecturer at the University of Hong Kong. “That has been the issue ever since.”

The two-state solution set out in the 1994 Oslo Accords offered Berlin a chance to clear the slate. Germany became a key supporter of negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. In 2023, Germany, directly and via the European Union, was the second-largest national donor in the Palestinian territories and to the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), behind only the United States in the latter ranking.

“The idea was: If you just throw money at the process, things are going to get resolved,” Marwecki said. “The U.S. will take the political leadership—we’re just going to follow checkbook diplomacy.”

In the 2000s, as the Oslo process failed, Germany drew closer to Israel on matters of security. Berlin’s foreign policy became increasingly tied up with domestic anxieties about antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment among Muslims in Germany, which some politicians said obstructed the country’s attempts to overcome its history. Longtime Chancellor Angela Merkel summed up Germany’s position during a speech to the Knesset in 2008, when she said that Israel’s security was Germany’s Staatsraison, or reason of state—a term repeated by Scholz and others after Oct 7.

When Merkel put the blame for the 2006 Lebanon War and 2008 Gaza War entirely on Hezbollah and Hamas respectively, there was still occasional opposition to the Israeli military’s operations expressed by officials within the German government; in 2008, a leading Social Democratic politician accused the then-chancellor of “taking the side of permanent Israeli bombardment.”

But Israel’s military conduct in wars in Gaza in 2014 and 2021 earned relatively little criticism from German politicians of any party. Although Germany continued to oppose the construction of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and expressed alarm at the anti-democratic tendencies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition, these policy differences did not substantively alter the Germany-Israel relationship.

In the months after Oct. 7, German leaders fixated on the victims of Hamas’s attack, the fate of hostages in Gaza, rising antisemitism, and what they perceived to be Hamas’s existential threat to Israel’s security. The welfare of Palestinian civilians received notably less attention than in previous conflicts, even amid historic levels of death and destruction in Gaza.

Last October, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Hamas had taken the entirety of Gaza hostage and repeated Israel’s claims that the militant group was using civilians as human shields. Germany continued to reject calls for a cease-fire, which Scholz said would allow Hamas to rearm, and abstained from a December 2023 United Nations vote calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.

As Palestinian deaths in Gaza climbed to more than 20,000 in January, German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck denied that Israel was targeting civilians; while some may object to the Israeli military’s “harsh measures,” he said, accusations of genocide against Israel were false. Germany labeled South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice as “political instrumentalization” and froze its funding for UNRWA after Israel alleged that some of its staff participated in the Oct. 7 attack. (Germany has since reinstated its UNRWA funding after an independent review found that Israel provided insufficient evidence for its claims.)

A protester issurrounded by police during a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Berlin on May 18, 2024. Ralf Hirschberger/AFP Via Getty Images

The Government’s Views Are Rarely Shared By Staff Of German Institutions With Experience In The Middle East. They have long admitted in private what cannot be said publicly in Germany, sources told Foreign Policy: The two-state solution is dead, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank amounts to apartheid, and German foreign policy is unmoored from the realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The divide between German organizations’ headquarters and their outposts in the Middle East has only grown starker since Oct 7. Staff across institutions in several countries say that using terms such as “apartheid” and “genocide” in reference to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians—phrasing rejected and considered antisemitic by the German government—is common among immediate colleagues. They say their work has been impaired by Germany’s support for the war, their own organizations’ silence or support for Israel, and blowback related to the repression of pro-Palestinian voices in Germany.

Several weeks after the protests against Prügel in Tunis, a swastika was painted on the walls of the city’s local branch of the Goethe Institute, the German government’s flagship global cultural institution. The organization canceled a series of school visits and a film screening in the capital and made a planned public exhibition invite-only. It has also canceled events in Beirut and Ramallah due to security concerns. In March, the Egyptian artist Mohamed Abla returned an award from the institute to protest Germany’s support for Israel; the organization had faced backlash in 2022 for canceling a talk with Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd.

Three current and former staff members at GIZ told Foreign Policy that Germany’s complicity in the war has caused outrage within the development agency. GIZ has not taken a public stance on the conflict, even after one of its own Palestinian employees was put in administrative detention—without a trial or charges—by Israel in March. (This differs from GIZ’s strong position against Russia’s war in Ukraine.) At least two Palestinian nongovernmental organizations that GIZ worked with are now boycotting the agency, the sources said.

One described an “authoritarian” atmosphere that has led some staff to fear speaking out and others to quit. “You fund the bombing on one side, and you throw a little bit of aid to show you’re a humanitarian,” the source said of Germany’s actions.

To keep a low profile and protect their local staff and partners, many German organizations doing work in the Middle East have quietly canceled public events, postponed the publication of reports, or removed their logos from the projects they support. Several sources said they fear that the German media or government could accuse their organizations or their local partners of antisemitism if anyone affiliated with them supports the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement or criticizes Israel on social media.

The German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, which funds GIZ and the party foundations’ work abroad, has said partner organizations are subject to “close scrutiny” and checked for any statements that are antisemitic, deny Israel’s right to exist, or support BDS. The ministry and foreign office are currently implementing cuts of nearly 1.5 billion euros as Germany slashes its international aid and development budget.

Last December, Germany removed funding for a project to support victims of trafficking aided by the Centre for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance after its leader signed a letter condemning the war and supporting BDS. During a post-Oct. 7 review, Germany defunded three Palestinian human rights organizations that Israel had labeled as terrorist organizations in 2021. (These designations had been denounced by the United Nations.) The ministry told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in February that it regularly discussed this review with Israel.

