In Gaza, human shields are used by Israeli soldiers at least six times a day.

I served in Gaza for nine months, and first came across these procedures, called "mosquito protocol" in December 2023. It was only two months into the ground offensive, long before there was a shortage of dogs from the IDF's canine unit, Oketz, who were used for this purpose. This became the insane, unofficial excuse for this insane, unofficial procedure. I didn't realize then how ubiquitous using human shields, whom we referred to as a "shawish," would become.

Today, almost every platoon keeps a "shawish," and no infantry force enters a house before a "shawish" clears it. This means there are four "shawishes" in a company, twelve in a battalion, and at least 36 in a brigade. We operate a sub-army of slaves.

I recently saw that the IDF's Military Police Criminal Investigation Division opened six investigations into the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields, and my jaw dropped. I've seen cover-ups before, but this is a new low.

If the MPCID wanted to do its job seriously, it would have to open far more than even a thousand investigations. But all the MPCID wants is for us to be able to tell ourselves and the world that we're investigating ourselves, so they've found six scapegoats and are pinning it all on them.

Israeli forces have been accused of executing handcuffed Palestinian medics before burying them in a mass grave underneath their crushed ambulances in southern Gaza's Rafah.

Fifteen humanitarian workers went missing last week after responding to a distress call from civilians being attacked by Israeli forces.

The workers include eight paramedics from the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), six members of the Palestinian Civil Defence search-and-rescue teams, and one UN staff member.

They were found over the weekend in a mass grave with at least around 20 multiple gunshots in each one of them, according to Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza.

At least one of them had their legs bound, another was decapitated and a third topless, he added.

https://archive.ph/vYKd9

Lorenzo Tondo in Jerusalem, Malak A Tantesh in Gaza, and Julian Borger
Mon 31 Mar 2025 10.24 EDT

"Fifteen Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers, including at least one United Nations employee, were killed by Israeli forces “one by one” and buried in a mass grave eight days ago in southern Gaza, the UN has said.

According to the UN humanitarian affairs office (Ocha), the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS) and civil defence workers were on a mission to rescue colleagues who had been shot at earlier in the day, when their clearly marked vehicles came under heavy Israeli fire in Rafah city’s Tel al-Sultan district. A Red Crescent official in Gaza said that there was evidence of at least one person being detained and killed, as the body of one of the dead had been found with his hands tied."

March 31, 2025

[an excellent, thought-provoking interview, along with a statement by a Ukrainian socialist group]

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4484610

A French court found Marine Le Pen guilty Monday in an embezzlement case and followed up the verdict with a sentence barring her immediately from running for office for five years. Le Pen abruptly left the Paris courtroom before hearing how long she will be banned from running for public office.

Le Pen and 24 other officials from her National Rally were accused of having used money intended for European Union parliamentary aides to pay staff who worked for the party between 2004 and 2016, in violation of the 27-nation bloc’s regulations. Le Pen and her co-defendants deny wrongdoing.

The biggest concern for Le Pen was that the court may declare her ineligible to run for office preventing her from running for president in 2027 -- a scenario she had described as a “political death.”

The Constitutional Council ruled Friday, in a separate case, that imposing the punishment immediately was constitutional.

Full article

https://archive.ph/jTAcu

The Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) successfully targeted an E-2 command and control aircraft belonging to the US aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, a senior Sanaa government source told Al Mayadeen on Sunday.

According to the source, "The Truman lost command capabilities following the attack, while both the White House and the US Department of Defense (Pentagon) have launched an investigation into the incident."

Details on the targeted E-2 aircraft

The targeted E-2 aircraft is designed to provide critical intelligence on potential threats faced by the warship during military operations. While it does not directly participate in attacks, it plays a crucial role in surveillance and tracking.

The aircraft, operated by a five-member crew—including two pilots and three radar specialists—lost its defensive protection, making it more vulnerable to attacks from Yemeni missiles and drones.

YAF target 'Israel's' Ben Gurion Airport

Earlier today, the Yemeni Armed Forces also announced that they had targeted "Israel's" Ben Gurion Airport in the occupied Yafa (Tel Aviv) area, spokesperson Brigadier General Yahya Saree announced.

Saree stated that the military operation was carried out using a Zulfiqar ballistic missile and successfully achieved its objective, adding that the latest strike was in support of the Palestinian people and their Resistance.

The spokesperson pointed out that the YAF reaffirmed the failure of the US aggression in preventing Yemen from continuing its support for the Palestinian people.

He stressed that "dozens of daily airstrikes [on Yemen] will not deter the armed forces from fulfilling their duties," underscoring that Yemeni operations against "Israel" will persist until the aggression on Gaza ceases and the blockade imposed on the Palestinian enclave is lifted.

Sirens sounded across central "Israel" and al-Quds at midday on Sunday following the launch of a missile from Yemen. Debris was also found in Modi’in and Tel Aviv.

According to "Israel's" Channel 12, two people were injured in Gush Dan. One woman exited her vehicle when the sirens went off and fell into a five-meter-deep pit, while another person sustained a head injury in Tel Aviv while heading to a shelter.

Read more: YAF say engaged with US aircraft carrier Truman 3 times within 24 hrs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_E-2_Hawkeye

The Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye is an American all-weather, carrier-capable tactical airborne early warning (AEW) aircraft.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/27916601

By Ahmed Aziz in Khan Younis, occupied Palestine and Nader Durgham in Beirut
Published date: 30 March 2025 12:37 BST

“At around 1.30am, we were surprised by bombings that shook the entire area,” he said. “We went to social media, Telegram, Facebook and were shocked to see that the strikes hit my sister, her son, her husband and my two cousins. [The #Israelis] targeted their tent with what I believe was a drone strike, and my sister, her son and my two cousins were martyred.”"

