Where does the rest of the world stand on Israel genocide allegations?

The accusations levelled against Israel by South Africa are certainly momentous – but what support do they really have globally?

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South Africa says more than 50 countries have expressed support for its case at the United Nations’ top court accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in the war in Gaza.

Others, including the United States, have strongly rejected South Africa’s allegation that Israel is violating the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Many more have remained silent.

The world’s reaction to the landmark case that was heard on Thursday and Friday at the International Court of Justice in The Hague shows a predictable global split when it comes to the inextricable, 75-year-old problem of Israel and the Palestinians.

Sunday marks 100 days of their bloodiest ever conflict.

The majority of countries backing South Africa’s case are from the Arab world and Africa.

In Europe, only the Muslim nation of Turkey has publicly stated its support.

No Western country has declared support for South Africa’s allegations against Israel. The US, a close Israel ally, has rejected them as unfounded, the UK has called them unjustified, and Germany said it “explicitly rejects” them.

China and Russia have said little about one of the most significant cases to come before an international court in recent history – and the European Union also hasn’t commented.

EU, US and UK reaction: ‘Meritless’ allegations

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on a visit to Israel a day before the court proceedings began that South Africa’s allegations are “meritless” and that the case “distracts the world” from efforts to find a lasting solution to the conflict.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said genocide is “not a word that ought to be thrown around lightly, and we certainly don’t believe that it applies here.”

“We don’t agree with what the South Africans are doing,” UK Foreign Minister David Cameron said of the case.

Israel fiercely rejects the allegations of genocide and says it is defending its people. It says the offensive is aimed at eradicating the leaders of Hamas, the militant group that runs the territory and provoked the conflict by launching surprise attacks on southern Israel on 7 October.

Blinken said a genocide case against Israel was “particularly galling” given that Hamas and other groups “continue to openly call for the annihilation of Israel and the mass murder of Jews.”

The US, the UK, the EU and others classify Hamas as a terrorist organisation.

Israel’s military response in Gaza has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The count doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians. It says more than two-thirds of the dead are women and children.

Much of northern Gaza has become an uninhabitable moonscape with entire neighbourhoods erased by Israeli air strikes and tank fire.

South Africa has also condemned Hamas’ 7 October attack but argues that it did not justify Israel’s response.

German support for Israel – and Turkish doubt

Germany’s announcement of support for Israel on Friday, the day the hearings closed, has symbolic significance given its history of the Holocaust, when the Nazis killed 6 million Jews in Europe. Israel was created after World War II as a haven for Jews in the shadow of those atrocities.

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“Israel has been defending itself,” German government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit said. His statement also invoked the Holocaust, which in large part spurred the creation of the UN Genocide Convention in 1948.

“In view of Germany’s history… the Federal Government sees itself as particularly committed to the Convention against Genocide,” he said. He called the allegations against Israel “completely unfounded.”

Germany said it intends to intervene in the case on Israel’s behalf.

The EU has only said that countries have a right to bring cases to the UN court. Most of its member states have refrained from taking a position.

Turkey, which is in the process of joining the EU, was a lone voice in the region. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country provided documents that were being used against Israel in the case.

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“With these documents, Israel will be condemned,” he said.

Arab condemnation of Israel

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) was one of the first blocs to publicly back the case when South Africa filed it late last month. It said there was “mass genocide being perpetrated by the Israeli defense forces” and accused Israel of “indiscriminate targeting” of Gaza’s civilian population.

The OIC is a bloc of 57 countries which includes Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt. Its headquarters are in Saudi Arabia. The Cairo-based Arab League, whose 22 member countries are almost all part of the OIC, also backed South Africa’s case.

South Africa drew some support from outside the Arab world. Namibia and Pakistan agreed with the case at a UN General Assembly session this week. Malaysia also expressed support.

“No peace-loving human being can ignore the carnage waged against Palestinians in Gaza,” Namibian President Hage Geingob was quoted as saying in the southern African nation’s The Namibian newspaper.

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Malaysia’s Foreign Ministry demanded “legal accountability for Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.”

Silence from China and Russia

China, Russia – which is also facing allegations of genocide in the world court – and the emerging power of India have largely remained silent, seemingly aware that taking a stand in such an inflammatory case has little upside and could irreversibly upset their relationships in the region.

India’s foreign policy has historically supported the Palestinian cause, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi was one of the first global leaders to express solidarity with Israel and call the Hamas attack terrorism.

Sitting on the fence?

A handful of South American countries have spoken up, including the continent’s biggest economy, Brazil, whose Foreign Ministry said President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva backed South Africa’s case.

However, the ministry’s comments did not directly accuse Israel of genocide but focused on the need for a cease-fire in Gaza.

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South Africa’s case against Israel is two-fold: It wants the court to say Israel is committing genocide and to issue an interim ruling ordering an end to its military campaign in Gaza. The court said it would decide on an interim ruling soon but, reflecting the gravity of the case, it could take years for a final verdict on the genocide charge.

