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Israel Isn’t Violating International Law; Hezbollah Is Putting Civilians at Risk

Smoke billows over Khiam, amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as pictured from Marjayoun, near the border with Israel, Oct. 29, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Karamallah Daher

A PBS Newshour report on October 22 about the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah incorrectly claimed that Israel’s “attacking medical workers and striking health care facilities are war crimes.” But this is not an accurate statement of international law, nor would anyone with an understanding of how law works claim it to be so. Both the Geneva Conventions and Customary International Humanitarian law provide that medical facilities lose their protected status when they are used for military purposes.

The International Committee of the Red Cross’s customary international humanitarian law database, Rule 28, states, “Medical units exclusively assigned to medical purposes must be respected and protected in all circumstances. They lose their protection if they are being used, outside their humanitarian function, to commit acts harmful to the enemy.” (Emphasis added.)

And Article 21 of the Geneva Conventions states, “The protection to which fixed establishments and mobile medical units of the Medical Service are entitled shall not cease unless they are used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy. Protection may, however, cease only after a due warning has been given, naming, in all appropriate cases, a reasonable time limit and after such warning has remained unheeded.” (Emphasis added.)

Even a previous PBS report has acknowledged that, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, “hospitals can lose their protections if combatants use them to hide fighters or store weapons.”

This has to be the case, otherwise it would incentivize warring parties to turn their hospitals into military bases, and provide a mechanism for those parties to attack others with impunity. And, indeed, for these reasons, US forces or US-backed forces attacked hospitals in Iraq on at least four occasions. Despite this, PBS’ Geoff Bennett introduced the segment by Leila Molana-Allen with the unqualified assertion that “Israeli airstrikes around Beirut have increasingly targeted health care facilities and health care workers,” and Molana-Allen failed to qualify her description of international law, creating a false impression of Israeli actions in Lebanon.

Further, within the report, Molana-Allen says, “and now, hospitals as well as homes are under attack. Yesterday Israel’s authorities said they believed a Hezbollah cash trove sat under Beirut’s El Sahel hospital, but said they wouldn’t strike it. Instead, they hit a different one. Just before midnight, an airstrike was launched on the entrance of Beirut’s Rafik Hariri hospital, flattening four buildings in front of it….” (Emphasis added.)

But as multiple news sources made clear, the hospital itself was not the target of the attack, and in fact, it wasn’t even hit — though it seems to have suffered collateral damage from the blast. The BBC reported “the Israeli military said it hit a ‘Hezbollah terrorist target,’” and that the buildings that were hit were about 160 feet from the hospital. Even The New York Times reported that the strike was on “residential buildings across from,” the hospital.

But it appears as though Molana-Allen is trying to make it seem like the hospital itself was struck, when she says, “this is the capital’s main specialist public hospital, where children injured in the bombings are receiving surgery. Rescuers dug for hours through the mangled carcass of concrete and iron searching for survivors.”

One interview subject, a Lebanese medic, is quoted saying, “they [the IDF] don’t differentiate at all between military personnel, civilians, or paramedics. Anyone trying to do their duty is at risk.” Yet, the speaker has no way to know what the military objectives of any particular strike are.

The segment also featured a video clip of what Molana-Allen claims is, “an 11-story apartment block leveled in less than a second. Dozens of homes and lives demolished.” But, though she does note that residents were warned to flee, she makes no effort to explain why the building was a target. In fact, the IDF press office has confirmed to CAMERA that the building was part of Hezbollah’s infrastructure.

The IDF has said for years that “Hezbollah militants and arms are systematically embedded in civilian areas and urban population centers.”

And on October 16, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller acknowledged, “We understand that Hezbollah does operate at times from underneath civilian homes, inside civilian homes. We’ve seen footage that has emerged over the course of the past two weeks of rockets and other military weapons held in civilian homes.”

Of course it is tragic when civilian homes or medical facilities are caught up in fighting, and even more so when civilians lose their lives, but Hezbollah, like Hamas, has embedded itself within the civilian population. Any blame for such death and destruction must be properly laid at the feet of those who store weapons in residences, and who forced the opening of this front in the war with 11 months of rocket attacks on northern Israel that displaced tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes, including the July 27 attack that killed 12 Israeli Druze teenagers.

Neither the slain Israeli children nor the many displaced Israeli civilians were mentioned in this report. At fault as well is UNIFIL, which failed in its mission to protect both Israeli and Lebanese civilians by restraining Hezbollah, yet which also isn’t even mentioned in Molana-Allen’s report.

