I am one of the original Hippie’s and have been in several Peace Demonstrations. I demonstrated for keeping People’s Park that was under attack. The Diggers were there when the first free meal was served. We need to start a World Peace Movement that will last many generations! We must confront the HATERS OF PEACE – everywhere! We must send Peace Emissaries to all the colleges of the world, and drive out the Peace Haters and the Lovers of War! We can teach everyone not to be Hater!
John Presco
Thousands of people took to the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem over the weekend in the largest protests Israel has seen since the start of the war against Hamas, a significant challenge to the increasingly embattled leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Demonstrators are angry at Netanyahu and his government for not having secured the release of all the hostages taken captive during the October 7 terror attack. While 105 people were released during a temporary truce last year, another 130 that were kidnapped are either dead or still being held by Hamas and other militant groups.
Banners at the protests called on the Prime Minister to resign and for Israel to hold new elections.
“You’ve failed,” one poster read. “Impeachment now,” read another.
Thousands gathered in Jerusalem on Sunday to call for Netanyahu to step down. – Ilan Rosenberg/Reuters© Provided by CNN
Police said Sunday’s demonstrations in Jerusalem were dispersed by force. – Ronen Zvulun/Reuters© Provided by CNN
Netanyahu has said that the goals of the current war against Hamas are to bring back the hostages, destroy Hamas and remake Gaza so that no militant group can ever carry out the type of attack that Israel suffered last year, in which about 1,200 people were killed. But the families of the hostages and demonstrators that came out over the weekend believe the Israeli government should be more focused on hostage retrieval than any military or security objectives.
What now for Gaza after World Central Kitchen suspended aid operations?
WCK provides a lifeline to Palestinians facing famine but has halted operations after an Israeli strike killed workers
Jonathan YerushalmyThu 4 Apr 2024 05.33 EDTShare
A cargo ship carrying 240 tonnes of food destined for Gaza has returned to Cyprus, after aid workers from World Central Kitchen (WCK) were killed in an Israeli strike on Monday evening.
After the attack, WCK paused operations in the territory and turned its flotilla of ships back to Cyprus.
The undelivered aid was part of a consignment of about 340 tonnes sent to Gaza from Cyprus – the aid workers killed in Gaza had just finished unloading 100 tonnes when they were killed.
WCK’s suspension of operations – with pauses from other aid organisations including Anera and Project Hope – have renewed fears that the humanitarian situation in Gaza could decay further.
How important is external aid to the people of Gaza?
Since 2007, Gaza has been subject to a strict land and sea blockade by Israel that prevents civilians and goods such as food and medicine from moving easily across the border. Israel says the blockade is necessary to limit Hamas’s access to weapons.
Even before the conflict began, 63% of Gaza’s population was dependent on international aid, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa.
After Hamas’s 7 October attack, the blockade on Gaza was tightened even further, with fewer deliveries of aid allowed in. On average, 161 aid trucks passed into Gaza every day last month, Unrwa data shows. That number is far below the target of 500 trucks a day.
Chef José Andrés accuses Israel of targeting World Central Kitchen aid workers
Tel Aviv — Chef José Andrés says his World Central Kitchen charity’s team in the Gaza Strip appears to have been deliberately targeted by the Israeli military with deadly airstrikes that killed seven staffers on Monday, including a young American father. The Israel Defense Forces and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have called the airstrikes, which hit three WCK vehicles in succession, the kind of mistake that happens in war, but that explanation has been increasingly dismissed as insufficient and even disingenuous by Andrés and at least one of the slain aid worker’s home nations.
“This was not just a bad luck situation where, ‘Oops, we dropped a bomb in the wrong place,’” Andrés told the Reuters news agency, stressing that his team’s vehicles were clearly marked and “it’s very clear who we are and what we do.”
“They were targeting us in a deconflicting zone, in an area controlled by IDF. They, knowing that it was our teams moving on that road… with three cars,” he said, adding that he believed the seven aid workers killed by the strike in Gaza were targeted “systematically, car by car.”
Palestinians stand next to a vehicle in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, April 2, 2024, where employees from the World Central Kitchen (WCK) were killed in an Israeli airstrike. / Credit: YASSER QUDIHE/Middle East Images/AFP/Getty© Provided by CBS News
“The airstrikes on our convoy I don’t think were an unfortunate mistake,” he told Israel’s Channel 12 in a separate interview. “It was really a direct attack on clearly marked vehicles whose movements were known by everybody at the IDF.”
The IDF has called the attack on the three-car convoy a case of misidentification, but WCK said it had coordinated its movements in Gaza with the IDF.
Andrés said his team even tried to call the military as they came under fire — some moving from the first car after it was hit to a second vehicle, which was then also struck, and then the third, eventually leaving all seven of the aid workers dead.
Nir Barkat, Israel’s economy minister, dismissed Andrés’ comments as “nonsense” in an interview with CBS News’ partner network BBC News on Thursday, insisting that it had been a “grave mistake” and for which he said Israel was “terribly sorry.”
Barkat reiterated that, “unfortunately, in wars, friendly fire happens.”
Speaking Thursday in Sydney after an Australian woman was named as one of the victims of the strikes, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called for complete transparency from Israel and dismissed the suggestion that such incidents were unavoidable in c.
“We need to have accountability for how it has occurred, and what is not good enough is the statements that have been made, including that this is just a product of war,” Albanese said. “They have committed to a full and proper investigation. I want that to be transparent and I want those findings to be made public so that we find out how exactly this can occur.”
In Washington, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller was asked Wednesday if Israel should be held accountable for the death of the American WCK worker Jacob Flickinger in the strikes.
© Provided by CBS News
Miller said the Biden administration wanted to see Israel conduct “a full, swift and transparent investigation” and then, “if that investigation shows that accountability is appropriate, then there of course should be accountability. And we will wait to see the results of that investigation before we pass judgment on it.”
“We want to see it wrapped up as soon as possible and see them put in place any measures to prevent this from happening again in the future,” Miller added. “They need to put in place better deconfliction and better coordination to protect humanitarian workers and to protect all the civilians on the ground, and it is something that we have consistently said to them over the past few months.”
CBS News has geolocated the wreckage of the three WCK cars to positions hundreds of yards apart, and while retired U.S. Air Force Master Sergeant Wes Bryant said it “rings true that this was likely a misidentification,” he blamed that error on “negligent callousness” by Israel’s military.
“At least one vehicle was clearly marked, and the other two were clearly part of their convoy, so not to know those critical pieces of information is pure negligence,” Bryant told CBS News. “That right there would have been one of the checks, to say, ‘Hey, wait, this is a yellow flag, or a red flag here.’”
The bodies of the six foreign team members were transported out of Gaza on Wednesday, including Flickinger’s. The 33-year-old U.S.-Canadian dual national leaves behind a baby son. The other WCK staffers killed were Palestinian, British, Polish and Australian nationals.
Meanwhile, the deadly strike on the aid convoy is already impacting hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza who are contending not only with war, but hunger, because it’s not just World Central Kitchen that’s suspended its operations in Gaza. Anera, another American non-profit group that was working in the enclave, has also said it’s pausing its work there.
President Biden was to have his first phone call with Netanyahu since the deadly strikes on the WCK convoy later on Thursday. Mr. Biden has said he was “outraged and heartbroken” by the attack.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diggers_(theater)
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