In the first week of Ramadan I was lucky enough to be able to go out to Lebanon 🇱🇧 again with @salamcharityuk to serve our Syrian, Palestinian and Lebanese brothers and sisters.
BREAKING:
Israel is dropping bombs on tents full of civilians in Khan Younis — in the middle of the night as families sleep.
There is no refuge left in Gaza.
My brain can’t comprehend how a monkey and a penguin get more attention than an actual human baby, starving in the middle of a genocide. People in Gaza deserve to live too. No child deserves to be starved to death or shot in the head.
Hind Rajabs words on a mobile phone as Israel was murdering her.
‘“I’m not talking because every time I talk blood comes out of my mouth & makes my clothes dirty and I don’t want my mom to have to clean it.”
Israeli MK Limor Son Har Melech announces the passing of the death penalty for Palestinian hostages with tears of joy in her eyes.
There is a deep sickness here.
Imagine you’re a Palestinian, sitting outside your home, trying to find a moment of peace in a place your family has lived for generations.
Suddenly, Israeli settlers appear, assaulting you, backed by the army.
A scene that is hard to put into words.
The boy who saw seventy bullets pierce through his family in Tammun said: "I asked the soldier, 'Do you love your father and mother?' He replied, 'Yes.' I said to him, 'Then why are you killing my father and mother?' So he slapped me across the face."
Noor Abu Salma
The IDF shot up a family of 6 in a car. 2 parents and 4 kids aged 5-11.
Then they removed the 11 year old who survived and beat him.
*After* they beat him, they asked him who they had just killed. The boy said his family, and they kept yelling at him, calling him “liar, liar”.
This was not in Gaza where the genocide is happening. This was in the West Bank where illegal Israeli settlers live under Israeli civil law and Palestinians live under Israeli military law - officially and explicitly. And yet Israel nonsensically claims there’s no apartheid.
There’s always been violence against Palestinians in the West Bank but it has massively ramped up since the Iran war started. Dozens of murders, over a hundred cases of settler violence, and 180 Palestinians kicked out of their homes by illegal Israeli settlers.
There is a pattern many have noticed. When there’s a distraction - anything ranging from the Super Bowl to a full fledged war - Israel ramps up the war crimes. One can only conclude this is calculated and intentional.
I call them illegal Israeli settlers because for half a century, the UN and International Court of Justice have ruled these settlements are illegal.
Beginning in 1979, the UN Security Council resolved the settlements were illegal and in 1980 that they must be dismantled. The 1980 vote was 15-0. Even the US affirmed the resolution.
In 2004, the International Court of Justice formally upheld that these settlements were illegal.
At the end of 2022, the UNGA asked the highest court in the world for another opinion.
And in 2024 the ICJ formally gave it. They plainly stated:
1) Israel’s continued occupation of the OPT is illegal (not only Gaza and the West Bank, but also East Jerusalem)
2) All ~750,000 Israeli settlers must leave the OPT
3) Israel must pay reparations
4) All countries must acknowledge the occupation is illegal and must not aid Israel in any way in maintaining its illegal occupation
Obviously Israel is blatantly spurning the highest court in the world.
The framing is important. This isn’t just a few bad apples doing a few bad things.
This is 50 years of blatantly illegal and wildly oppressive occupation, enacted by 750,000 Israelis, by direct and official policy from all of Israel, and it is largely ignored, tolerated, and in some cases financially supported by The West.
The call to Free Palestine thus isn’t some abstract, obscure, or whimsical ask. The International Court of Justice has very clearly ruled that Israel must GTFO of Palestine. We simply want Israel to follow basic international law and leave Palestine alone. And we want the world to do something about it if Israel won’t.
Free Palestine 🇵🇸