Category Archives: Israel

‘The war needs to end’: is the US right turning on Israel?

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Longstanding ties between US conservatives and Israel face strain as war’s toll and internal rifts reshape the right

As the Israel-Gaza war nears its two-year mark, and as images of starving people and utter devastation flood social media, cracks seem to be emerging in the American right’s typically iron-clad support for Israel.

The US continues to support Israel diplomatically and militarily, and last Thursday pulled out of peace negotiations that it accused Hamas of sabotaging. And in the US Congress, only two Republicans voted for a recent amendment that would have pulled funding for missile defense systems for Israel. One of them, Marjorie Taylor Greene, on Monday became the first Republican to call Israel’s war a “genocide”.

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Saudi Arabia and France to lead UN push for recognising Palestinian statehood

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Two countries open three-day conference at United Nations with goal as part of peaceful settlement to end war in Gaza

Saudi Arabia and France have opened a three-day conference at the United Nations with the goal of recognising Palestinian statehood as part of a peaceful settlement to end the war in Gaza.

The conference began on Monday, just days after the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said Paris would officially recognise the Palestinian government in September in an effort to reinvigorate peace talks around a two-state solution that have all but been written off since the deadly Hamas raid and ensuing Israeli military operation that began in 2023.

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Aid deliveries a ‘drop in the ocean’ amid Gaza’s desperate hunger, UN says, as Israel resumes military pause – as it happened

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UN says ‘vast amounts of aid’ needed to prevent catastrophic health crisis in Gaza

At least 43 Palestinian people have been killed across Gaza since dawn, including nine people seeking aid, Al Jazeera is reporting, citing hospital sources.

More than 1,000 people have been killed by Israeli fire while trying to get aid, most of them near Gaza Humanitarian Foundation food distribution sites, during its two months in Gaza, the UN says.

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Mary Kostakidis tells court Zionist federation racial discrimination case is ‘embarrassing’ and too vague

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Exclusive: Federation head says in response that former SBS newsreader’s attempt to strike out case is ‘without foundation and should be rejected’

Mary Kostakidis has asked the federal court to strike out an “embarrassing” Zionist Federation of Australia racial discrimination claim on the grounds it fails to identify which race, ethnicity or nationality was offended by her social media posts about Israel.

The journalist’s interlocutory application said the claim is “embarrassing” because it is so ambiguous it could include ethnic Arabs who follow the Jewish faith or “a Jewish person who is ethnically Swedish”.

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Israel committing genocide in Gaza, say Israel-based human rights groups

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Reports detailing intentional targeting of Palestinians as a group, and systemic destruction of Palestinian society, add to pressure for action

Two leading human rights organisations based in Israel, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, say Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and the country’s western allies have a legal and moral duty to stop it.

In reports published on Monday, the two groups said Israel had targeted civilians in Gaza only because of their identity as Palestinians over nearly two years of war, causing severe and in some cases irreparable damage to Palestinian society.

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Keir Starmer to recall cabinet for emergency meeting on Gaza crisis

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Prime minister expected to press Donald Trump to take tougher stance towards Israel when they meet in Scotland

Keir Starmer will recall his cabinet from their summer break for an emergency meeting on the Gaza crisis this week as cross-party MPs warned his talks with Donald Trump provided a critical juncture in helping to resolve the conflict.

Amid growing international horror over the situation on the ground in Gaza, he will urge the US president to take a tougher stance towards Israel and will push for ceasefire talks to resume, when they meet in Scotland on Monday.

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Starmer faces difficult task persuading Trump to take different path on Gaza

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PM will be hoping to convince Trump to push Netanyahu to revive peace talks when UK and US leaders meet on Monday

Moments after Air Force One touched down at Prestwick on Friday for a trip in which politics will take as big a billing as golf, Donald Trump was asked about his relationship with Keir Starmer.

“I like your prime minister. He’s slightly more liberal than I am, as you’ve probably heard. But he’s a good man,” the US president told reporters. At a time when the UK wants Trump’s ear on numerous weighty issues, his response to questions about the “special relationship” will have given Downing Street some reassurance.

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Israel trying to deflect blame for widespread starvation in Gaza

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Officials and ministers either deny that Palestinians are being affected by hunger or say it is not Israel’s fault

Israel is pursuing an extensive PR effort to remove itself from blame for the starvation and killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is responsible.

As dozens of governments, UN organisations and other international figures have detailed Israel’s culpability, officials and ministers in Israel have attempted to suggest that there is no hunger in Gaza, that if hunger exists it is not Israel’s fault, or to blame Hamas or the UN and aid organisations for problems with distribution of aid.

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Middle East crisis live: Gaza running out of specialised food to save malnourished children, UN agencies say

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Supplies of ready-to-use-therapeutic food will be depleted by mid-August if nothing changes, says Unicef

Gaza is on the brink of running out of the specialised therapeutic food needed to save the lives of severely malnourished children, United Nations and humanitarian agencies say.

“We are now facing a dire situation, that we are running out of therapeutic supplies,” Salim Oweis, a spokesperson for Unicef in Amman, Jordan, told Reuters on Thursday, saying supplies of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF), a crucial treatment, would be depleted by mid-August if nothing changed.

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Albanese says Israel’s killing of civilians in Gaza ‘cannot be defended or ignored’ in strongest condemnation yet

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The prime minister did not, however, follow French president Emmanuel Macron’s lead with a commitment to recognise a Palestinian state

Anthony Albanese has condemned Israel for “the killing of civilians, including children” seeking aid, but stopped short of saying Australia would recognise a Palestinian state, as France has committed to doing.

