Peace and Justice Post

Palestinians were seen walking in Gaza City with the belongings they could carry on October 10, 2025.

(Photo by Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“Israeli officials who ordered unlawful destruction, collective punishment, or acts of genocide must be held accountable.”

Jake Johnson

May 12, 2026

Amnesty International released a report Tuesday detailing the Israeli military’s leveling of more than a dozen high-rise residential and commercial buildings in the Gaza Strip late last year, attacks that the leading human rights organization said must be investigated as “war crimes of wanton destruction and collective punishment.”

The new report cites “celebratory and gleeful” comments from Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz as evidence that there was no plausible military objective for Israel’s destruction of at least 13 multistory residential and commercial buildings in Gaza City between September and October 2025. In one mid-September social media post, Katz boasted that Israeli bombs sent one Gaza university “soaring to the heavens.”

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Amnesty, which has called Israel’s assault on Gaza a genocide, notes that the Fourth Geneva Convention bars occupying powers from engaging in collective punishment and property destruction “except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.”

“In the month preceding the so-called ceasefire in October 2025, Israel expanded and escalated its relentless assault on Gaza City, causing one of the worst waves of mass displacement during the genocide,” said Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns. “A key pattern of this assault was the deliberate destruction, through aerial bombardment, of multi-story civilian buildings, leveling the homes of thousands of civilians, and destroying makeshift camps in their vicinity.”

“All the available evidence indicates that Israel’s destruction of these 13 high-rise buildings was not ‘rendered absolutely necessary by military operations’ and as such must be investigated as war crimes,” she added.

“”Our children are sick from the rain and cold. It is especially difficult to raise a baby in such disastrous conditions. We lack everything.“

Amnesty said that satellite imagery, interviews with residents displaced by Israel’s large-scale destruction of Gaza buildings, and verified video footage revealed “a chilling pattern of deliberate destruction of the civilian structures by Israeli forces without requisite military necessity.” A 32-year-old IT engineer told the group that his family, including three children, is now living in a tent in southern Gaza after Israel bombed the 10-story Al-Najm building in Gaza City.

“Our children are sick from the rain and cold,” the man said. “It is especially difficult to raise a baby in such disastrous conditions. We lack everything. My other children, a six-year-old girl and a seven-year-old boy, are traumatized; we had to run away from home and they saw it bombed into rubble in front of their eyes. They don’t understand and I can’t explain it to them.”

The United Nations has estimated that Israeli attacks have damaged or destroyed more than 80% of structures in the Gaza Strip since October 2023, when Israel’s assault began in response to a deadly Hamas-led attack.

“The widespread destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure, including homes, either through bombardment or demolitions with explosives, combined with Israel’s ongoing restrictions on the entry of shelter material into Gaza and the prohibition on the return to the areas east of the yellow line, have inflicted catastrophic suffering on Gaza’s population,” said Guevara Rosas. “Israel must allow immediate, unfettered access to indispensable aid and goods, including shelter material.”

“Israeli officials who ordered unlawful destruction, collective punishment, or acts of genocide must be held accountable,” she added.

MEM, May 7, 2026 at 2:55 pm

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez awards the Order of Civil Merit to UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, on 7 May 2026 [sanchezcastejon/X]

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez awarded on Thursday the Order of Civil Merit to UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, recognizing her work documenting violations of international law in the Gaza Strip, Anadolu reports.

Sanchez received Francesca Albanese in Madrid, where they discussed the situation in Palestine, the importance of international law and “the need for an immediate end to the violence and the building of a lasting peace based on dignity and humanity,” according to a government statement.

“Public responsibility also implies the moral obligation of not looking away,” Sanchez wrote on social media, praising Albanese as “a voice that upholds the conscience of the world.”

The Order of Civil Merit is one of Spain’s highest civilian honors and is awarded to Spanish and foreign citizens for extraordinary services benefiting the state or society.

