Exclusive: Cambridge’s wealthiest college to divest from arms companies / by Imran Mulla

_{^{People punt past the Wren Library, part of Trinity College, on the River Cam in Cambridge, England, on 9 September 2023 (Justin Tallis/AFP)}}

MEE revealed in February that Trinity College Cambridge had investments in Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer

_{Reposted from Middle East Eye}

Trinity College Cambridge, the University of Cambridge’s wealthiest constituent college, has decided to divest from all arms companies, Middle East Eye can reveal.

This came after MEE revealed in February that Trinity had £61,735 ($78,089) invested in Israel’s largest arms company, Elbit Systems, which produces 85 percent of the drones and land-based equipment used by the Israeli army.

MEE also reported that the college had millions of dollars invested in other companies arming, supporting and profiting from Israel’s war on Gaza.

In response to this report, on 28 February the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), a UK-based rights group, issued a legal notice to Trinity College warning that its investments could make it potentially complicit in Israeli war crimes.

The ICJP indicated in its legal notice that “officers, directors and shareholders at the college may be individually criminally liable if they maintain their investments in arms companies that are potentially complicit in Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

MEE has learnt from three well-informed sources close to Trinity’s student union that the college council, responsible for major financial and other decisions, voted to remove Trinity’s investments from arms companies in early March.

According to these sources, the college decided not to announce that it would divest from arms companies after an activist defaced a 1914 portrait of Lord Arthur Balfour – who authored the infamous Balfour Declaration – inside the college on 8 March.

Condemnation

The incident prompted widespread media coverage in the UK – and condemnation from British MPs, including Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden.

MEE has contacted Trinity College Cambridge for comment.

MEE revealed in February that the college also had investments worth approximately $3.2m in Caterpillar, a US-based heavy equipment company that has long been the target of boycott campaigns for its sale of bulldozers to the Israeli army, and multiple other companies involved in Israel’s war – including General Electric, Toyota Corporation, Rolls-Royce, Barclays Bank and L3Harris Industries.

Trinity has not committed on divesting from all these companies.

On Thursday, an open letter written by Cambridge academics and signed by more than 1,700 staff, alumni, and students from the university was published, expressing support for protesters who set up a protest encampment last week that calls on the university to end any potential complicity in Israel’s war on Gaza.

Around a hundred students gathered on the lawn outside Cambridge’s King’s College on Monday, where they erected tents and demanded the institution commit to divesting from companies involved in Israel’s war.

They joined students at over 100 universities worldwide who have set up similar protest movements.

The encampment’s organisers told MEE they are demanding that Cambridge University disclose all its relationships with companies and institutions “complicit in the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine”.

On Thursday, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak summoned the vice-chancellors of 17 universities to an “antisemitism roundtable” at Downing Street and urged them to take “personal responsibility” for protecting Jewish students.

That same day, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland’s most prestigious university, announced it would divest from Israeli companies involved in the occupation of Palestine after a sit-in by students protesting against the war on Gaza.

Since the events of 7 October, when a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel killed 1,171 people and resulted in more than 200 being taken back to Gaza as captives, the enclave has been under total siege and deprived of basic necessities, while facing a devastating bombing campaign by Israel.

More than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed and around 1.7 million displaced, in what was described at the International Court of Justice in January as a plausible genocide.

Nearly 77,000 people have also been wounded, according to health officials. The figures exclude tens of thousands of dead who are believed to be buried in the bombed-out ruins of homes, shops, shelters and other buildings.

_{Imran Mulla is a journalist at Middle East Eye.}

Telling the ‘Untold’ Stories of Palestinian Lives, Dreams, and Hopes—in Gaza and Beyond / by April M. Short

_{^{Palestinian solidarity mural in Belfast, Ireland. Image credit: PPCC Antifa/Flickr}}

The media collective Untold Palestine gathers the stories mainstream media doesn’t tell about Palestinians—videos, photographs, and written accounts from Palestinian people about their culture and daily life.

_{Reposted from ZNet}

After a decade of struggling with infertility and undergoing IVF procedures, 27-year-old Alaa gave birth to her first son, Kareem—an “energetic and brilliant child” with a “sweet” soul who “filled the house with joy.” Two years later she had another child, Ahmed, nicknamed Moudi, who was “the funniest kid ever with his words and stories.”