Brazil said it hoped the case would get Israel to “immediately cease all acts and measures that could constitute genocide.”

Other countries have stopped short of agreeing with South Africa. Ireland premier Leo Varadkar said the genocide case was “far from clear cut” but that he hoped the court would order a cease-fire in Gaza.

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Israel defends itself at the U.N.’s top court against allegations of genocide against Palestinians

Israel’s Legal Counselor of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Tal Becker, lawyer Malcolm Shaw, and Gilad Noam, Deputy Attorney-General for International Affairs, attend the International Court of Justice (ICJ) prior to the hearing on the genocide case against Israel, brought by South Africa, in The Hague on January 11, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Accused of committing genocide against Palestinians, Israel defended its war in Gaza at the United Nations’ highest court Friday, a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the allegations as hypocrisy that “screams to the heavens.”

Israel, which was founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust, has vehemently denied the accusations brought by South Africa in one of the biggest cases ever to come before an international court, one that has drawn international attention and protesters from both sides to the courthouse.

South African lawyers asked the court Thursday to order an immediate halt to Israeli military operations in the besieged coastal territory that is home to 2.3 million Palestinians. A decision on that request will probably take weeks, though the full case is likely to last years.

“We live at a time when words are cheap in an age of social media and identity politics. The temptation to reach for the most outrageous term to vilify and demonize has become, for many, irresistible,” Israeli legal advisor Tal Becker told a packed auditorium at the ornate Palace of Peace in The Hague.

He added that South Africa “has regrettably put before the court a profoundly distorted, factual and legal picture. The entirety of its case hinges on a deliberately curated, decontextualized and manipulative description of the reality of current hostilities.”

Explained | South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ: What are the allegations and what to expect?

Israel often boycotts international tribunals and U.N. investigations, saying they are unfair and biased. But, in a sign of how seriously they regard the case, Israeli leaders have taken the rare step of sending a high-level legal team.

At the heart of the case are Israel’s actions in Gaza, where it launched a massive air and ground assault after Hamas militants crossed into Israel on Oct. 7, storming through communities and killing some 1,200 people, mainly civilians. The assailants also abducted around 250 people, over half of whom are still held captive.

More than 23,000 people in Gaza have been killed during the military campaign, according to the the Health Ministry in the territory, which is run by Hamas. Nearly 85% of Gaza’s people have been driven their homes, a quarter of the territory’s residents face starvation, and much of northern Gaza has been reduced to rubble.

South Africa says this amounts to genocide and is part of decades of Israeli oppression of Palestinians.

“The scale of destruction in Gaza, the targeting of family homes and civilians, the war being a war on children — all make clear that genocidal intent is both understood and has been put into practice. The articulated intent is the destruction of Palestinian life,” lawyer Tembeka Ngcukaitobi said in opening statements Thursday.

The case’s “distinctive feature” was “the reiteration and repetition of genocidal speech throughout every sphere of the state in Israel,” he said.

Mr. Netanyahu dismissed those arguments.

“This is an upside-down world — the state of Israel is accused of genocide while it is fighting genocide,” the Prime Minister said Thursday in a video statement. “The hypocrisy of South Africa screams to the heavens.”

Instead, Israel says it is acting in legitimate self-defence. International agreements still bind countries to the rules of war, even when responding to an attack, no matter how serious, and the court must decide if Israel’s operations have indeed remained within those strictures.

Although the court’s findings are considered binding, it was unclear whether Israel would heed any order to halt the fighting. If it doesn’t, it could face U.N. sanctions, although those may be blocked by a veto from the United States, Israel’s staunch ally.

The White House declined to comment on how it might respond if the court determines Israel committed genocide. But National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby called the allegations “unfounded”.

The extraordinary case goes to the core of one of the world’s most intractable conflicts — and for the second day protesters rallied outside the court. Pro-Israeli demonstrators set up a table near the court grounds for a Sabbath meal with empty seats commemorating the hostages still being held by Hamas. Nearby, over 100 pro-Palestinian protesters waved flags and shouted protests.

The case strikes at the heart of Israel’s national identity, which is rooted in the country’s creation as a Jewish state after the Nazi slaughter of 6 million Jews during World War II.

Israel says it is battling a fierce enemy that carried out the deadliest attack on its territory since the country was founded in 1948. Its leaders insist they are following international law and doing their utmost to avoid harm to civilians. Israel blames Hamas for the high death toll, saying the militants operate in residential areas.

The case also evokes issues central to South Africa’s own identity: Its governing party, the African National Congress, has long compared Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank to its own history under the apartheid regime of white minority rule, which restricted most Black people to “homelands” before ending in 1994. South Africa sought to broaden the case beyond the Israel-Hamas war.

“The violence and the destruction in Palestine and Israel did not begin on Oct. 7, 2023. The Palestinians have experienced systematic oppression and violence for the last 76 years,” said South African Justice Minister Ronald Lamola.

