Thursday, March 21, 2024

Common Dreams:
"Australia Restores UNRWA Funding as Israel Kills Aid Workers, Starving Gazans. 'Restoring UNRWA funding is the bare minimum,' said one Australian Green senator. 'The Labor government must publicly pressure Israel to allow aid into all parts of Gaza.'

Australia said Friday that it would reinstate funding for the United Nations United Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in international financing due to unsubstantiated Israeli claims that UNRWA staff participated in the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel.

'The best available current advice from agencies and the Australian government lawyers is that UNRWA is not a terrorist organization,' Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in Adelaide while announcing a new funding package for the agency, which works to aid Palestinians forcibly displaced during the Nakba, or 'catastrophe' through which the modern state of Israel was established in 1948, as well as their descendants.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/australia-unrwa

-->The NYT was all over the story of countries defunding UNRWA. But now that the charges look to be more Israeli propaganda, you would think that the NYT would apologize to its readers. But our newspaper of record has no shame when it comes to Palestine.

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Common Dreams:
"More than 100 pro-Palestine demonstrators were arrested Thursday after staging a protest at The New York Times' Midtown Manhattan headquarters, where activists handed out copies of a satirical knockoff of the newspaper that skewered what organizers called its biased coverage of the Gaza genocide.

After surrounding the Times' printing plant in College Point, Queens, members of Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG), Palestinian Youth Movement, and other groups shut down the paper's Midtown West headquarters, where they chanted, 'New York Times you can't hide, we charge you with genocide,' 'free, free Palestine,' and 'from the river to the sea.'

Around 150 demonstrators occupied the Times building, where they called on passersby to boycott, divest, and unsubscribe. Some passersby confronted the demonstrators. One angry man attempted to steal a large banner from protesters. The New York Police Department said 124 protesters were arrested."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/journalism-gaza

-->Interesting how The NYT won't even cover the ceasefire demonstrations when they shut down access to the NYT's own printing plant. Hello, NYT, anyone home?

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Aljazeera:
" ‘Massacre’: Israel forces attack crowds waiting for aid in Gaza, killing 21. Palestinian officials call latest assault ‘premeditated’ as people seeking humanitarian supplies increasingly targeted.

At least 21 Palestinians have been killed after Israeli forces opened fire on thousands of people waiting for aid in Gaza City in the same area that was targeted hours earlier, government officials said. The Ministry of Health in Gaza described the late Thursday attack as a 'new, premeditated massacre' and said more than 150 people were wounded.

Witnesses told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces had used helicopters, tanks and drones to target thousands of people waiting on food trucks. It was the latest in a string of assaults on people desperately in need of food and other essential supplies as Israel continues to obstruct and severely control the entry of aid into the enclave."
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/15/massacre-israel-forces-attack-crowds-waiting-for-aid-in-gaza-killing-21

-->How did our "newspaper of record" deal with another cold blooded slaughter of starving Palestinians waiting for food? The title of the NYT story says it all: "Israeli and Gazan officials offer diverging accounts of deadly chaos around another aid convoy." Diverging accounts of genocide, and deadly chaos instead of an IDF hail of bullets and tank shells.