Convincing evidence Israel backed aid convoy looters in Gaza, historian says
Account of visit to Gaza by French professor describes Israeli military attacks on security personnel protecting convoys
A historian who spent more than a month in Gaza at the turn of the year says he saw “utterly convincing” evidence that Israel supported looters who attacked aid convoys during the conflict.
Jean-Pierre Filiu, a professor of Middle East studies at France’s prestigious Sciences Po university, entered Gaza in December where he was hosted by an international humanitarian organisation in the southern coastal zone of al-Mawasi.
Israel has blocked international media and other independent observers from Gaza but Filiu was able to evade strict Israeli vetting. He eventually left the territory shortly after the second short-lived truce during the war came into effect in January. His eyewitness account, A Historian in Gaza, was published in French in May and in English this month.
In the book, Filiu describes Israeli military attacks on security personnel protecting aid convoys. These permitted looters to seize huge quantities of food and other supplies destined for desperately needy Palestinians, he writes. Famine threatened parts of Gaza at the time, according to international humanitarian agencies.
UN agencies at the time told the Guardian that law and order had deteriorated across Gaza since Israel began targeting police officers, who guarded aid convoys. Israel considered police in Gaza, which has been run by Hamas since 2007, an integral part of the militant Islamist organisation.
Read more at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/29/convincing-evidence-israel-backed-aid-convoy-looters-in-gaza-historian-says
Israel still committing genocide in Gaza, Amnesty International says
The NGO’s chief says last month’s ceasefire ‘risks creating a dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal’
Amnesty International has said Israel is “still committing genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, despite the ceasefire agreed last month.
The fragile, US-brokered truce between Israel and Hamas came into effect on 10 October, after two years of war.
“The ceasefire risks creating a dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal,” said Amnesty’s secretary general, Agnès Callamard. “But while Israeli authorities and forces have reduced the scale of their attacks and allowed limited amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza, the world must not be fooled. Israel’s genocide is not over.”
Contacted by Agence France-Presse, the Israeli foreign ministry did not immediately respond to the allegations. When faced with such allegations previously, the ministry has vehemently rejected them as “entirely false”, “fabricated” and “based on lies”.
The 1948 UN genocide convention defines genocide as any of five “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”.
In December 2024, Amnesty concluded that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza by three of those acts – including deliberately inflicting on Palestinians conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.
Read more at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/27/israel-still-committing-genocide-in-gaza-amnesty-international-says
Punish Genocide! Take Action!
Urge your Members of Congress to co-sponsor H.Res.876, which would formally recognize Israel's genocide in Gaza and push the United States to meet its legal obligations to prevent and punish genocide.
Send a letter directly to your Representative — most people finish in about a minute. Constituent messages are among the most effective drivers of new co-sponsors — yours helps build momentum now.
By giving Israel $30 billion in weapons over the past two years, we've failed miserably in our obligation to prevent genocide. This resolution is the first step in holding Israel accountable for its atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel used widely banned cluster munitions in Lebanon, photos of remnants suggest
Israel used widely banned cluster munitions in its recent 13-month war in Lebanon, photos of munition remnants in south Lebanon seen by the Guardian suggest.
The images, which have been examined by six different arms experts, appear to show the remnants of two different types of Israeli cluster munitions found in three different locations: south of the Litani River in the forested valleys of Wadi Zibqin, Wadi Barghouz and Wadi Deir Siryan.
The evidence is the first indication that Israel has used cluster munitions in nearly two decades since it employed them in the 2006 Lebanon war. It would also be the first time that Israel was known to have used the two new types of cluster munitions found – the 155mm M999 Barak Eitan and 227mm Ra’am Eitan guided missiles.
Cluster munitions are container bombs which release many smaller submunitions, small “bomblets”, over a wide area the size of several football fields. The use of cluster munitions is widely banned as up to 40% of submunitions do not explode upon impact, posing a danger to civilians who might later stumble upon them and be killed when they explode.
To date, 124 states have joined the convention on cluster munitions, which forbids their use, production and transfer. Israel is not a party to the convention and is not bound by it.
Israel’s underground jail, where Palestinians are held without charge and never see daylight
Exclusive: Detainees at Rakefet include nurse deprived of natural light since January, and teenager held for nine months
Israel is holding dozens of Palestinians from Gaza isolated in an underground jail where they never see daylight, are deprived of adequate food and barred from receiving news of their families or the outside world.
The detainees have included at least two civilians held for months without charge or trial: a nurse detained in his scrubs, and a young food seller, according to lawyers from the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) who represent both men.
The two men were transferred to the subterranean Rakefet complex in January, and described regular beatings and violence consistent with well-documented torture in other Israeli detention centres.
Read more at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/08/israel-underground-jail-rakefet-palestinians-gaza-detainees