Maram Al Masri, the aunt of the boys, shared their story on Instagram, which was posted by the media collective platform, Untold Palestine, on March 18, 2024. On January 8, 2024, Kareem and Ahmed Al-Masry were killed by an Israeli artillery shell. “It took away Kareem and Ahmed, the children we had longed for over many years… vanished in the blink of an eye.”

Kareem and Ahmed are two of more than 13,000 children killed by Israel’s attacks on Gaza since October 7, 2023, according to figures provided by UNICEF on March 17, 2024.

A Book Full of Stories

Ibrahim Sha’ban loved life. He was “like a book full of stories and memories, laughter and joy” and “the best engineer in Gaza,” writes his brother, Mohammad Sha’ban, in a note shared by Untold Palestine on Instagram on March 13. “He was also my teacher for mathematics, physics, and Arabic and the keeper of my secrets. He filled us with his kindness, happiness, and love,” adds Mohammad. Ibrahim and his wife Aya, his “soulmate in kindness and happiness,” had many projects and travels planned with their two children—the youngest not yet three months old—when the four of them were all killed by Israel on October 24, 2023.

As of March 2024, the Sha’ban family was among the more than 30,000 victims killed by Israel since the war began, in what UN experts have called a genocidal campaign. Despite ongoing, mass protests worldwide, and a ruling in January 2024 by the International Court of Justice ordering Israel to do everything in its capacity to prevent death, destruction, and any acts of genocide in Gaza, Israel has continued constant military bombardment in the region and prevented food and aid from reaching people in refugee camps in Gaza. Experts warned that millions of people in Gaza were on the brink of famine due to Israel’s actions, PBS reported on March 19.

Thwarting International Law

Beyond its brutality in Gaza, Israel’s military, as well as informal settler militias, have thwarted international law with violent attacks that have increased at an “unprecedented rate” throughout Palestine since October 7. For example, every morning, 42-year-old Lina Amr gets her children ready and takes them to school, “saying goodbye with a heavy heart, as if it might be our last farewell.” She works as an ambulance officer at the Palestine Red Crescent Society in Hebron, and since October 7, “the dangers and fears have increased on this job,” she writes in a post Untold Palestine shared on Instagram on March 21, 2024.

“We often face settler attacks and obstacles from checkpoints, settlements, and challenges by the Israeli occupation army, which threaten our lives and hinder our work. Sometimes, soldiers give us a minute to leave before opening fire, which has sadly happened,” she writes, noting that while paramedics were once protected in Israel (as they are supposed to be, by international law), they are now being directly targeted.

Untold Palestine

The personal narratives above were collected and shared by Untold Palestine, an independent digital media platform, organized as a collective, which has been working since 2019 to share stories of Palestinian life, told by Palestinian people by way of photos that are accompanied by these stories on social media (shared in both Arabic and English).

As its website states, the stories they share “are people-centered.” “[W]e shed light on their personality, interests, and passions.”

In this way, Untold Palestine aims to connect the Palestinian diaspora throughout Palestine and around the world, and “to create a multifaceted image of the Palestinian people in all their diversity. Our platform is an open space, and we want to make it accessible particularly… [for] those whose voices are usually not heard due to marginalization, racism, and exclusion.”

In addition to social media channels, Untold Palestine offers learning opportunities for artists and journalists—including photography trails for professional and amateur photographers.

Photographer Mohamed Badarne, who works with the Untold Palestine collective, spoke with me for the Independent Media Institute 160 days into Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. He says that the Palestinian people are typically portrayed in much of the western media through racist stereotypes—and are often either presented as the victims of violence or perpetrators of violence and terrorism. While in the Arab media, they are often shown as heroes in the context of the struggles and clashes they witness almost on a daily basis. He says the Untold Palestine platform was established to paint a more accurate picture of Palestinians and to give people of the region a way to take back ownership of their stories. In this way, the platform might help humanize Palestinian people in the eyes of the world.

Badarne, a Palestinian from Haifa who is now living in Berlin, has been involved in social activism since he was a teen. He worked as a human rights organizer and teacher for years, before becoming a photographer when he was 35 years old. He has experience sharing the stories of those who have been overlooked or oppressed. His exhibition, the Forgotten Team, documented the treatment of 2022 FIFA World Cup workers in Qatar.

He says as a Palestinian person he always has to fight for his rights and safety. After facing years of racism in Israel, he moved to Berlin in 2012, but has faced more difficulty and racism living in Berlin.