Karen Bekker is the Assistant Director in the Media Response Team at CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, where a version of this article first appeared. 

The post Israel Isn’t Violating International Law; Hezbollah Is Putting Civilians at Risk first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Canadian University Hires Convicted Terrorist Who Bombed Paris Synagogue to Teach ‘Social Justice’

Hassan Diab attending a 2012 rally calling on the Canadian government not to extradite him to France. Photo: Reuters Connect

Carleton University in Ontario, Canada is being castigated for hiring convicted terrorist Hassan Diab — who carried out a 1980 bombing of a synagogue in Paris, which killed four Jewish worshippers and injured dozens of others — as a professor.

Diab, 70, is teaching at least one course in Carleton University’s sociology department this fall, according to B’nai Brith Canada, a Jewish civil rights group. He will lecture on “social justice in action.” So far, no high level administrative official has attempted to explain what merited his being hired.

A former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who is currently the subject of an international arrest warrant issued by French law enforcement, Diab was found guilty in 2023 in absentia of detonating a bomb at Rue Copernic synagogue on Oct. 3, 1980, an attack which coincided with Shabbat. The French court last year sentenced him to life in prison and issued a warrant for his arrest.

Decades passed between the incident and Diab’s conviction, owing to his elusiveness and oscillations of a criminal justice system which ordered his extradition on charges of terrorism, dropped them, and then reinstated them when the case reached France’s highest judicial body, the Court of Cassation. Throughout the proceedings, Diab has professed his innocence and even compared himself to Alfred Dreyfus, a French army officer falsely convicted of espionage in a landmark case that sparked antisemitic violence across France.

“Despite being handed a life sentence by a French court, Hassan Diab continues to live freely in Canada, while Carleton University, unconscionably, continues to allow him the privilege of teaching at a Canadian institution,” B’nai Brith Canada said in a statement, which included a link to a petition calling for the termination of Diab’s employment. “The university has ignored B’nai Brith’s formal request to terminate his position, allowing Diab to remain in a position of authority over students.”

It continued, “Carleton’s silence is deeply disturbing. Its decision to continue to employ Diab not only presents a danger to the well-being of its students, but it is an insult to the memory of innocent victims of his heinous crime and an affront to all Canadians who value law and order. This must change! We must act now!”

Carleton University has not responded to The Algemeiner‘s request for comment for this story.

Diab, a Lebanese-Canadian academic, is not the first PFLP terrorist to find refuge in academia. Leila Khaled, who hijacked a Tel Aviv-bound plane in 1969 and attempted another hijacking, this time of an El Al flight, in 1970 — has been invited to speak at San Francisco State University, the University of California, Merced, and New York University. Additionally, Khaled has a strong following among radical activists in the American anti-Zionist movement, in which she is highly praised as “the poster girl of Palestinian militancy.” American lawmakers, however, have described Khaled as “unrepentant” and suggested that inviting her to an American campus violates anti-terrorism laws.

In Diab’s case, Carleton University’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology, in which he is currently employed, has effusively advocated ignoring France’s request for extradition, which would result in Diab’s serving the life sentence to which he was sentenced for his crime.

“Dr. Diab has been caught in a political nightmare in which the existence of accuse has become the foundation for a guilty finding in a trial with no official transcripts and no opportunity for appeal,” the department said in 2023. “While our hearts go out to the victims, families, and communities hurt by this act of antisemitic terror, causing further damage to the life of an innocent man and continued harm to his family will not heal their pain. Canada must refuse to extradite Hassan Diab and end his 15-year long ordeal.”

Jewish civil rights leaders in France, however, support the court’s findings and have demanded Canadian compliance with the two countries’ extradition treaty.

“Forty-three years after the attack on the Rue Copernic synagogue, Hassan Diab is sentenced to life imprisonment,” Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), said following the verdict. “Everything must now be done to enforce the international arrest warrant. CRIF calls on Canada to cooperate with the French justice system. CRIF expresses its solidarity with the families of the victims, who have devoted their lives to ensuring that justice is done.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Canadian University Hires Convicted Terrorist Who Bombed Paris Synagogue to Teach ‘Social Justice’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Pro-Israel Supporters Encouraged to Back Trader Joe’s as Chain Faces Pressure to Boycott Israeli Products

Bamba snacks for Trader Joe’s. Photo: Trader Joe’s.

A pro-Israel activist organization is urging the public to show support for Trader Joe’s as the chain of grocery stores faces pressure to stop stocking Israeli products in support of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against the Jewish state.

