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Israeli forces in Gaza ‘use civilians as human shields’ against possible booby-traps

Newspaper and campaign group allege Palestinians are sent ahead of troops into buildings or tunnels that need clearing Emma Graham-Harrison in Jerusalem Wed 14 Aug 2024 19.08 BST Last modified on Thu 15 Aug 2024 02.31 BST

Israeli soldiers are using Palestinian civilians as human shields in Gaza to enter and clear tunnels and buildings they suspect may have been booby-trapped, a leading Israeli NGO and newspaper have reported.

The practice was so widespread across different units fighting in Gaza that it could in effect be considered a “protocol”, said Nadav Weiman, the executive director of Breaking the Silence, a group founded by Israeli combat veterans to document military abuses.

The group has collected testimony describing the practice from veterans of the 10-month war in Gaza. The accounts they have heard match those reported in an investigation by the newspaper Haaretz, which claimed that the chief of staff’s office was aware of the practice.

“The senior ranks know about it,” one source said to have taken part in finding civilians to serve as human shields told the paper. “Our lives are more important than their lives,” Haaretz quoted commanders telling their soldiers.

The practice is said to be so routine that Israeli soldiers have a name for the human shields, who are referred to as shawish – informal slang for a low-ranking soldier – and the process was described by several witnesses.

Palestinian civilians, mostly young men, are picked up by Israeli soldiers, dressed in Israeli army uniforms, then sent into tunnels and damaged houses ahead of Israeli forces, soldiers told Haaretz and Breaking the Silence.

Their hands are tied together and a camera is attached to their bodies as they go in. “Palestinians are told: ‘Do one mission of … a [tunnel] shaft and you’re free,’” Haaretz quoted one soldier saying.

Afterwards, the men are reportedly released to join their families – underlining to the soldiers who spoke to Haaretz and Breaking the Silence that they were civilians who did not pose any military threat and had been detained only for the clearance operations.

Footage of Palestinian civilians, including some in IDF uniform, being sent into devastated buildings was obtained by Al Jazeera and broadcast in July.

Breaking the Silence said it had heard reports of civilians being used as human shields from the early stages of the war in Gaza. Initially it said it thought it had been one commander acting illegally, but testimony started coming in from soldiers stationed across the territory.

“We heard it from different units, fighting in different times and different places inside Gaza,” Weiman said. “Then we understood it’s something a lot more widespread – or even, I could say, a protocol – in the IDF.”

One soldier had been told Palestinian civilians were being used to replace the dog units that search for explosives “because too many dogs had died”, he added.

Many soldiers had raised concerns about a practice that is illegal under international and Israeli law, Weiman said.

In Israel in 2005, the supreme court banned using Palestinians as human shields in response to a petition against the military’s “neighbour procedure” in the West Bank, in which soldiers forced civilians to go ahead of them when raiding houses there. Hamas unlikely to take part in new round of Gaza ceasefire talks Read more

Haaretz also reported heated arguments, including shouting, between soldiers and commanders ordering the use of human shields. “Most of them realised there was a problematic incident here, and it was hard for them to process,” one source said.

The IDF said that the use of human shields was banned, that orders had been “clarified” to troops on the ground, and that the allegations reported by Haaretz would be reviewed.

“The orders and directives of the IDF prohibit the use of Gazan civilians captured in the field for military missions that endanger them,” a spokesperson said.

The reports of the Israel Defense Forces using civilian human shields come after the Israeli military has repeatedly justified attacks on civilian targets, including schools and hospitals, by alleging Hamas uses them, and uses the people inside them as human shields.

“How we can say that kind of thing after we’re doing this, after we’re taking Palestinians as human shields?” Weiman said.

Terms such as “climate neutral” or “climate positive” that rely on offsetting will be banned from the EU by 2026 as part of a crackdown on misleading environmental claims.

On Wednesday, members of the European parliament [MEPs] voted to outlaw the use of terms such as “environmentally friendly”, “natural”, “biodegradable”, “climate neutral” or “eco” without evidence, while introducing a total ban on using carbon offsetting schemes to substantiate the claims.

Under the new directive, only sustainability labels using approved certification schemes will be allowed by the bloc. It comes amid widespread concern about the environmental impact of carbon offsetting schemes, which have often been used to justify labelling products “carbon neutral”, or imply that consumers can fly, buy new clothes or eat certain foods without making the climate crisis worse.

“This new legislation puts an end to misleading advertising for supposedly environmentally friendly products and thus enables consumers to make sustainable choices,” said Anna Cavazzini, the Green MEP and chair of the Committee of the Internal Market and Consumer Protection.