The Isra-helli flag flies between the flags of the European Union and Germany outside the Reichstag in Berlin on April 9, 2024. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Some regional partners have issued their own boycotts against Germany. The Lebanon-based Haven for Artists collective rejected a $35,000 grant from the socialist Left Party’s Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in January after a board member criticized Egypt for not admitting Palestinians fleeing Gaza, which the Lebanese group said amounted to support for ethnic cleansing.

“People within the [cultural] scene right now don’t want to be associated with the German foundations,” said a staffer at a German organization in Lebanon. The same source believes that more culture workers would join a boycott if they could afford to do so; many people who once saw Berlin as a hub of Arab culture, they added, have become disillusioned.

In recent weeks, Germany, like the United States, has taken a harsher tone toward Israel. Scholz and Baerbock have now repeatedly called for a more permanent cease-fire and an increase in the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza to alleviate the risk of famine. They have also warned Netanyahu to cease Israel’s planned full-scale invasion of Rafah. During a visit to Israel in mid-March, Scholz spoke not of Staatsraison, but of the suffering of Palestinians and the impossibility of fighting terrorism through military means alone.

Still, in a scene unthinkable just months ago, Germany’s chief representative in the Palestinian territories was chased out of Ramallah’s Birzeit University in late April. Videos show Palestinian students heckling him, kicking his car, and hurling stones as it sped away. Germany’s rhetoric and actions since Oct. 7 “destroyed the dream and an idea of Germany,” the staffer in Lebanon said.

As one of the biggest Western funders of civil society in the Arab world, Germany will continue to be a major influence in the region. Its less political work, such as supporting infrastructure programs and providing language classes, has largely been unaffected by the Israel-Hamas war.

But the government’s moral advantage on many issues—and Germany’s image as a liberal, welcoming society—may prove hard to rehabilitate.

— Ruairí Casey is a Freelance Writer based in Berlin who reports on Politics, Housing, and Migration.

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No Place For Double Standards On Ukraine And Gaza Conflicts – Top EU Diplomat! Josep Borrell Says The Bloc Should Welcome The ICC’s Actions Against Both The Israeli PM And The Russian President

— June 01, 2024 | RT

Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell. © Pier Marco Tacca/Getty Images

There should be no double standards when dealing with the International Criminal Court’s decisions, regardless of whether it acts against Russia for its actions in Ukraine, or against Israel for its operation in Gaza, top EU diplomat Josep Borrell has said. He also called for international pressure to be placed on Israel to compel it to end its military operation against Hamas and ensure the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Last Monday, the ICC’s Chief Prosecutor, Karim Khan, stated that he was seeking arrest warrants for several senior Israeli and Hamas leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. There are “reasonable grounds to believe” that these individuals are responsible for “war crimes and crimes against humanity” in Gaza and in Israel, Khan claimed. The actual issuing of arrest warrant may take months, however, before a three-judge panel passes its verdict.

While Israel, the US, China, and Russia, along with other nations, do not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction, 124 countries, including all EU member states, have signed and ratified the Rome Statute. Should arrest warrants be issued in the names of top Israeli officials, this would likely restrict their travel options.

Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore on Saturday, Borrell noted that Ukraine “is not the only place where international law is being violated,” adding that the EU needs to “avoid double standards” with respect to the situation in Gaza.

“And if we applaud when the International Criminal Court acts against [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, we should be able to do the same thing when the same court acts against other actors in the Middle East,” he said.

The US, Israel’s key ally, has called the “ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders outrageous,” with President Joe Biden vowing last Monday to “always stand with Israel.”

According to Fox News, a bipartisan group of US senators is working on a resolution that would urge the White House and Congress to “impose financial sanctions and visa bans on officials of the ICC.”

Commenting on the US’ reaction, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last Tuesday that the “situation is more than curious with the attitude of the United States, and its readiness to use sanctions methods even in relation to the ICC.”

On March 17, 2023, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for allegedly participating in the “unlawful” deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.

Moscow declared the decision null and void, insisting that children had been evacuated from front line regions in the interest of safety.

The Russian authorities also launched a criminal investigation into several prosecutors behind the charges.

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Award-winning American Comedian Dave Chappelle described “Terrorist, Fascist, Apartheid, War Criminal, Liar, Conspirator, and The Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell's War” on Gaza as "genocide" to cheers during his performance in the capital of the United Arab Emirates while urging Americans to fight antiSemitism in the US so Jews don't feel like they need to be protected by Israel.

Performing in Abu Dhabi on May 23, Dave Chappelle was met with a cheering crowd at Etihad Arena as DJ Trauma, who accompanied him on the tour, played "My Blood is Palestinian" by Palestinian singer Mohammed Assaf before he came on stage.

About halfway through a wide-ranging comedy set, Chappelle initially said his friends had told him to either discuss the war or not. A woman from the audience screamed "Free Palestine!," to cheers from the crowd.

Chappelle then referred to the war as a "genocide" and said that making Jews feel safer in America amid rising cases of anti-Semitism would make them realise they don't need Israel as the protector.

But when touching on the upcoming US election, Chappelle's mention of President Joe Biden — who has promised "ironclad support for Israel" - drew widespread boos throughout the arena.

Now on its 231st day, Israel's war on Gaza has ravaged the besieged enclave, killing 35,800 Palestinians - mostly innocent babies, children, and women - and leaving over 80,200 wounded, while a further 10,000+ are feared dead beneath the rubble of their shattered homes.