“Mothers, fathers, children, siblings, grandparents, aunts, cousins are often all killed together. This killing is nothing short of destruction of Palestinian life. It is inflicted deliberately. No one is spared. Not even newborn babies,” said South African lawyer Hassim.

About two-thirds of the dead in Gaza are women and children, according to health officials there. The death toll does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

The world court, which rules on disputes between nations, has never judged a country to be responsible for genocide. The closest it came was in 2007, when it ruled that Serbia “violated the obligation to prevent genocide” in the July 1995 massacre by Bosnian Serb forces of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica.

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Fighting in Gaza rages near hospital as Blinken seeks postwar plan

The latest news from the Israel Hamas war.

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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke on Wednesday to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas about reforming his government, as Blinken sought to rally the region behind postwar plans for Gaza that include concrete steps toward a Palestinian state.

In their meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Blinken told Abbas that the US supports “tangible steps” toward a Palestinian state, according to State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.

He said the two discussed administrative reform.

The vision outlined by Blinken faces serious obstacles. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has so far rejected Palestinian Authority control in Gaza and adamantly opposes the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

While the US Secretary of State and the Palestinian leader discussed the future, outside a peaceful demonstration against Blinken’s visit ended in clashes with the police.

Israeli military operations in Gaza are focused on the southern city of Khan Younis and urban refugee camps in the territory’s center. Hundreds of people have been killed in recent days in strikes across the territory, including in areas of the far south where Israel told people to seek refuge.

A heavy strike on Wednesday brought down a two-story building in the central town of Deir al-Balah, close to its main Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, killing at least 20 people, according to hospital officials. A strike killed six people in an ambulance near Deir al-Balah, including four crew, a medical aid group said.

Israeli army filmed shooting Palestinians seemingly without provocation

Security camera video from a West Bank village shows a young man standing in a central square when he is suddenly shot and drops to the ground. Two others rushing to his aid are also hit, leaving a 17-year-old dead, moments before Israeli military jeeps roll in.

An Associated Press review of the video and interviews with the two wounded survivors showed Israeli soldiers opened fire on the three when they did not appear to pose a threat. 

One of the wounded Palestinians was shot a second time after he got up and tried to hop away.

The fatal shooting in the village of Beit Rima last week is the latest in a series of incidents in which soldiers appeared to fire without provocation, a trend Palestinians say has worsened since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza three months ago.

The Israeli military said troops entered Beit Rima overnight Thursday into Friday as part of a “counter-terrorism operation.” It said troops fired at suspects who threw explosives and firebombs at them.

The video, obtained by the AP from a local shop, does not show anyone throwing explosives.

Violence in the West Bank has surged to levels unseen in nearly two decades since fighting broke out on 7 October. 

Israel battles against genocide claim at world court

Israel is sending top legal minds, including a Holocaust survivor, to The Hague this week to counter allegations it is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

The robust engagement with the International Court of Justice is unusual for Israel, which normally considers international tribunals unfair and biased. 

Participating rather than boycotting reflects Israeli concerns judges could order Israel to halt its war against Hamas and tarnish its image internationally.

“Israel cannot run away from an accusation that is so serious,” said Alon Liel, a former director general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry. 

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Israel has tapped a former Israeli Supreme Court chief justice to join the court’s 15 regular members who will rule on the accusation. It has also enlisted a British barrister and lauded international law expert as part of its defence team.

Israel hopes their expertise will trounce the South African claim that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza amounts to genocide. Israel claimed halting the war with Hamas still intact and captive hostages would amount to a Hamas victory.

The genocide charge strikes at the heart of Israel’s national identity. The country sees itself as a bulwark of security for Jews after 6 million were killed in the Holocaust. International support for Israel’s creation in 1948 was deeply rooted in outrage over Nazi atrocities.

Israel’s unprecedented air, ground and sea offensive has killed more than 23,200 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children, according to health officials in Gaza. 

Israel’s military campaign has displaced roughly 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million population, many with no homes to return to. 

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More than a quarter of the population is starving.

US defends its veto of call for Gaza ceasefire

The United States defended its veto of a call for the immediate suspension of hostilities in Gaza at a UN meeting on Tuesday. 

Washington has again faced demands by the Palestinians and many other countries to help secure a ceasefire now in the Israel Hamas war.

US Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood called the Russian-proposed amendment to a 22 December Security Council resolution which it vetoed “disconnected from the situation on the ground.” 

The council then adopted a watered-down resolution, with Washington abstaining, calling for urgent steps to immediately allow expanded humanitarian aid into Gaza, “and to create conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.”

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Wood called it “striking” that those urging an end to the conflict have made very few demands of Hamas, following its surprise 7 October assault into southern Israel that killed around 1,200 people. 

No-one was urging the Palestinian militants “to stop hiding behind civilians, lay down its arms, and surrender,” he claimed. 