“I work as a photographer and I hold workshops here for refugees and women,” he says. “All of my work is focused on photography and storytelling for social change.”

Badarne says the Untold Palestine platform started out by sharing everyday stories about the hopes, dreams, art, and activities in Palestine—across ethnicities and ages. The idea was to help people in Palestine to reclaim how they were portrayed. And the hope was that it would inspire people in other places in the world where narratives are often co-opted into stereotypes, to take back their own stories as well.

“We don’t often have the chance to tell our story as we want because the international media and western media tend to control our stories—our photography, our videography, and our scenes… we don’t have the chance, oftentimes, to bring our voices out,” he says. He adds that telling stories from everyday life can help people find shared humanity with Palestinians.

“People can be in solidarity with us when we bring our normal photos to the world,” he says. “One of the very problematic things is that regimes, like the Israeli regime or western regimes, don’t see us as human. They don’t see that we also like to dance, to swim, and to read books. And if you go to our platform, you will find hundreds and hundreds of doctors, teachers, engineers, women, children, and so on… and see that they have a life.”

He says one of the platform’s challenges has been that while the idea is not to tell political stories but personal ones, they are often political by nature due to the realities of everyday life for Palestinians. He shares the example of a teacher who has to cross seven checkpoints on his way to school each day.

“He is the same teacher as everywhere in the world—he has the same dreams—but in the end his story is different,” Badarne says.

He says the goal of Untold Palestine is to give ownership of the Palestinian story back to its people—and that means their photos and stories need to be freed up to the public. Badarne says that Palestinian photographers and journalists seldom have the chance to publish their photos as they would like because they lack the access and funds necessary to reach larger media platforms.

“We established [Untold Palestine] because we believe that not just the Palestinians, but everyone who is under occupation, must have the right to tell their story as their own,” he says.

He says they aim to humanize as many victims as possible, telling their stories, in hopes of increasing solidarity with Palestinians, and with all those people who are fighting for freedom.

We Are Not Numbers

Badarne says if you scroll back through the Untold Palestine platform before October 7, 2023, you will find photos and stories of women, children, artists, culture, beauty, and life in Gaza and beyond.

“Now, we show the life that Israel destroyed,” he says.

He says that even before the war began on October 7, it was not always easy to convince photographers, journalists, and others in Palestine to share photographs and stories that had messages of hope, because so often, they were focused on commemorating oppression and clashes. However, over time, Untold Palestine collected stories from all around Palestine, as well as from Palestinian people living around the world, which showed inspiring and humanizing moments from daily life.

In the aftermath of October 7, 2023—due to the level of bloodshed and violence Palestinians have been experiencing on a daily basis—the collective came to the decision to shift the focus to telling the stories of the lives of victims before they were killed.

This is what the collective has been doing since the war began, and the stories of the lives of victims have received millions of views. Badarne says that through the stories of the victims’ lives, people around the world may be better able to connect with the realities of what is happening at a human level—rather than seeing them as just numbers.

“People can be in solidarity with us not just when we are killed, not just when we are bloody… this is a kind of solidarity with the small details in life,” he says.

In fact, “We Are Not Numbers” is the title of Untold Palestine’s Instagram posts, which provide the stories of victims’ lives shared by their friends and families.

The text at the top of these posts reads: “With each martyr and martyr raised, it increases our responsibility to document their stories and lives, and ensure that they do not become just numbers,” followed by an invitation for people to send in photos and stories of those they’ve known who have been killed during the war.

“I think the kind of story that we publish has more effect than learning about ‘30,000 people killed,’” Badarne says. “I think about all the photos from Gaza that people see of tanks or bombing—now there are photos of life; these are photos and stories of the people, and details about people we care about.”

In addition to the stories of victims, the platform continues to share stories of those living in Palestine—like that of Lina Amr—including a daily post that often provides insights into the lives of people living in refugee encampments.

Badarne says the platform has inspired other groups to create similar platforms to share the life stories of people who are victims of war and violence, in various languages around the world.

The Work of Storytellers

Every day since October 7, Badarne says he or other members of the Untold Palestine collective team learn about a personal friend or relative who has been killed and/or receive an overwhelming number of stories from the friends and relatives of victims.

The work “is not easy”—and it’s unending, because the violence is unending, and the stories continuously keep flooding in.

“We publish stories about the lives of our friends and people that we know… and we don’t have the time to be sad about our friends,” he says. “All the time you must publish news.”