Albanese, an Italian legal scholar, has served since 2022 as the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. She has become one of the most prominent international voices criticizing Israel’s military operations in Gaza.

On Tuesday, Sanchez also sent a letter to the European Commission calling for the activation of the EU’s Blocking Statute to counter US sanctions imposed on Albanese as well as judges and prosecutors from the International Criminal Court.

READ: Spain urges EU to take steps to protect independence of ICC, UN, their actions to end Gaza genocide

“It’s like an international mafia — they want to silence everyone who demands an end to genocide, an end to the crimes,” Albanese told Spanish broadcaster RTVE, referring to the sanctions against her.

Also on Thursday, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares criticized Israel’s continued detention of Spanish-Palestinian activist Saif Abukeshek, calling it “inadmissible and unacceptable.”

Jose Manuel Albares told the Spanish parliament that he summoned Israel’s top envoy in Spain on Wednesday to discuss the situation and had also spoken with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar.

Albares said Abukeshek was “illegally” detained in international waters where Israel had “no jurisdiction” while traveling with a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla.

“Spain reacted without hesitation, with complete clarity and firmness, in response to violations of international law,” Albares said.​​​​​​​

Lawyers says two activists are being subjected to ‘psychological torture’ as their detention is extended for another week

Activist Thiago Avila, a member of the Global Sumud Flotilla seized by Israel in international waters, sits at a magistrate’s court hearing in Ashkelon, Israel, 3 May 2026 (Amir Cohen/Reuters)

By Mera Aladam

Published date: 5 May 2026 12:08 BST | Last update:21 hours 34 mins ago

Two activists seized by Israeli forces in international waters while en route to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza have been threatened with death or lengthy imprisonment, their lawyers said on Monday.

The legal centre Adalah, which represents Thiago Avila and Saif Abu Keshek, said the pair have been subjected to psychological abuse and held in solitary confinement since their capture last week.

On Tuesday, a court in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon extended their detention until Sunday.

Abu Keshek, a Spanish-Swedish national of Palestinian origin, and Avila, a Brazilian national, were detained late on Wednesday when Israeli naval forces raided a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in international waters off Greece.

They were taken to Israel and accused of assisting the enemy during wartime, contact with a foreign agent, membership of and providing services to a terrorist organisation, and transferring funds to such a group. Both deny the charges.

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Since their detention, the men have been held in cells under constant bright light, a practice intended to cause sleep deprivation and disorientation, according to Adalah. They are also blindfolded whenever taken out of their cells, including during medical examinations, which it described as a serious breach of medical ethics.

Global Sumud Flotilla: When states fail, humanity sets sail

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Avila reported being subjected to repeated interrogations lasting up to eight hours, during which he was allegedly threatened that they would be “killed” or “imprisoned for 100 years”.

He is also being held in very low temperatures, the group said. 

The two men, now in solitary confinement, have entered their sixth day of a hunger strike in protest at what legal experts have described as an unlawful seizure outside Israel’s territorial waters.

Lawyers Hadeel Abu Salih and Lubna Tuma of Adalah told the court the case was “flawed and unlawful”, arguing there is no legal basis for applying Israeli law to foreign nationals in international waters.

During Friday’s raid, Israeli forces intercepted at least 21 Gaza-bound vessels and detained 175 activists, in what organisers from the Global Sumud Flotilla described as an act of “piracy”.

The boats were seized about 600 nautical miles from Gaza’s coast, near the Greek island of Crete.

Spain and Brazil issued a joint statement on Friday describing the detention of Avila and Abu Keshek as illegal.

April 29, 2026 benjamin netanyahu, civilian casualties, gaza, genocide, international law, Israel-Palestine, middle east, u.s. complicity, U.S. foreign policy, war crimes, wendy sherman

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Joshua Scheer

Former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman has delivered a rare rupture in official Washington’s script: accusing Israel of carrying out a genocide in Gaza—and acknowledging that the United States is not a bystander, but a participant in its outcome.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Sherman pointed directly to the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, arguing they have driven the devastation in Gaza while fueling wider instability across the Middle East. This is not the language of ambiguity or “both sides”—it is an indictment from within the establishment itself.