Wood reiterated ongoing US efforts to secure a “pause” in the fighting to get 136 Israeli hostages out of Gaza.

Some observers challenge the human shields argument often raised by Israel and its allies, claiming it is used to deflect attention from Israeli violence and does not omit obligations to protect civilian life under international law.

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Avaaz campaigner: ‘Neither Hamas nor Fatah can claim to represent the Palestinian people’

from our special correspondent in Ramallah – Two weeks into the Israel-Hamas war, Fadi Quran, campaigns director for Avaaz, an NGO coordinating activists worldwide, is calling for a ceasefire in the interest of children on both sides.

More than 4,000 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis have died since the unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, and at least 212 people are still being held hostage in the Gaza Strip. As the death toll climbs on both sides, UN agencies and other NGOs are calling for a ceasefire.

Quran speaks to FRANCE 24 in his residence in Ramallah about the despair of the Palestinian people caught in the conflict, and implores civil societies on both sides to pressure their governments to work for peace and spare the lives of children.

FRANCE 24: How do the people of the West Bank feel about the war in Gaza?

Quran: For many Palestinians, living in the West Bank every day is an experience of torture. We watch children being killed in Gaza – one child every 15 minutes. Imagine that you lived in Marseille, France, and you were watching TV for two weeks, seeing such images. Now, every 15 minutes, a child is pulled from under the rubble. People are in deep pain and they are trying to figure out what to do.

Many Palestinians have gone out to protest against this war, and many of them have been arrested over the last two weeks. Israel has also arrested over 4,000 Palestinians from across the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority, which is working with Israel, has also arrested dozens of people… 

Many of us have friends in Gaza. I was speaking to a friend this morning and he was telling me how he’s bringing water from the Mediterranean sea and boiling it, and then waiting for it to cool down without the salt so that he can give that water to his three-year-old child and his wife. They don’t have any more [fresh] water left where they live, because Israel has blockaded [the Gaza Strip].

That is the situation today. And for many Palestinians, what we’re beginning to do in the West Bank is to call for the replacement of the current Palestinian leadership, because we feel that they are betraying the cause by not doing enough to support the people in Gaza. But the truth is, I think many Palestinians, not just here but across the world, are staying at home, watching TV in tears.

What do you mean by replacement?

Our goal is to hold democratic elections for Palestinians across the world, to choose leaders who are capable of liberating us. The truth today is [that] neither Hamas nor Fatah can claim that they represent the Palestinian people, because we have not had elections for over 15 years. While Israel has banned Palestinians from voting in elections, the Palestinian Authority cooperates to make sure they never happen.

Many Gazans are stranded in Ramallah or elsewhere in the West Bank. What are their living conditions like?

Both my mother and sister are clinical psychologists, and they’ve been working with families from Gaza who are now here. According to what they report to me and the stories I’ve heard myself, it’s just complete and total depression, a complete and total sense of helplessness, panic attacks.

For example, a man called Mohammed from Gaza who was working in the West Bank got stuck here. He was talking to his wife and children when the phone got cut off and he hasn’t been able to reach them for ten days now. He was begging and crying: “I just want to go home. I just want to find my wife. I want to find my children.” He tried contacting his parents. They initially answered and then again disappeared. He can’t speak to them.

That is the story of hundreds of Gazans, fathers, mothers, and grandparents that are just unable to speak to their loved ones. It is heartbreaking.

How do you see the situation developing?

I’ve been speaking as part of my work in international advocacy to diplomats across key countries, including countries in the EU. [According to them,] Israel has forecast the deaths of 25 to 35,000 Palestinians. That alone is a terrifying number. They’re also estimating that 10 to 15% of Gaza’s population will be permanently displaced. We’re talking about 300 to 400,000 people becoming refugees for the third time in their lives. It seems like we’re going to face another catastrophe [of] ethnic cleansing, genocide. That is what the Israeli government is moving towards.

Read moreExperts say Hamas and Israel are breaking international law, but what does that mean?

Now there is another scenario. It’s the less likely one – but the one that we should all be fighting for – which is a proposal now being put on the table where Israel would be asked to release the 170 children that it holds in military prisons. In return, Hamas would release the children and their guardians held as hostages since October 7 and create a humanitarian corridor and safe areas for children in Gaza.

That is the scenario that President Macron, Biden and the international community should be pushing for. Instead of pushing for a solution that saves Jewish and Palestinian lives, they’re supporting Israel’s warmongering. That war is not only going to take tens of thousands of my people’s lives. It will also keep Netanyahu in power, but it won’t achieve security for the Jewish people. So even though the scenario of a ceasefire for children is the less likely one, if people raise their voices, it will become the only path forward. Otherwise, we’re looking at a war that is going to devastate us all.

Is the ceasefire for children feasible on the Israeli side?