He notes that Untold Palestine’s photographers in Gaza are working under very difficult conditions.

“They suffer on two levels: First, they are photographers and they must [keep] storytelling, and tell the stories of other people,” he says. “Second, they must also care for their families—and themselves are victims.”

He says working as a media collective, rather than a top-down media channel, allows Untold Palestine’s storytellers, photographers, and videographers to mutually support and uplift each other.

“We try to give our photographers [on the ground in Gaza] power and support,” he says. “We work with them; we try to help them. We try to work together… to spotlight their photos and stories,” he says.

The Untold Palestine team mostly comprises people from Gaza and the West Bank, and most work as volunteers, while the organization is funded by donations. They operate under the umbrella Yura, a nonprofit based in Berlin. He says the collective is a mix of media and art, and that it hopes to increasingly fund itself through its own art rather than relying on outside funders.

For example, he shares that there was an exhibition in Berlin in early 2024 where they sold the photos of their photographers.

“While our goal is to become self-funded through art projects, donations play a critical role in the sustainability of our operations,” he says. “In addition, we have partnerships with organizations such as the IMS [International Media Support], the EED [European Endowment for Democracy], and the Euro-Mediterranean Foundation of Support to Human Rights Defenders, as well as individual donors and grants from other organizations.”

Badarne says another hope of the collective is to expand on the concept to include other places. He imagines organizations such as Untold Sudan, Untold Morocco, Untold Africa, and so on.

“Our goal is to bring this kind of model to other places, and also to bring more voices about people and life everywhere because we think that solidarity is the main way to change the narrative,” he says. He thinks the only real solution is to free Palestine, and the only way to do this is through global solidarity. And, according to Badarne, solidarity has poured in from everywhere as the platform continues to share people’s stories.

After sharing the stories of the lives cut short in Gaza, “still more people are killed” each day. This can be disheartening. Badarne says it is difficult at the moment for him and the Untold Palestine team, and that the situation has taken a toll, but that there is no time or room to rest and feel it or mourn, as the requests to share stories keep pouring in.

“You can’t rest, you can’t just cry for your friends that you’ve lost—and it is very sad every day to [read] messages and there are people telling you, ‘Please talk about my family,’ or ‘Talk about my brother, talk about this…’” he says. “This work is really a responsibility. You can feel so bad about the situation.”

Badarne thinks with time, the power dynamics will change. He says little changes have already given him hope and gives the example of mass protests against Israel’s actions in the U.S. that have been led by Jewish people, as well as protests around the world that are fighting for human rights and basic freedoms of the Palestinian people.

“My team and I, we think about it as this: we did our best; we did everything to bring the stories [to the world],” he says. “Every day that I see a new story on our platform, I believe more that we have hope. And because of the people that are still in Gaza, there is no way to stop talking about Palestine.”

This article was produced by Local Peace Economy.

_{April M. Short is an editor, journalist, and documentary editor and producer. She is a co-founder of the Observatory, where she is the Local Peace Economy editor. Previously, she was a managing editor at AlterNet as well as an award-winning senior staff writer for Good Times, a weekly newspaper in Santa Cruz, California. Her work has been published with the San Francisco Chronicle, In These Times, LA Yoga, the Conversation, Salon, and many other publications.}

Israel Ministers Call for Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza at Settler Conference / Olivia Rosane

_{^{Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir speaks during a convention calling for Israel to resettle Gaza Strip and the northern part of the West Bank at the International Convention Center on January 28, 2024 in Jerusalem, Israel | Photo: Amir Levy/Getty Images}}

“The colonial meeting in Jerusalem poses a blatant challenge to the International Court of Justice decision, accompanied by public incitement to forcibly displace Palestinians,” the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said.

_{Reposted from Common Dreams}

Members of the Israeli government—including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—attended a far-right conference on Sunday calling for the “resettlement” of Gaza and increased Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The conference, at which both Ben-Gvir and Smotrich repeated calls for the removal of Palestinians from Gaza, came days after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent its military from committing genocide in Gaza.

“These are the people who are making policy in Israel, and these are the people who were calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.”

Sunday’s conference, titled “Conference for the Victory of Israel—Settlement Brings Security: Returning to the Gaza Strip and Northern Samaria,” was organized by the right-wing Nahala organization, according to Haaretz and Al Jazeera. The group argues for an expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, even though these settlements are illegal under international law, as Reuters explained.