“I am particularly pleased that claims such as “climate-neutral” or “climate-positive”, which are based on CO2 offsetting, have been completely banned from the internal market. Investments by companies in climate protection projects are welcome and of course they can still be communicated,” she said. “However, it should no longer appear that planting trees in the rainforest makes the industrial production of a car, the organisation of a soccer World Cup or the production of cosmetics climate neutral. This deception is now a thing of the past. This is a great success for the environment, the climate and consumers.”

The directive comes after months of negotiations over how environmental claims will be regulated in the EU, with a deal reached in September that was approved by law makers on Wednesday. Member states now have two years to introduce the new rules. Drop carbon offsetting-based environmental claims, companies urged Read more

In January, the Guardian published a joint investigation into forest carbon offsets approved by the world’s leading certifier that big corporations used for their sustainability commitments, finding more than 90% of offsets from a large sample of projects to be worthless.

Environmental NGOs have raised concerns about claims based on offsets, including the 2022 World Cup in Qatar which was advertised as a “carbon neutral” event.

“This agreement is a big step towards more honest commercial practices and more informed European consumers. The European Union is taking leadership in combating greenwashing,” said Lindsay Otis, a policy expert on global carbon markets at CMW. “Carbon neutrality claims have been shown to be unintelligible to consumers, and they must stop. Today marks the end of outlandish and baseless advertisements that tell European consumers that they can take carbon-neutral flights, wear carbon-neutral clothes, and eat carbon-neutral food.”

Hunting stags with packs of dogs has supposedly been illegal for almost 20 years – although there are some exemptions. However – despite the ban – hunts are continuing with impunity. We’ve been sent footage of stags being chased on National Trust land involving people on quad bikes as well as horses. While on another hunt – it’s one of the hounds which appears to be at risk. There is some distressing footage in this story.

The mayor of Greater Manchester has urged ministers to talk to leaders in the north of England before scrapping HS2 and leaving it with “Victorian infrastructure” for the rest of the century.

Andy Burnham said he and the leader of Manchester city council, Bev Craig, would be writing to Rishi Sunak to say that while a rephasing of the rail project may be possible, cancelling the section to Manchester would create “a north-south chasm”.

“You really should not take this decision without listening to the voice of people here,” Burnham told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Amid significant political anger about the much-trailed move, including within the Conservative party, it remains unclear when any decision might be taken.

Sunak and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, are expected to decide this week, with an announcement pencilled in for Friday.

However, northern Tories believe that scrapping the northern leg before the Conservative party conference in Manchester next weekend would be a huge political embarrassment, and are urging Sunak to wait while they push for a compromise solution.

Asked what would happen to the parallel Northern Powerhouse Rail project if HS2 ended at Birmingham, Burnham said: “Scrapping HS2 rips the heart out of Northern Powerhouse Rail. Basically it would leave the north of England with Victorian infrastructure probably for the rest of this century.

“If we’re trapped with that old infrastructure and the southern half of the country gets new lines, that is a recipe for the north-south divide to become a north-south chasm, the very opposite of the levelling up that we were promised in this parliament.”

In his letter to Sunak, Burnham said he and Craig would be saying: “Please at least do us the courtesy of meeting us and discussing this issue before you take any decision.”

He continued: “It’s frankly disrespectful to the people of the north of England that our voice has not been heard at all in this conversation that seems to be going on within government. This is a decision of epic proportions for our part of the world and we should be heard before it’s taken.

The second thing we’ll be saying in the letter is as part of any discussion, we would say whatever you decide to do, please don’t scrap it.”

If changes had to be made, Burnham said, he could be open to a possible rephashing of the northern section so Northern Powerhouse Rail was built first.

He said: “That is something we could have a discussion with the government about, but scrapping it will basically take everything off the table, the east-west line, Liverpool to Leeds as well.

“And that will be a disaster for people here in the north of England. It would leave us stuck with that Victorian infrastructure that causes so much chaos on our railways day after day.”

Asked about the plans for HS2 on Sky News, the housing minister, Rachel Maclean, was able to say only that there was “no announcement at the moment”.

“The focus is on delivering HS2,” she said, adding: “It’s not for me to say – I’m the housing minister.”

Patients with suspected cancer may have to wait longer to get a diagnosis under government proposals due this week.

The target that all patients should see a specialist within two weeks of an urgent referral for cancer tests by a GP is expected to be scrapped under NHS England plans to streamline cancer targets.

Ministers have been consulting on the proposals to replace the nine existing cancer targets with just three.

Under a new “faster diagnosis standard”, three-quarters of patients should have a diagnosis or be told they do not have cancer within 28 days. Once diagnosed, patients should receive their first treatment within 62 days from referral or 31 days after the decision to treat.