This proposal for ceasefire for children is not being discussed in Israel. But we just did a poll with Israeli institutes which showed us that 57% of Israelis would support the proposal I just mentioned. Now, the government doesn’t support it, but this is why now we’re speaking with Israeli civil society organisations and even trying to reach out to the families of the hostages, so that they push their government to move away from war and towards the solution. I think we have less than a week to make this solution a reality before we face another catastrophe as Palestinians.

What do you expect from the international community?

This could be a moment that makes any solution for freedom, justice and dignity – and the opportunity to end the apartheid that the Palestinian people face – more impossible and take longer. Or, it can be a moment for a paradigm shift. And for us as Palestinians, we’re doing what we can to protect ourselves and create that path for freedom and dignity for both sides. But if people across France, the people across the United States and people across the United Kingdom don’t organise as well to stop this war, then it will not be stopped. So there is a responsibility, and one that the French and France’s leadership, are not taking seriously: putting an end to this violence.

So I call on the French people to act now because peace for us is also peace for the world.

This article is a translation of the original in French.

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Over two dozen killed as Russia strikes cities across Ukraine

Russia attacked cities across Ukraine early on Friday, killing at least 26 people, according to local officials. Ukraine said it downed 21 Russian missiles and two attack drones overnight. Meanwhile a deal on Ukrainian food exports transiting across EU countries has been reached. Read our live blog to see how all the day’s events unfolded. All times are Paris time (GMT+2).

This live page is no longer being updated. For more of our coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here

10:21pm: Death toll in Ukraine reaches 26 following Russian attacks

On Friday evening, workers in Uman, the site of an annual Hasidic pilgrimage, pulled the body of another child from under the rubble. Authorities said Russian cruise missiles killed 23 people — including four children — in Uman.

Authorities said the strikes in Dnipro killed a 31-year-old woman and her two-year-old daughter in their sleep.

Separately, authorities in the southern region of Kherson said on Friday evening that Russian forces shelled the village of Bilozerka, killing a 57-year-old woman and wounding another three.

This brings the death toll from the Russian strike with missiles and drones across Ukriane on Friday to 26 citizens, including children.


 

8:38pm: Russian strikes leave 25 dead including children

Russian strikes battered cities across Ukraine on Friday, killing 25 people including five children, as Kyiv said preparations for a counter-offensive against Moscow’s forces were nearly complete.

The deadly new attacks included a strike on a residential block in the historic city of Uman in central Ukraine, where AFP journalists saw rescue workers extracting victims’ remains from destroyed buildings.

7:33pm: European Commission says five nations reach deal on Ukraine food exports

Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia have agreed a deal to allow the transit of Ukrainian food exports, the European Commission said Friday, after temporary bans were imposed on the foodstuffs amid farmer protests.

“(The) EU Commission has reached an agreement in principle with Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia regarding Ukraine agri-food products,” EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis tweeted. “We have acted to address concerns of both farmers in neighbouring EU countries and Ukraine.”


7:16pm: Air alerts called off in Ukraine, Kyiv says

Ukraine canceled a series of air alerts that were issued for much of eastern and southern Ukraine and some central regions on Friday in the wake of earlier Russian missile strikes that killed 24 people, authorities said.

5:54pm: Zelensky sought help from China’s Xi to bring Ukraine’s children back home frm Russia children

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday that he asked his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to help bring back the Ukrainian children taken by Russia. 

“We need to involve everyone… to put pressure on the Russian aggressor and the terrorists who kidnapped so many of our children,” Zelensky said. “The UN, many others want to do something, but so far the results have been poor. So I have appealed to the leader of China.”


 

5:35pm: Air alerts sound in Ukraine after Russian strikes 

Air alerts were issued for much of eastern and southern Ukraine and some central regions on Friday, with officials appealing to residents not to ignore the warnings.

“Do not ignore the alerts,” Andriy Yermak, head of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, said on the Telegram messaging app hours after deadly Russian missile strikes earlier on Friday.

5:29pm: Russia exempts ‘friendly’ countries from oil sales ban

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree exempting so-called “friendly” countries from his ban on Russian oil exports to nations supporting Ukraine, according to the government’s website.

China and India, for example, now buy more Russian oil than they did before the war.

5:22pm: Death toll in Ukraine missile and drone attacks up to 22

Russia fired more than 20 cruise missiles and two drones at Ukraine early Friday, killing at least 22 people, almost all of them when two missiles slammed into an apartment building in a terrifying nighttime attack, officials said. Three children were among the dead.

The missile attacks included the first one against Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, in nearly two months, although there were no reports of any targets hit. The city government said Ukraine’s air force intercepted 11 cruise missiles and two unmanned aerial vehicles over Kyiv. 


 

5:09pm: Russian attacks kill seven people in occupied region, Russia appointed official claims

The top Russian-installed official in Ukraine’s occupied Donetsk region, Denis Pushilin, accused Ukraine on a social media post of killing seven people on Friday, including a child, with a rocket that set a minibus alight in the city of Donetsk.

A Russian Investigative Committee officer who declined to give his name said a residential area had been struck by multiple Grad rockets.