In the Australian government’s strongest condemnation of Israel yet, the prime minister said the killings and denial of aid “cannot be defended or ignored”.

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People in Gaza are ‘walking corpses’, says Unrwa, as agency says it has 6,000 aid trucks ready to enter – Middle East crisis live

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Philippe Lazzarini says Unrwa findings show one in five children is malnourished in Gaza City and says agency has food and medical supplies

Palestinian health officials said Thursday that two Palestinian teenage boys were killed by Israeli fire on Wednesday night in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Israel’s military said its forces had fired at Palestinians throwing molotov cocktails toward a highway, killing two near the West Bank town of Al-Khader.

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‘Extortion’: Columbia University’s deal with White House met with mixed reactions

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Some slammed the agreement with the Trump administration to reinstate $400m in federal funds while others praised it as an ‘excellent outcome’

Columbia University’s long anticipated deal with the Trump administration after months of negotiations has drawn both condemnation and praise from faculty, students, and alumni – a sign that the end of negotiations will hardly restore harmony on a campus profoundly divided since the beginning of Israel’s war in Gaza.

The deal will reinstate $400m in federal funds the administration cut from the university after it accused it of allowing antisemitism to fester on campus. But it will cost Columbia some $220m in legal settlements, as well as a host of new measures that critics warn significantly restrict the university’s independence and will further repress pro-Palestinian speech.

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‘This is not action’: MPs respond to David Lammy’s condemnation of Israel

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Keir Starmer’s government struggling to convince MPs and public it is doing enough for civilians starving in Gaza

When David Lammy stood at the dispatch box to deliver a statement condemning Israel’s killing of starving civilians in Gaza on Monday, he was met with anger from MPs.

“We want action, and this is not action,” thundered one Labour MP. Another questioned: “Is this it?” A third asked: “At what point does our basic humanity require us to take stronger action? Many of us think the red line was passed a long time ago.”

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‘We faced hunger before, but never like this’: skeletal children fill hospital wards as starvation grips Gaza

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For months Israel kept food shipments to Gaza far below starvation rations. Now the death toll is rising rapidly

Mohammed’s skeletal arms stick out of a romper with a grinning emoji-face and the slogan “smiley boy”, which in a Gaza hospital reads as a cruel joke. He spends much of the day crying from hunger, or gnawing at his own emaciated fingers.

At seven months old, he weighs barely 4kg (9lbs) and this is the second time he has been admitted for treatment. His face is gaunt, his limbs little more than bones covered in baggy skin and his ribs protrude painfully from his chest.

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Israeli cruise ship turned away from Greek island by Gaza war protest

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Tourists greeted on Syros by banner saying Stop the Genocide and prevented from disembarking

A cruise liner carrying Israeli tourists has been forced to reroute to Cyprus after being turned away from the Greek island of Syros after a quayside protest over the Gaza war.

Around 1,600 Israeli passengers on board the Crown Iris were prevented from disembarking amid safety concerns when more than 300 demonstrators on the Cycladic isle made clear they were unwelcome over Israel’s conduct of the war and treatment of Palestinians in Gaza. A large banner emblazoned with the words Stop the Genocide was held aloft alongside Palestinian flags.

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Starmer under pressure from cabinet to recognise Palestinian statehood

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Exclusive: Wes Streeting among ministers pushing for action after calling Israeli attacks on aid sites ‘intolerable’

Keir Starmer is under pressure from cabinet ministers for the UK to immediately recognise Palestine as a state, as global outcry grows over Israel’s killing of starving civilians in Gaza.

The prime minister is understood to have been urged by a number of senior ministers in different cabinet meetings over recent months that the UK should take a leading role in issuing recognition.

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Global outcry grows over Israel’s killing of starving civilians in Gaza

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UN secretary general warns ‘last lifelines’ may soon collapse after Israeli forces attack WHO facilities in Deir al-Balah

Israel is facing intensifying international condemnation for its killing of starving Palestinian civilians in Gaza, and its attacks on humanitarian efforts, as the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said the “last lifelines keeping people alive [in the strip] are collapsing”.

An angry chorus of senior figures, among them the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, and a senior Catholic cleric, expressed on Tuesday a growing sense of global horror over Israel’s actions.

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Trump ‘caught off guard’ by Israeli strikes on Syria last week

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The White House confirmed that Trump called Netanyahu to ‘rectify’ the situation after ongoing clashes in the city of Sweida

Donald Trump was “caught off guard” by Israeli strikes on Syria last week, the White House has said, adding that the US president called Benjamin Netanyahu to “rectify” the situation.

Israel launched strikes on the capital Damascus and the southern Druze-majority city of Sweida last week, saying it aimed to put pressure on the Syrian government to withdraw its troops from the region amid ongoing clashes there.

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WHO says residence and main warehouse in Gaza hit by Israeli forces

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Staff quarters attacked three times and four people detained, three temporarily, as IDF tanks enter Deir al-Balah

The World Health Organization (WHO) has said the Israeli military attacked its staff residence and main warehouse in Deir al-Balah on Monday, compromising its operations in Gaza.

The WHO said its staff residence was attacked three times, with airstrikes causing a fire and extensive damage, and endangering staff and their families, including children.

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Belgian police question two Israelis over war crimes accusations

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Authorities interviewed Israeli pair after they were seen at Tomorrowland music festival near Antwerp

Belgian authorities have said they briefly held and questioned two Israeli citizens who attended an electronic music festival last week, after pro-Palestinian groups accused them of war crimes.

Prosecutors said they had received legal complaints alleging that two Israeli soldiers responsible for “serious violations of international humanitarian law” in Gaza were spotted at the Tomorrowland festival near the northern city of Antwerp.

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