The anti-Israel activist group Code Pink recently launched a petition pressuring Trader Joe’s to stop selling Israeli products in its stores “until Israel respects international law and human rights for Palestinians.” The items mentioned in the petition include Israeli feta cheese, Bamba puffed peanut snacks, and crushed garlic and ginger cubes from the Israeli brand Dorot.

“While Trader Joe’s claims it is ‘transforming grocery shopping into a welcoming journey full of discovery and fun,’ it is certainly not fun to discover that — one year into this genocide — you are still carrying Israeli products,” the petition reads. “We urge you to be on the right side of history. Stop stocking Israeli goods in your stores until Israel ends the occupation, respects international law, and ensures full and equal rights for Palestinians.” The petition has garnered a little more than 14,000 signatures and has a goal of reaching 15,000.

In response, the pro-Israel activist organization EndJewHatred launched a counter-campaign over the weekend, calling on its supporters to “show Trader Joe’s some love” and purchase the Israel-made items from their local Trader Joe’s locations. Pro- Israel supporters are being urged to call the customer relations department at Trader Joe’s and tell the representative on the line, or leave a message, saying: “Thank you for carrying Israeli products! I’m so appreciative that I am able to buy products made in Israel.” EndJewHatred said supporters can also leave possible feedback about Israeli products on the Trader’s Joe’s website.

 

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In mid-October, activists in support of Code Pink shared a video on social media of them visiting a Trader Joe’s store, where they sang loudly about a boycott of Israeli products and pulled Israeli items off shelves. The section of the store that carried the Israeli snack Bamba was referred to as “the apartheid aisle” and “genocide aisle” by protesters in the video. Another protester said that when she looks at the Dorot crushed garlic cubes from Israel that is sold in Trader Joe’s, it looks like the item “is dripping in blood.”

“I can see children being killed,” she claimed, while holding the frozen product. “I can’t even look at it,” another activist added.

The protesters in the clip also approached the store manager, who explained that while she “completely sympathizes” with their concerns, stores have no say in merchandising decisions. “We, as store managers, cannot do anything about this — in terms of supplies. Trader Joe’s, as a corporation, makes merchandising decisions, at a higher level,” the manager said.

The post Pro-Israel Supporters Encouraged to Back Trader Joe’s as Chain Faces Pressure to Boycott Israeli Products first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Hundreds of Runners Dedicate Race in New York City Marathon to Hamas Hostages

A runner in the New York City marathon is wearing a shirt honoring one of the hostages during the race on Nov. 3, 2024. Photo: Liri Agami

More than 150 runners dedicated their race in the New York City marathon on Sunday to five hostages abducted by Hamas terrorists and still held captive in the Gaza Strip since the deadly massacre that took place in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

The runners competed in the 26.2-mile race while wearing shirts that featured images of hostages Naama Levy, Doron Steinbrecher, Evyatar David, Ohad Yahalomi, and Edan Alexander, five athletes who previously completed marathons and triathlons, according to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. Near the finish line at Columbus Circle, the NY Hostages Families Forum and many of its supporters showed support for the runners while waving Israeli flags adorned with yellow ribbons, which has become a symbol calling for the safe return of the hostages abducted last Oct. 7.

Yamit Ashkanzi, Steinbrecher’s sister, said the 31-year-old hostage “loves to run” and ran every Saturday morning in the kibbutz where they lived. “On that tragic day [on Oct. 7] she wasn’t able to run and ever since she’s been held hostage,” Ashkanzi added. “It warms our hearts that people will be running today with Doron’s picture and to know that she’s in so many people’s hearts. To know they are running for her because she can’t run for over a year now.”

Levy’s father Yoni Levy said, “When I see Naama’s picture in the huge marathon, I feel her absence so deeply and how it hurts that she’s not here. Naama participated in triathlons and races with deep passion and courage and if she would have known people would be running for her, she’d be excited and thankful for the support and for people fighting to bring her home.”

Some runners also competed in the marathon while wearing shirts that said “Bring Them Home Now” and a group of 260 runners representing the Shalva Center in Israel, which supports individuals with disabilities, competed in the marathon wearing yellow shirts, in solidarity with the hostages. Together the group also sang Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikvah,” minutes before starting the race. The runners included IDF soldiers, those wounded in the Israel-Hamas war, and family members of those killed in the ongoing conflict.

Also at the marathon, Jewish rapper Kosha Dillz filmed a music video for his song “Marathons in the Rain” while running in the race to raise money for Blue Card, an organization that aids Holocaust survivors.

The post Hundreds of Runners Dedicate Race in New York City Marathon to Hamas Hostages first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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