4:33pm: India and Russia to bolster defence ties, government says

India and Russia agreed to strengthen their defence partnership in talks between their defence ministers on Friday, the Indian government said, amid worries in New Delhi that the war in Ukraine was hurting its own military supplies from Moscow.

“They acknowledged the unique, long-lasting and time-tested relationship between India and Russia,” the statement said.

4:23pm: Russia to repair power line connected to Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant

Russia has informed the UN nuclear watchdog that equipment spotted at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which Russia controls, will be used to fix a power transmission line that leads to Russian-held territory, the watchdog said on Friday.

The planned restoration of the downed power line may heighten Ukrainian fears that Russia is preparing to connect Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, to Russia’s power grid.

A small number of International Atomic Energy Agency officials are present at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP), which is operated by Ukrainian staff working under the orders of Russian forces and the Russian nuclear company Rosatom.

3:52pm: Russia grants citizenship to Ukrainians in controlled territory

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed a decree that gives people living in parts of Ukraine under Moscow’s control a path to Russian citizenship but means those who decline or who do not legalise their status face potential deportation.

The decree extends to four Ukrainian regions which Russia has claimed as its own and partially controls: Donetsk,

Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Kyiv says it will retake all four areas and has accused Moscow of trying to browbeat its citizens into accepting Russian citizenship.

The new decree sets out ways that Ukrainian citizens or those holding passports issued by Russia-backed breakaway republics, and who live in the four regions, can start the process of becoming Russian citizens or legalise their status with the Russian authorities.

3:17pm: Over dozen dead after strikes on Ukraine

Russian strikes battered cities across Ukraine early Friday, killing at least 19 people as Kyiv said preparations for a highly anticipated offensive against Moscow’s forces were nearly complete.

The barrage of almost two dozen missiles overnight ended a weeks-long pause following the repeated Russian strikes that had aimed to paralyse Ukraine’s energy grid during the winter months.

These deadly new attacks included a strike on a residential block in Uman, central Ukraine, where AFP journalists saw rescue workers extracting victims’ remains from destroyed buildings.

3:13pm: Spain summons Russian ambassador over misinformation

Spain said Friday that it summoned the Russian ambassador over a fake video shared on its social media accounts showig Spanish soldiers on the battlefield in Ukraine, according to Spanish media reports.

Spain’s foreign ministry demanded the “immediate” removal of the video and summoned Russia’s ambassador to Spain “to protest the attacks using social media against the government,” a ministry spokesman told AFP.

2:58pm: UN expresses concerns overs Russian human rights violations

A United Nations committee said on Friday it was deeply concerned about human rights violations by Russian forces and private military companies in Ukraine, including enforced disappearances, torture, rape and extrajudicial executions.

In its findings on Russia, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination called on the Russian authorities to investigate allegations of human rights violations committed during the invasion of Ukraine.

“The Committee was deeply concerned about the grave human rights violations committed during the ongoing armed conflict by the Russian Federation’s military forces and private military companies …,” it said in a statement.

1:10pm: Russia-installed Donetsk mayor says seven killed after Ukraine’s artillery hits minibus in Donbas city

The Russian-installed mayor of the Ukrainian city of Donetsk said on Friday in a statement posted on Telegram that seven people were killed when Ukrainian shelling hit a minibus in the city.

Reuters was unable to immediately verify the report.

1:05pm: Ukraine ready for counteroffensive, defence minister says  

Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said Friday that his military was ready as preparations for a highly-anticipated offensive against Russian positions were drawing to a close.

“Preparations are coming to an end. In addition to being provided a weapon, it must be mastered. Equipment has been promised, prepared and partially delivered. In a global sense, we’re ready,” he told reporters in Kyiv.

12:45pm: Russian strikes death toll rise to 16

Russian strikes across Ukraine on early Friday killed at least 16 people. These deadly new attacks included a strike on a residential block in Uman, central Ukraine, where AFP journalists saw rescue workers extracting victims’ remains from destroyed buildings. Rescuers were using cranes to search for survivors among the remains of the multi-storey housing block in the central city of 80,000 inhabitants.

Ukraine’s interior minister said 14 people had been killed in Uman, with two 10-year-old children among the dead. Regional governor Igor Taburets said the city was hit by two cruise missiles, with one hitting a residential building and the other a warehouse.

Russian missiles also hit the central city of Dnipro: “A young woman and a 3-year-old child died,” the city’s mayor, Borys Filatov, said Friday on Telegram.

12:35pm: Russian deputy PM says visited Ukraine’s destroyed Bakhmut, vowed to rebuild

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said Friday he had paid a rare visit to the destroyed city of Bakhmut in east Ukraine and vowed Moscow would rebuild the city.

“I visited Artemovsk,” Khusnullin said on Telegram using the Russian name for Bakhmut, adding: “The city is damaged, but it can be restored. We have the experience needed. As soon as the operational situation allows, we will go in and work, step by step.”

