A Year of Empty Threats and a “Smokescreen” Policy: How the State Department Let Israel Get Away With Horrors in Gaza

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Reporting Highlights

  • Empty Threats: Since Oct. 7, 2023, Biden has repeatedly issued threats that Israel ignored. U.S. officials tried to enforce consequences — but they couldn’t.
  • Internal Dissent: The State Department disregarded its own experts and cracked down on leaks. Some human rights officials said they were prevented from pursuing evidence of Israeli abuses.
  • Costs of Inaction: Experts say Biden’s failure to follow through led to impunity for widespread human rights abuses, including blocking aid deliveries, even after explicit U.S. warnings.

“Netanyahu’s conclusion was that Biden doesn’t have enough oomph to make him pay a price, so he was willing to ignore him,” said Ghaith al-Omari, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute who’s focused on U.S.-Israel relations and a former official with the Palestinian Authority who helped advise on prior peace talks. “Part of it is that Netanyahu learned there is no cost to saying ‘no’ to the current president.”

Read more at: https://www.propublica.org/article/biden-blinken-state-department-israel-gaza-human-rights-horrors

'Damning' New Poll Shows Price Kamala Harris Paid for Backing Israeli Genocide in Gaza

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As a cease-fire and hostage release deal was reportedly reached between Hamas and Israel on Wednesday, new polling made it clearer than ever that Vice President Kamala Harris' refusal to break with the Biden administration's position on Israel's relentless assault on Gaza had an impact on her support from voters, and contributed to millions of potential Democratic voters deciding to stay home on Election Day.

A YouGov poll backed by the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project and released on Wednesday showed that among the 19 million people who voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 but did not vote in 2024, nearly a third named Israel's U.S.-backed war on Gaza as a top reason for staying home.

"The top reason those non-voters cited, above the economy at 24% and immigration at 11%, was Gaza: a full 29% cited the ongoing onslaught as the top reason they didn't cast a vote in 2024," wrote Ryan Grim at Drop Site News, the first outlet to report the news.

In states that swung from Biden in 2020 to President-elect Donald Trump in 2024, 20% of non-voters said Gaza was the reason they didn't cast a ballot in November.

Read more at: https://www.commondreams.org/news/harris-gaza

Israeli lawmakers demand military destroy all food and energy resources in Gaza

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Israeli lawmakers are urging the military to intensify the genocide in Gaza by destroying any possible sources of energy, food, and water in the territory. 
 

They demand three basic points of action, after the “encirclement and evacuation of the population:” 

  1. Remote elimination of all energy sources, that is fuel, solar panels and any relevant means (pipes, cables, generators etc.)
  2. Elimination of all food sources including warehouses, water and all relevant means (water pumps etc.)
  3. Remote elimination of anyone who moves in the area and does not exit with a white flag during the days of the effective siege. 

“After these actions and the days of siege upon those who remain, IDF must enter gradually and conduct a full cleansing of the enemy nests.”

 Read more at: https://mondoweiss.net/2025/01/israeli-lawmakers-demand-military-destroy-all-food-and-energy-resources-in-gaza/

 

Lancet Study Finds Official Gaza Death Toll Likely a 41% Undercount

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The peer-reviewed analysis estimates that Israel's assault on Gaza killed 64,260 people between October 7, 2023 and June 30, 2024—a figure significantly higher than the one reported by the enclave's health ministry.

 A peer-reviewed analysis published in The Lancet on Thursday found that the official Gaza death toll reported by the enclave's Ministry of Health between October 7, 2023 and June 30, 2024 was likely a 41% undercount, a finding that underscores the devastation wrought by Israel's assault on the Palestinian territory and the difficulties of collecting accurate data amid relentless bombing.

During the period examined by the new study, Gaza's health ministry (MoH) reported that 37,877 people had been killed in Israeli attacks. But the Lancet analysis estimates that the death toll during that period was 64,260, with women, children, and the elderly accounting for nearly 60% of the deaths for which details were available.

 

 

‘My hands are paralyzed from torture’: Gazans reveal horrors of Ofer Camp

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In February, Rami was arrested by the Israeli army at Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital. The 42-year-old Palestinian was taken to the notorious Sde Teiman detention center, where, like thousands of Gazans detained there, he endured severe abuse at the hands of the guards. But he was soon transferred out. “I thought I was being returned to Gaza, but I found myself in another prison,” he told +972 and Local Call. That prison was Ofer Camp — a military facility that Israel established during the current war to hold detainees from Gaza, located between Jerusalem and Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

Rami described the facility as no less brutal than Sde Teiman. “I was severely tortured,” he said. “We were forced to kneel with our hands tied from sunrise until midnight. Guards beat us on every part of our bodies. I was given electric shocks every two days.” He stressed that such treatment was not exceptional: “All detainees at Ofer were tortured, beaten, and humiliated. We [all] received food only once a day.”

Read more at: https://www.972mag.com/ofer-camp-torture-gaza-detainees/

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  1. Transcript & Links: Senator Merkley Highlights Devastation in Gaza on U.S. Senate Floor
  2. Senator Merkley Highlights Devastation in Gaza on U.S. Senate Floor - YouTube
  3. UNLEASHED: Abuse of Palestinians by Israeli Soldiers in the center of Hebron
  4. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL CONCLUDES THAT ISRAEL IS COMMITTING GENOCIDE IN GAZA

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