From PressTV
Heavy flooding makes life more difficult for Gazans
Heavy flooding and rainfall have made life even more difficult for thousands of Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip who have already lost their homes in the latest Israeli war on the besieged enclave.
On Friday, residents of some neighborhoods in the southern town of Rafah were forced to evacuate their homes with motor and paddle boats due to rising water levels.
“People are calling us for help and we are not capable of helping them after the recent war,” said Hatem al-Khur, an official in the Khuza’a municipality, east of the town of Khan Younis.
In some areas, floodwater is reaching the second floor of buildings.
Among those affected by the harsh weather were families who lost their homes during Israel’s 50-day war on Gaza in summer.
Israel started pounding Gaza in early July, inflicting heavy losses on the Palestinian land. Over 2,140 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed in the Israeli onslaught and around 11,000 others were injured.
The Israeli war ended on August 26 with an Egyptian-brokered truce that took effect following negotiations in the Egyptian capital Cairo. The ceasefire deal stipulates the ease of Israel’s seven-year-old blockade of the Gaza Strip as well as the provision of a guarantee that Palestinian demands will be met.
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From PressTV
ICC can immediately probe Israel crimes: Palestinian UN envoy
The International Criminal Court (ICC) can immediately start examining Israeli war crimes against Palestinians should it choose to conduct the probe, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations says.
Riyadh Mansour said on Thursday that Fatou Bensouda, the prosecutor of the ICC, does not need to wait for Palestine’s formal membership in the ICC on April 1.
He said Palestine’s formal acceptance of the court’s jurisdiction authorizes the prosecutor to take required measures to examine Israel’s war crimes.
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From the Jewish Daily Forward
Bloody Madness Ends With Two Paris Shootouts — 4 Hostages Killed
3 Terrorists Killed as Police End Twin Standoffs
Paris — (Reuters) — Two brothers wanted for a bloody attack on the offices of French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo were killed on Friday when anti-terrorist police stormed their hideout, while a second siege ended with the deaths of four hostages.
The violent end to the simultaneous stand-offs northeast of Paris and at a Jewish supermarket in the capital followed a police operation of unprecedented scale as France tackled one of the worst threats to its internal security in decades.
With one of the gunmen saying shortly before his death that he was funded by al Qaeda, President Francois Hollande warned that the danger to France – home to the European Union’s biggest communities of both Muslims and Jews – was not over yet.
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From the Jewish Daily Forward
‘Selma’ Got It Right by Leaving Out Jews
By Katie Rosenblatt
Leida Snow’s review of the new film “Selma” takes director Ava DuVernay to task for a “glaring omission” — airbrushing out the contributions of white people in general, and Jews in particular, to the civil rights movement. But Snow makes this critique by drawing selectively from American Jewish history, and her triumphalist narrative is more deserving of her critique than the movie is.
Snow offers a well-tread recitation of a triumphalist version of black-Jewish relations presented in synagogues and summer camps, complete with mention of Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, Jewish involvement in the March on Washington, and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching with Dr. Martin Luther King at Selma. This version animates social action in a multitude of Jewish spaces, including youth groups, Hillel-sponsored alternative spring breaks and missions to post-Katrina New Orleans. But it’s dangerous for several reasons.
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