9:35am: Death toll from air strikes rises to 12, officials say

At least 12 people died in the first large-scale Russia air strikes in nearly two months in the early morning hours of Friday, as Kyiv prepares to launch a counteroffensive to try to retake Russian-occupied territory.

In the central city of Uman, firefighters battled a raging blaze at a residential apartment building that had been struck on an upper floor. At least 10 people were killed and 17 wounded there, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.

In the southeastern city of Dnipro, a missile struck a house, killing a 2-year-old child and a 31-year-old woman, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said. Three people were also wounded in the attack.

“Since early February, the general feeling is that Russian attempts to damage infrastructure were winding down, with Ukraine going through the winter with a series of very large scale attacks on power stations,” among others, FRANCE 24’s Gulliver Cragg reports from Mykolaiv. “We don’t really know the reason why these particular cities and buildings were hit,” he added.


 

8:50am: Ukraine downed 21 Russian missiles, 2 drones overnight, defence ministry says 

Ukraine said Friday it had downed a barrage of 21 Russian missiles and two attack drones overnight in Moscow’s most recent deadly wave of strikes targeting cities across the country.

“Ukrainian air defenders shot down 21 of 23 missiles and 2 drones,” the defence ministry said in a statement, referring to Russia as a “terrorist state” that had launched the munitions from Tu-95 strategic bombers.

06:48pm: Russian attacks across Ukraine death toll rises to five

As Russia attacked cities in a wide arc across Ukraine early on Friday, extending from the capital Kyiv, three people were killed and eight wounded when a missile hit an apartment building in the central town of Uman, setting it ablaze, said Ihor Taburets, head of the military administration in the area, raising the death toll to five.

Kyiv was also rocked by explosions and air raid sirens and explosions were reported across the country, according to the Interfax Ukraine and reports on social media channels. There were no details on what had been struck in Kyiv or of any damage and casualties. The city’s military administration said anti-aircraft units were in operation.

Interfax said explosions were also reported after midnight in Dnipro, Kremenchuk and Poltava in central Ukraine and in Mykolaiv in the south.

05:30am: At least two killed in attack on Dnipro

“A young woman and a three-year-old child have been killed,” Borys Filatov, mayor of the central city of Dnipro, said on Telegram. Filatov gave no further details.

Pictures on social media showed an apartment building ablaze in the central town of Uman.

Kyiv was also rocked by explosions and air raid sirens and explosions were reported across the country, according to the Interfax Ukraine and reports on social media channels.

There were no details on what had been struck in Kyiv or of any damage and casualties. The city’s military administration said anti-aircraft units were in operation.

Interfax said explosions were also reported after midnight in Dnipro, Kremenchuk and Poltava in central Ukraine and in Mykolaiv in the south.

Interfax quoted accounts on the Telegram message service as saying unidentified airborne objects were also headed for the west of the country.

04:10am: Explosions reported in Kyiv 

Explosions resounded in Kyiv and the region surrounding the capital early on Friday, Interfax Ukraine and local telegram channels reported.

There were no details on which targets had been struck after midnight or of damage and casualties. The city’s military administration said anti-aircraft units were in operation.

Earlier reports said cities stretching from central Ukraine to southern Mykolaiv Region had been hit by explosions after air raid alerts were declared throughout the country.

9:32pm: Russia’s forced transfer of Ukraine children ‘genocide’, Council of Europe says

Russia‘s forced transfer of Ukrainian children amounts to genocide, the Council of Europe said Thursday in a resolution adopted by its parliamentary assembly.

Calling for the safe return of the children to Ukraine, the parliament said “the documented evidence of this practice matches with the international definition of genocide”.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed the resolution as an “important” decision that will help “hold Russia and its leaders to account”.

The deportation of Ukrainian children is one element of “Russia’s attempt to erase the identity of our people, to destroy the very essence of the Ukrainian people”, he said in his evening address.

7:25pm: Basketball star Griner urges US detainees in Russia to ‘stay strong’

WNBA superstar Brittney Griner urged US detainees in Russia to “stay strong, keep fighting, don’t give up” on Thursday in her first press conference since being released as part of a prisoner swap last year.

Speaking in Arizona as she prepares to resume her career with the Phoenix Mercury, Griner vowed to keep fighting on behalf of people wrongfully detained around the world.

Asked what her message would be for Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and US citizen Paul Whelan, both held in Russia, Griner replied: “I would say to everyone that’s wrongfully detained right across the world: ‘Stay strong, keep fighting, don’t give up’.

“Just keep waking up. Find a little routine and stick to the routine as best as you can. That’s what helped me,” she said.

3:14pm: Ukraine ask Pope’s help in getting children back from Russia

Ukraine’s prime minister said he asked Pope Francis during a private Vatican audience Thursday to help facilitate the return of Ukrainian children who were forcibly taken to Russia.

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, briefing reporters on his half-hour audience with the pontiff, said he also invited Francis to come to Ukraine.