That standard would replace the nine existing cancer targets, including the two-week wait between a GP referral and first consultant appointment; a one-month wait for care once a decision has been made to offer treatment for cancer such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery; and a two-month wait from the urgent GP referral to a first treatment of cancer.

The latest figures show that only 59% of patients in England started their first cancer treatment within two months of an urgent GP referral, well short of the 85% target. Only 62% of patients were seen within two months of a positive result from a national cancer screening test, compared with the 90% target.

When a consultation on the proposals began last year, the NHS highlighted that the current two-week target set no expectation of when patients should receive test results or have a confirmed diagnosis.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Pat Price, a visiting oncology professor at Imperial College London and co-founder of the Catch Up with Cancer campaign, accused ministers and NHS leaders of “fiddling around” in the middle of an NHS crisis and of watering down the targets.

“Changing the targets won’t help patients, unless we can treat patients better and quicker. And that means now increasing treatment capacity,” she said.

On breast cancer, the target is that 93% of women should be seen in a one-stop clinic in two weeks, but the figure is now 74%. Price said: “The target we think is only going to be 75% in 28 days – that’s actually worse. Is it really the best that government and senior NHS leaders can do is fiddle around with targets in the middle of this crisis?”

The BBC reported that the outcome of the consultation was expected to be announced within days, and implementing the changes would be subject to final approval by the health secretary, Steve Barclay.

Barclay said on the Today programme that the proposals were designed to improve outcomes and were what the sector wanted.

He said: “Any changes will be those where it’s been requested by clinical specialists within the cancer field and would be done in consultation with the leading cancer charities. The consultation has been about working with consultants, clinical leaders, as to what drives the best outcomes, what is the way of getting the best survival rates.”

Barclay said there had been a 28% increase in urgent GP referrals for suspected cancer and £2.3bn investment in 160 community diagnostic centres, with 114 of those open.

Prof Sir Stephen Powis, the NHS national medical director, said: “These proposals were put forward by leading cancer experts and have the support of cancer charities and clinicians. By making sure more patients are diagnosed and treated as early as possible following a referral and replacing the outdated two-week wait target with the faster diagnosis standard already being used across the country, hundreds of patients waiting to have cancer ruled out or diagnosed could receive this news faster.

“The proposals will also remove the need for unnecessary outpatient appointments in order to comply with waiting times rules, allowing more patients to be referred ‘straight to test’ and the wider deployment of diagnostic technologies including artificial intelligence.”

Dr Tom Roques, a vice-president of the Royal College of Radiologists, said simplifying the targets would make it easier for cancer teams to deliver care, but warned targets were no panacea.

“It’s important to remember that the targets are just a tool to try and improve care – the targets achieve nothing on their own. And the real need is investment in workforce, in newer ways of working, so we can improve the situation on the ground, which I think if you ask any cancer team is just not good enough at the moment for the patients,” he said.

“I think one of the problems that we have with targets as a whole is that they often focus on the process rather than the outcomes that are important to patients. So if you look at the old two-week target to see a doctor, you may not need to see a doctor to be diagnosed or not diagnosed with cancer, you may need teledermatology to assess your skin lesion and tell you whether it’s cancer or not. You may need to have an endoscopy test to quickly look and see whether you’ve got bowel cancer, and an artificial focus on ‘you must see a doctor by 14 days’ may not be the best way to get patients quickly through the system.”

Keir Starmer accused the government of “moving the goalpost” on cancer targets. “I want swifter diagnosis, of course I do – both for the individuals concerned and obviously for the health service,” the Labour leader said on a visit to Scotland.

“Under the last Labour government, we had targets, we hit those targets; we didn’t walk away when the going got tough,” he said. “With this government, it’s targets that they’ve repeatedly failed to hit. And now what they’re doing is moving the goalposts and even where they’re keeping targets [in place] after this streamlining, there’s targets they’re still not hitting.”

DEF CON Infosec super-band the Cult of the Dead Cow has released Veilid (pronounced vay-lid), an open source project applications can use to connect up clients and transfer information in a peer-to-peer decentralized manner.

The idea being here that apps – mobile, desktop, web, and headless – can find and talk to each other across the internet privately and securely without having to go through centralized and often corporate-owned systems. Veilid provides code for app developers to drop into their software so that their clients can join and communicate in a peer-to-peer community.

In a DEF CON presentation today, Katelyn "medus4" Bowden and Christien "DilDog" Rioux ran through the technical details of the project, which has apparently taken three years to develop.

The system, written primarily in Rust with some Dart and Python, takes aspects of the Tor anonymizing service and the peer-to-peer InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). If an app on one device connects to an app on another via Veilid, it shouldn't be possible for either client to know the other's IP address or location from that connectivity, which is good for privacy, for instance. The app makers can't get that info, either.