Israel also held settlements in Gaza for 38 years before withdrawing them in 2005. At Sunday’s conference, Smotrich said that settlers who had left Gaza as children had returned as soldiers during Israel’s ongoing bombardment and invasion of the enclave.

“We knew what that would bring and we tried to prevent it,” Smotrich said of the 2005 withdrawal. “Without settlements, there is no security.”

Ben Gvir also said that he and others had warned against leaving Gaza.

“If we don’t want another October 7, we need to return home and control the land,” he said, as Reuters reported further. He also called for Israel to “encourage emigration” of Palestinians out of Gaza.

Both Smotrich and Ben Gvir have made similar statements in the past, with Smotrich saying in December, “What needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration,” as Al Jazeera reported at the time.

In early January, Ben Gvir said the war presented an “opportunity to concentrate on encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza,” according toThe Times of Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel does not plan to establish permanent settlements in Gaza, as Al Jazeera reported, but he has also dismissed calls for a Palestinian state at the end of the war, which is the favored policy of the United States, arguing that Israel needs “security control over all territory west of the Jordan River.”

A National Security Council spokesperson said the U.S. was “troubled” by Sunday’s event, as The Times of Israel reported.

“We have also been clear, consistent, and unequivocal against the forced relocation of Palestinians outside of Gaza,” the White House said in a statement. ‘This rhetoric is incendiary and irresponsible, and we take the prime minister at his word when he says that Israel does not intend to reoccupy Gaza.”

In addition to Smotrich and Ben Gvir, 12 ministers from Netanyahu’s Likud party were also present at Sunday’s event, as Israel’s Channel 12 News reported.

One, Likud Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, said of calls for voluntary migration out of Gaza that, during a war, “‘voluntary’ is at times a state you impose [on someone] until they give their consent,” as Haaretz reported.

Conference organizer Daniella Weiss outlined a plan to use starvation to force population transfer in a video from the event posted on social media.

“So we don’t give them food. We don’t give the Arabs anything. They will have to leave,” she said. “The world will accept them.”

United Nations workers and doctors warned this month that famine in Gaza imposed by Israel’s blockade was already causing children to die of starvation.

Palestinian-American expert and advocate Mariam Barghouti told Al Jazeera, that 15 Knesset members were also present at Sunday’s conference, adding that it was “not a joke.”

“These are the people who are making policy in Israel, and these are the people who were calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, complete ethnic cleansing of the people of Gaza,” Barghouti said.

Former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth pointed out on social media that there was a “consistency problem” among Israel’s allies such as the U.S., who continue to fund Israel after ministers call for “a war crime” but cut funds to the United Nations Relief and Public Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) after it fired 12 of its workers over reports from Israel that they were involved in Hamas’ October 7 attack.

The October 7 attack killed around 1,100 Israelis and led to the taking of around 240 hostages into Gaza. Israel’s subsequent campaign against Gaza has now killed 26,637 people and wounded 65,387, Gaza’s Health Ministry announced on Monday.

_{Olivia Rosane is a staff writer for Common Dreams.}

While Dismissing ICJ Genocide Finding, US Cuts UNRWA Funds Over Israeli Allegations / by Julia Conley

_{^{U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is seen during an October 3, 2022 press conference in Bogota, Colombia | Photo: Guillermo Legaria/Getty Images}}

“How has the U.S. reacted to these allegations against UNRWA? It suspended funding,” said one British expert. “How has the U.S. reacted to the International Court of Justice ruling that there are plausible grounds that Israel is committing genocide? Nothing.”

_{^{Reposted from Common Dreams}}

_{^{Note: This article has been updated to include comments from UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini.}}

The Israeli government’s allegations that 12 employees of the United Nations Palestinian refugees agency were involved in Hamas’ October 7 attack pushed the United States to promptly halt funding for the organization on Friday—leading journalists and advocates to note that a top international court’s finding that Israel is “plausibly” committing a genocide in Gaza has not convinced the U.S. to stop arming the Israeli military.

Hours after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) announced its preliminary ruling in a case brought by South Africa, ordering Israel to stop acts of genocide in Gaza, the United Nations Relief and Public Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) announced it had fired 12 of its 30,000 workers after the Israeli Foreign Ministry called for “an urgent investigation by UNRWA regarding the involvement of its employees in the terrorist events of 10/7.”