Excerpts:

When the president talks about security in the Arctic, he’s talking about climate change.

Their aim, the vice president said in a video on X, is to check up on Greenland’s security, because unnamed other countries could “use its territories and its waterways to threaten the United States.” And these are real concerns for the United States, rooted in climate change: As polar ice melts away, superpowers are vying for newly open shipping routes in the Arctic Ocean and largely unexplored mineral and fossil-fuel reserves. Arctic warming could pose a direct threat to America’s security interests too: Alaska could have new vulnerabilities to both China and Russia; changes in ocean salinity and temperature might interfere with submarine detection systems; the extremes of climate change, including permafrost thaw in Russia, could drive economic instability, social unrest, and territorial claims.

So far this term, Trump has acted as if climate change does not matter: He has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement, announced plans to reopen the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas drilling, and paused new offshore-wind development and Inflation Reduction Act clean-energy funding. But if the president’s bid for Greenland—or the U.S. military’s quiet cooperation with Canada to boost Arctic defenses—is any indication, the U.S. is weighing its options for a warmer future. “We live in the real world,” Evan Bloom, a global fellow at the Wilson Center’s Polar Institute and former State Department official, told me. “The military and other agencies will continue to take climate change into account, because they have to.” When he hears Trump talk about Greenland, he hears the president speaking about the geopolitics of climate change—“whether he’s willing to call it that or not.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/27915778

By Fayha Shalash in Ramallah, Palestine
Published date: 30 March 2025 10:20 BST

"The Israeli army has announced plans to change the layout of the Palestinian refugee camps in the cities of Jenin and Tulkarm as part of a large-scale military operation in the northern occupied West Bank that has been ongoing since late January.

The plans aim to completely wipe out the Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams refugee camps, transforming them into neighbourhoods within the two cities, with the goal of preventing them from serving as "incubators for terrorist organisations," the military was quoted as saying by Israeli media."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/27915321

By Nader Durgham and Alex MacDonald Published date: 29 March 2025 16:36 GMT

"Locals were arrested, vehicles were damaged and the gates to animal pens were breached, allowing sheep to escape.

The attack follows another major one on Friday, during which settlers beat Palestinians with iron bars, resulting in at least two major head injuries.

Israeli forces arrested 22 Palestinians - but no settlers."

https://archive.is/elDUs

The International Court of Justice will hold public hearings on April 10 in Sudan’s case against the United Arab Emirates, the court announced Friday.

The hearings, at the Peace Palace in The Hague, will address Sudan’s request for provisional measures over alleged violations of the Genocide Convention.

Sudan filed the case on March 5, accusing the UAE of violating the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, particularly in relation to actions involving the Masalit group in West Darfur.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/59889150

Orban invited him last November, saying he would guarantee that the warrant would "not be observed"

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/59888407

• "It is necessary to strengthen the implementation of RCEP, in which all three countries have participated, and to create a framework for expanding trade cooperation among the three countries through Korea-China-Japan FTA negotiations," said South Korean Trade Minister Ahn Duk-geun

https://archive.ph/YtWw8

France has long tried to balance two contradictory roles with Algeria: a fair-weather friend and a former coloniser that never truly let go. However, as the right wing reshapes the political mainstream in Paris, Algerians in France say they are being scapegoated in the name of 'national security.'

On 8 March, Michel Onfray, a prominent French essayist, declared on CNEWS—a far-right-leaning channel often compared to America’s Fox News—that "the danger in France now is Algerian."

Once confined to the fringes, this rhetoric is now seeping into Matignon (France's 10 Downing Street), with supposedly centrist ministers inching ever closer to the right.

On 24 February, Prime Minister François Bayrou lashed out at Algerian authorities for their "unacceptable" refusal—ten times over—to issue a consular pass for the return of a 37-year-old Algerian national ordered to leave French territory.

Algeria has also refused to accept the return of two of its nationals arrested in France for inciting violence online.

In response, Bayrou, backed by his cabinet, is now threatening to scrap the 1968 Franco-Algerian agreement, which grants Algerians special immigration privileges, as retaliation for Algiers' reluctance to take back its nationals.

https://archive.is/6IVjE

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/59803274

• major Korean companies are accelerating their feasibility studies on resuming business in Russia. The move comes as Russia is seen as a critical market for diversifying business interests, especially amid growing tariff pressures from the United States.

• Among major Korean firms, LG Electronics is making a swift move. According to industry officials, LG Electronics partially resumed operations at its electronic appliance plant in Moscow of late.

• HD Hyundai Electric, which has been maintaining its Russian business through the war, will participate through a local distributor in Electro 2025, Russia's largest electrical exhibition, scheduled for April 1 to 4, in an apparent move to exploit the high demand for restoring power infrastructure damaged by the war.

• Hyundai Motor Group is also busy studying the feasibility of the post-war Russian market.

• Apart from Hyundai Motor, its affiliates Kia, Hyundai Mobis, and Hyundai Steel have recently posted job openings in Russia, signaling greater chances of the group resuming business in Russia.

• Samsung Electronics is also reviewing the feasibility of resuming its Russian business. In February, a Russian newspaper reported that Samsung's marketing expenses from January to February this year increased 30 percent from the same period a year earlier.