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The UN’s humanitarian chief said on Wednesday that recent “horrifying scenes” of Palestinians being killed while trying to access food aid were the result of “deliberate choices” to deprive them of essentials. “The world is watching, day after day, horrifying scenes of Palestinians being shot, wounded or killed in Gaza while simply trying to eat,” UN aid chief Tom Fletcher said in a statement, adding: “This is the outcome of a series of deliberate choices that have systematically deprived two million people of the essentials they need to survive.”
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Gaza is facing “dark days”, the UK prime minister has said, as he vowed to consider “further action” against Israel. On Wednesday, Keir Starmer described the Israeli government’s conduct in the 25 mile-long strip as “counterproductive and intolerable”. He added: “We will keep looking at further action along with our allies, including sanctions, but let me be absolutely clear: we need to get back to a ceasefire.”
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Starmer was also asked in the House of Commons whether he would repeat the position put forward by government lawyers that there is not a genocide taking place in Gaza, to which he replied: “I’ve said that we are strongly opposed and appalled by Israel’s recent actions, and have been absolutely clear in condemning them and calling them out, whether that’s the expansion of military operations, settler violence, or the dreadful blocking of aid, is completely unacceptable.”
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The UN security council will vote later today on a resolution calling for a ceasefire and unrestricted humanitarian access in Gaza. It will be the first vote on the issue held by the council since November. The US is expected to exercise its veto to prevent the 15 nation body passing the resolution, as it did the last time the council voted on the subject of Israel and Gaza.
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Spain, which has strongly criticised Israel’s offensive in Gaza, has cancelled a contract to buy 168 firing posts and 1,680 anti-tank missiles from Israeli defence company Rafael, reported Spanish media. The deal was worth €287.5m ($327m), according to top-selling daily Spanish newspaper El País, which cited unnamed government sources. The equipment was to be manufactured in Spain under licence from Rafael.
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The UK has said Israel’s newly introduced measures for aid delivery in Gaza are “inhumane, foster desperation and endanger civilians”. Foreign Office minister Hamish Falconer described the killings of Palestinians while trying to access aid sites as “deeply disturbing” and called for and independent investigation into the incidents.
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The Gaza health ministry said on Wednesday that Israeli strikes had killed at least 95 Palestinians in the past 24 hours, including women and children at a school housing displaced families that was hit near the southern city of Khan Younis. “At least 12 people were killed, including several children and women, in a strike by an Israeli drone this morning on a tent for displaced persons” near Khan Younis, the agency’s spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
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The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced on Wednesday that a soldier had been killed in combat in the northern Gaza Strip. Israel’s military said that 420 service personnel had been killed inside Gaza since its ground operation started on 27 October 2023.
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On Tuesday Israel’s military warned residents of Gaza against travel in areas leading to the distribution centres, after at least 27 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire as they waited for food at the points set up by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
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The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said it had begun distributing drinking water with the support of the German Red Cross to displaced Palestinians in Gaza. In an update on Wednesday morning on X, PRCS said it had “launched an emergency campaign to provide desalinated water to the most vulnerable amid worsening shortages and an escalating humanitarian crisis”.
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Norway’s parliament on Wednesday rejected a proposal to have the country’s $1.9tn sovereign wealth fund divest from all companies with activities in the occupied Palestinian territories. “We have an established ethical regime for the fund,” finance minister Jens Stoltenberg told the chamber in a debate on several aspects of the way the fund is run before the vote.
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Israel’s defence ministry said on Wednesday that its arms exports hit an all-time high of more than $14.7bn in 2024, with a sharp rise in deals with Arab Gulf states, despite international criticism of Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza.
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The BBC has defended its reporting on the war in Gaza and accused the White House of misrepresenting its journalism after Donald Trump’s administration criticised its coverage of a fatal attack near a US-backed aid distribution site. Senior BBC journalists said the White House was political point-scoring after Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, accused the corporation of taking “the word of Hamas with total truth”. She also falsely claimed that the BBC had removed a story about the incident.
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An evangelical leader and adviser to Donald Trump on interfaith issues has been appointed the new head of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Johnnie Moore, a member of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom and founder of the boutique advisory firm Kairos Company, was appointed the new head of the GHF after Jake Wood, a former marine, resigned, saying that he could not guarantee the GHF’s independence from Israeli interests.
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Syrian authorities insisted on Wednesday they would “never be a threat” to anyone in the region, after Israel bombed the country’s south in retaliation for overnight rocket fire on the Golan Heights. Israeli defence minister Israel Katz held Syria’s leader “directly responsible”, while Syria condemned the Israeli shelling as a “blatant violation of Syrian sovereignty” that “aggravates tensions in the region”.
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The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has detailed the harrowing account of one of its paramedics, who told the organisation he heard Israeli troops shoot first responders while they were still clinging to life. Asaad al-Nasasra, 47, was one of two first responders to survive the 15 March attack on a convoy of emergency vehicles in which 15 other medics and rescue workers were killed.
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Iran’s supreme leader on Wednesday criticised an initial proposal from the US in negotiations over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear programme, though he stopped short of entirely rejecting the idea of agreement with Washington. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described the US proposal as “100% against the idea of ‘we can’”, borrowing from an Iranian government slogan. He also said that Tehran needed to keep its ability to enrich uranium.
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BBC staff in London say their families are being “targeted and punished” by the Iranian regime as it intensifies a campaign of intimidation against journalists and media outlets. There have been more than 20 “threat-to-life” incidents against people in the UK by Iran in recent years, according to the Metropolitan police counter-terrorism commander.
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Turkey is training and advising Syria’s armed forces and helping improve its defences, and has no immediate plans for the withdrawal or relocation of its troops stationed there, defence minister Yasar Guler told Reuters. In written answers to questions from the news agency, Guler said Turkey and Israel – which carried out its latest airstrikes on southern Syria late on Tuesday – are continuing de-confliction talks to avoid military accidents in the country.
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About 20 far-right protesters arrived at the Kerem Shalom crossing to block aid trucks from entering the Gaza Strip on Wednesday morning, Haaretz reported. The GHF announced on Tuesday that it would halt the limited food distribution operations permitted by Israeli authorities at centres in the Gaza Strip for one day….
Violent incidents are increasingly related to Israel or Zionism….
But since Oct. 7, 2023 — when Hamas attacked Israel, setting off the ongoing Israel-Gaza war — groups monitoring antisemitism say such incidents are increasingly related to Israel or Zionism.
Attacks against the Jewish community have been growing for years, experts on hate crimes say, but increasingly, perpetrators are citing Israel’s war in Gaza, blurring the line between opposing the Israeli government and opposing Jewish people, some Jewish groups say….
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In 2024, 58 percent of antisemitic incidents “contained elements related to Israel or Zionism,” according to the Anti-Defamation League’s annual antisemitism report released this year. That has risen since the group began tracking the data with a new definition two years ago.
“For antisemites, the Israel issue has been a convenient tactic to pile onto the Jewish community,” said Oren Segal, ADL’s senior vice president of counterextremism and intelligence. Some people intentionally conflate being Jewish with support for the Israeli government, he said.
The overlap is complicating life for many U.S. Jews and Jewish organizations living with increasing antisemitism and the deep divisions sparked by the war in Gaza.
“People like me made arguments for years about how you should be able to criticize Israel and not be seen as antisemitic. Now that’s collapsed, and attacks on Zionism now target Jews. They see no difference, and so here we are,” said Joel Rubin, a deputy assistant secretary of state under President Barack Obama….
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