“The Israeli authorities have provided UNRWA with information about the alleged involvement of several UNRWA employees in the horrific attacks on Israel on October 7,” Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the agency, said in a statement.

Lazzarini said the agency was opening a thorough investigation into the allegations, while the U.S. State Department quickly released a statement saying it had “temporarily paused additional funding for UNRWA” while the investigation takes place.

As The New York Times reported Saturday, “it’s not entirely clear” what Israel’s precise allegations are, how the employees were allegedly involved in the attack on southern Israel, or “what kind of work they did or how senior they were” at UNRWA.

The agency is almost wholly funded by donations from U.N. member states. After the State Department announced its suspension of some of its funding, countries including Canada, the United Kingdom, Finland, Australia, and Italy said they were following suit.

Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, toldSky News that the decision by several countries to slash funding for the UNRWA “on the basis of allegations, not proven claims,” was “a disgrace.”

“The rest of the world is looking at this—they are aghast quite frankly,” said Doyle. “How has the U.S. reacted to these allegations against UNRWA? It suspended funding. How has the U.S. reacted to the International Court of Justice ruling that there are plausible grounds that Israel is committing genocide? Nothing. Did the U.S. say it would be suspending the sale of arms, the massive bombs that have been used in the Gaza Strip to destroy civilian infrastructure, as part of [what] might constitute genocide? Not a bit. Is it continuing? Yes.”

UNRWA is one of the largest employers of Palestinians in Gaza—where nearly half of adults are unemployed—and operates schools, medical clinics, and shelters while administering housing assistance, emergency loans, and overseeing other operations.

Lazzarini said Saturday that the suspension of funding would “threaten our ongoing humanitarian work across the region including and especially in the Gaza Strip” and said it was “shocking” that countries would halt funding even as the workers in question were fired—particularly since Israel and other countries were long aware of all the employees working for UNRWA:

_{UNRWA shares the list of all its staff with host countries every year, including Israel. The Agency never received any concerns on specific staff members.}

_{Meanwhile, an investigation by OIOS into the heinous allegations will establish the facts. Moreover, as I announced on 17 January, an independent review by external experts will help UNRWA strengthen its framework for the strict adherence of all staff to the humanitarian principles.}

_{I urge countries who have suspended their funding to re-consider their decisions before UNRWA is forced to suspend its humanitarian response. The lives of people in Gaza depend on this support and so does regional stability.”}

Cutting funding to the agency is akin to accelerating “genocide by collective punishment, cutting desperately needed relief aid,” said historian and former British ambassador Craig Murray.

Doyle wasn’t alone in noticing the contrast between the U.S. responses to the ICJ and to Israel’s allegations.

“It took [U.S. Secretary of State] Antony Blinken about three seconds to suspend UNRWA aid based on mere allegations that 12 employees [were] linked to Hamas’ attack, but despite concrete evidence that the Israel Defense Forces has indiscriminately and deliberately massacred tens of thousands of Palestinians—plausibly a genocide, ICJ said—ZERO suspension of Israel military aid,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now.

Following the ICJ ruling, U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.), who have led lawmakers in a call for the U.S. to demand a cease-fire since October, released a statement arguing the court’s findings put “the U.S. government on notice for enabling violations of the Genocide Convention.”

“The Biden administration must not only affirm the legitimacy of this ruling and facilitate an immediate cease-fire—it must comply with federal and international law by suspending military assistance to the Israeli government,” said Tlaib and Bush.

Like Israeli officials, the Biden administration has dismissed the findings of the ICJ, with National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby saying Friday that the court did not find Israel “guilty” of genocide.

Journalist and rights advocate Daniel Denvir pointed out that hours after the ICJ said South Africa’s claim that Israel is committing genocidal acts in Gaza is “plausible,” the news was dwarfed at the Times by its coverage of the UNRWA allegations.

“Israel has killed 101 UNRWA workers in Gaza and has bombed its schools and camps. Guess what you get when you google UNRWA & Israel now?” said Al Jazeera’s Sana Saeed.

Historian Remi Brulin noted that Israel has previously designated Palestinian civil rights organizations as terrorist groups “on wholly spurious grounds.”

“None of this necessarily means that the specific allegations about these 12 UNRWA members are untrue,” said Brulin. “But evidence needs to be provided. And it is quite remarkable that the U.S. could decide so quickly that cutting all funds to UNRWA was the correct, necessary measure here.”

_{Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams.}