#gaza-boycott

#gaza-boycott

After 35 years of defending Palestinian children's rights, we are not able to overcome operational challenges resulting from Israel's targeted criminalization of Palestinian human rights organizations.

The major offensive that Israel launched on Lebanon on Wednesday hit previously untouched districts of Beirut and attempted to separate the Lebanese front from the ceasefire agreed between the United States and Iran.

Haitham al-Zayed, displaced from Shallal al-Auja, recalls his childhood memories of swimming in al-Auja's lush pools, now occupied by settlers celebrating their presence during Passover.

"I have never chosen to adopt the title of 'refugee,' yet it keeps haunting me. It is scribbled on my Palestinian national identification card and follows my name in human rights conferences."

In the Al-Taghreba shelter in Khan Younis, the displaced refused to let the rituals of Ramadan die. They made their own decorations, recycling cola cans into radiant lanterns that hung between the tents.

The World Health Organization has suspended medical evacuations from Gaza to Egypt after a contract worker was killed by Israeli fire, with further evacuations on hold until further notice.

The data, painstakingly gathered and verified by ELSC, reveals the operation of a system, not something which is centrally directed, of course but something which is organic, multipolar, self-reinforcing and mutually exacerbating. A system which seeks to raise intolerably the personal cost to any individual who speaks or acts in light of their conscience seeks to reduce civil society's capacity to call out genocide and to demand at the same time robust action by our governments.

Today Americans are getting a taste of what Palestinians have experienced for decades: state terror. The escalation of state violence in the United States has been unprecedented. In the span of three weeks, two people were shot dead in Minneapolis during anti-immigration raids. Both were branded domestic terrorists. Meanwhile last week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents used five-year-old Liam Ramos as bait to get his asylum-seeking father to come out of their home;

But urgency should never become an excuse for illusion, spectacle, or political shortcuts. The contrast between rhetoric and reality could not be sharper. While United States President Donald Trump and a group of world leaders gathered in Davos, Switzerland, to sign the charter of the so-called Board of Peace and unveil glossy reconstruction plans, the killing in Gaza continued. Since the ceasefire came into effect on October 10, no fewer than 480 Palestinians have been killed.

Many Israelis see international condemnation as evidence of anti-Semitism, rather than a verdict on their government's actions. Defying a chorus of global condemnation and international law, Israel nevertheless proceeded earlier this month with the de facto annexation of the West Bank, home to more than three million Palestinians and a territory it has illegally occupied since 1967. The international criticism that met the announcement was hardly new.