Veilid's design is documented here, and its source code is here, available under the Mozilla Public License Version 2.0.

"IPFS was not designed with privacy in mind," Rioux told the DEF CON crowd. "Tor was, but it wasn't built with performance in mind. And when the NSA runs 100 [Tor] exit nodes, it can fail."

Unlike Tor, Veilid doesn't run exit nodes. Each node in the Veilid network is equal, and if the NSA wanted to snoop on Veilid users like it does on Tor users, the Feds would have to monitor the entire network, which hopefully won't be feasible, even for the No Such Agency. Rioux described it as "like Tor and IPFS had sex and produced this thing."

"The possibilities here are endless," added Bowden. "All apps are equal, we're only as strong as the weakest node and every node is equal. We hope everyone will build on it."

Each copy of an app using the core Veilid library acts as a network node, it can communicate with other nodes, and uses a 256-bit public key as an ID number. There are no special nodes, and there's no single point of failure. The project supports Linux, macOS, Windows, Android, iOS, and web apps.

Veilid can talk over UDP and TCP, and connections are authenticated, timestamped, strongly end-to-end encrypted, and digitally signed to prevent eavesdropping, tampering, and impersonation. The cryptography involved has been dubbed VLD0, and uses established algorithms since the project didn't want to risk introducing weaknesses from "rolling its own," Rioux said.

This means XChaCha20-Poly1305 for encryption, Elliptic curve25519 for public-private-key authentication and signing, x25519 for DH key exchange, BLAKE3 for cryptographic hashing, and Argon2 for password hash generation. These could be switched out for stronger mechanisms if necessary in future.

Files written to local storage by Veilid are fully encrypted, and encrypted table store APIs are available for developers. Keys for encrypting device data can be password protected.

"The system means there's no IP address, no tracking, no data collection, and no tracking – that's the biggest way that people are monetizing your internet use," Bowden said.

"Billionaires are trying to monetize those connections, and a lot of people are falling for that. We have to make sure this is available," Bowden continued. The hope is that applications will include Veilid and use it to communicate, so that users can benefit from the network without knowing all the above technical stuff: it should just work for them.

To demonstrate the capabilities of the system, the team built a Veilid-based secure instant-messaging app along the lines of Signal called VeilidChat, using the Flutter framework. Many more apps are needed.

If it takes off in a big way, Veilid could put a big hole in the surveillance capitalism economy. It's been tried before with mixed or poor results, though the Cult has a reputation for getting stuff done right. ®

Young Fathers - Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and G. Hastings stream exclusive three track live video filmed in partnership with Amnesty International to raise awareness for Refugee Week. The session, directed by Tom Hingston, features performances of the tracks ‘I Saw’, ‘Rice’, and ‘Geronimo’ and perfectly captures the trio’s electrifying and frenzied energy they pour into every live show.

The full video is available on Wednesday 21st June to mark Refugee Week (19-25th June 2023) an annual arts and culture festival celebrating the contributions, creativity and resilience of refugees and people seeking sanctuary.

Fans are able to watch the frenetic rendition of ‘Rice’ individually as a preview of the intimate performance, with the full session available to watch on Bandcamp when donating to Amnesty International.

The launch of the video and Refugee Week comes as the UK government prepares to permanently disqualify people’s asylum claims en masse regardless of the strength of their case. Amnesty International says the current immigration bill speeding through parliament will create significant obstacles, penalties and harms to people seeking asylum in the UK.

Alloysious Massaquoi who arrived in the UK with his family as a 4-year-old child refugee, said:

“I know full well the hardships of fleeing a warzone. That’s why it’s important for us to collectively speak up for refugee rights and show comradery.

Most of all we need to show compassion - it brings hope and understanding. It’s transformative. It gave my family and I the chance at a new life.“

Alongside the news of the live session, the band releases two limited edition t-shirt designs in conjunction with Everpress to further raise money and highlight the cause. All proceeds from the sale of the t-shirt will be donated to Amnesty International.

Buy the exclusive T-Shirt : everpress.com/young-fathers

All three tracks from the session are taken from the band’s fourth album ‘Heavy Heavy’ released to wide-spread critical acclaim on February 3rd via Ninja Tune. Since its release the trio have played a host of sell-out shows across the UK and Europe and are now set for a summer of festival performances followed by a full tour of North America - including a televised performance at 20:30 on Friday 23rd June at Glastonbury Festival’s West Holts Stage. Known for their electrifying performances, their shows are a blur of ritualistic frenzy, marking them as one of the most must-see acts operating today.