More damning still, Sherman underscored the uncomfortable truth at the heart of U.S. foreign policy: Washington’s actions are inseparable from its alliance with Israel. That relationship, she suggested, is no longer politically or morally sustainable without serious reassessment.

Her comments carry unusual weight. Sherman is not an outsider—she helped shape U.S. diplomacy at the highest levels. And her warning comes as global outrage grows over the scale of destruction in Gaza and the mounting civilian toll.

According to Gaza health authorities, at least 817 Palestinians have been killed and 2,296 wounded in reported Israeli violations of a ceasefire agreement since it took effect—figures that continue to climb as the violence grinds on.

International pressure is now building to force a reckoning: calls are intensifying to condition U.S. support for Israel on adherence to international law. The question is no longer whether the world is watching—it’s whether Washington will finally be forced to see what it has helped make possible.

In the full interview, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman—no outsider, but a career diplomat and reliable mouthpiece of empire—did not arrive at the word lightly. She is not a campus protester, not an antiwar dissident, not someone who has challenged the foundations of U.S. power. She is a lifelong architect and defender of it. That is precisely what makes her admission so jarring: Israel, she said, has “in essence created a genocide in Gaza,” and the United States helped pave the road that made it possible.

Let’s be clear—this is not an endorsement of Sherman’s worldview. She has spent decades advancing the very system now producing this devastation. But when even a figure so deeply embedded in that machinery begins to name what is happening, it signals something deeper than dissent—it signals rupture.

This is the moral collapse Washington keeps trying to launder as strategy. Gaza has been demolished, civilians slaughtered, hospitals and homes reduced to rubble, and still the political class hides behind euphemism while the dead pile up faster than the truth can be spoken. Sherman’s words matter not because she stands outside power, but because she doesn’t. They expose what official Washington already knows and refuses to confront: this is not an accident, not collateral damage, not a tragic excess of war. It is the destruction of a people—enabled, armed, and excused by the United States.

When a figure like that uses the word “genocide,” it punctures the careful language Washington relies on to avoid accountability. But it also reveals the limits of insider critique: naming the crime without challenging the structure that enables it. Her words expose a truth the political class already understands—that U.S. power is deeply entangled in this devastation—yet still stops short of confronting what that means. And that is the real indictment: not just what has been done, but how fully it has been absorbed into the logic of empire itself.

More from the interview

“Genocide” from inside the system
Sherman—no outsider—says Israel has “in essence created a genocide in Gaza,” and admits the U.S. helped create the conditions for it. U.S. power ≠ strategy
She warns Trump’s approach is “tactical” and impulsive, lacking any real long-term strategy—despite massive military escalation. Iran cannot be forced to surrender
The idea that Iran will simply capitulate is fantasy—its nuclear knowledge, regional ties, and strategic posture cannot be bombed away. War is weakening U.S. global dominance
Allies are drifting, trust is collapsing, and countries are turning toward China—accelerating a shift away from U.S. power. China and Russia are the real winners
The war strengthens China economically and geopolitically, while also giving it justification for its own future military actions. Strait of Hormuz = permanent leverage
Even after military strikes, Iran retains the ability to disrupt global trade—meaning the U.S. cannot fully control the situation. Negotiations are not about trust—only power
Sherman bluntly states diplomacy isn’t about trust but managing competing interests between adversaries. U.S. foreign policy built this crisis
She acknowledges decades of American decisions—from coups to wars—helped create today’s instability. Both parties share blame
Republicans and Democrats alike failed to create stability in the Middle East, with Iraq and failed diplomacy fueling long-term chaos. Even insiders are “angrier” now
Sherman admits growing anger and fear over the global cost—economic, political, and human—of current U.S. policy.