“I asked His Holiness to help us return home Ukrainians, Ukrainian children who are detained, arrested, and criminally deported to Russia,” Shmyhal said.

The Vatican’s brief statement on the audience did not go into particular points of the talks. It noted that Shmyhal met with the Holy See’s secretary of state and foreign minister after his meeting with Francis

2:54pm: Russia’s Prigozhin denies suspending artillery fire in Bakhmut

The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group said on Thursday he had been joking when he said his men would suspend artillery fire in Bakhmut to allow Ukrainian forces on the other side of the frontline to show the city to visiting US journalists.

Wagner has been spearheading Russia’s assault on Bakhmut since last summer in the longest and bloodiest battle of the war, but Ukrainian forces have so far thwarted its attempts to take full control of the city.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner’s founder, said in an audio message published on Thursday by his press service: “A decision has been taken to suspend artillery fire so that American journalists can safely film Bakhmut and go home.”

 

© France Médias Monde graphic studio

 

 

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)

 

 



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Proposed Florida Textbooks Won’t Say Why Rosa Parks Stayed Seated. Maybe She Was Stubborn, Who Knows?

Now that Ron DeSantis has scrubbed all the woke out of Florida math textbooks, it’s time for the state’s social studies textbooks to be winnowed, so that no traces of critical race theory remains, and so no children feel guilty or sad about history. The New York Times reports (gift link) that as part of the periodic review of textbooks this year,

a small army of state experts, teachers, parents and political activists have combed thousands of pages of text — not only evaluating academic content, but also flagging anything that could hint, for instance, at critical race theory.

Remember, of course, that while in academia, critical race theory is a graduate-level topic of study, on the right, CRT means anything that makes white people fretting about The Blacks uncomfortable.

One group involved in the effort, the Florida Citizens Alliance, determined that 29 of the 38 textbooks its volunteers examined were simply inappropriate for use in Florida, and urged the Florida Department of Education to reject them. The Times notes that the group’s co-founders helped out with education policy during DeSantis’s transition (to governor, not in a trans kind of way, heavens!), and that it has “helped lead a sweeping effort to remove school library books deemed as inappropriate, including many with L.G.B.T.Q. characters.”

We bet the books they rejected were just full of critical racecars and critical footraces! Just how bad were these awful textbooks?


In a summary of its findings submitted to the state last month, the group complained that a McGraw Hill fifth-grade textbook, for example, mentioned slavery 189 times within a few chapters alone. Another objection: An eighth-grade book gave outsize attention to the “negative side” of the treatment of Native Americans, while failing to give a fuller account of their own acts of violence, such as the Jamestown Massacre of 1622, in which Powhatan warriors killed more than 300 English colonists.

Good call, because while Native Americans may have been genocided by disease — and later by US federal policy — some fought back, and that evens everything out.

Hilariously, the Times also notes that that the White Citizens Council Florida Citizens Alliance is “pushing the state to add curriculum from Hillsdale College, a small Christian school in Michigan that is active in conservative politics.” There’s just one little problem, though, because what Hillsdale offers for K-12 history and civics isn’t in any sense a “textbook,” but instead a set of guidelines for teachers, with recommended primary readings like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and probably Rush Limbaugh’s awful children’s books (we’re guessing on that one). But it’s from Hillsdale so that’s what the kids need.

The Times simply notes that “The curriculum was not included in Florida’s official review, and the state did not comment on the group’s recommendations.”

Moar Here!

Rush Limbaugh’s Crappy Books Will Save Kids From A.P. History

Biden Just Deleted The Stupid Ahistorical Bullsh*ts Of T—p’s ‘1776 Commission Report

Florida Takes Its Turn On ‘Please Don’t Make White People Uncomfortable’ Bandwagon

Ask The Gay Penguins How ‘Limited’ Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Law Is. YOU CAN’T THEY’RE BANNED

Florida’s Education Department actually does require that schools teach Black history, although how exactly that’s supposed to be done in a way that won’t upset any hypervigilant rightwing parents isn’t entirely clear. The Times says the department

emphasized that the requirements were recently expanded, including to ensure students understood “the ramifications of prejudice, racism and stereotyping on individual freedoms.”

As we all know, slavery and Jim Crow were bad because they were regrettable departures from America’s founding ideas of freedom and equality, which were always the norm except in certain unfortunate moments (from 1619 through 1965 and elsewhere).

In a very sad attempt to win favor with Florida, an outfit called “Studies Weekly,” a minor-league publisher of weekly social-studies pamphlets mostly for early elementary grades, attempted to completely remove race from its first-grade lessons on Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. That took some doing!

The absolutely essential progressive parent group the Florida Freedom to Read Project provided the Times with three different versions of Studies Weekly’s very brief lessons on Parks. The first is currently used in Florida schools, and is pretty accurate:

“In 1955, Rosa Parks broke the law. In her city, the law said African Americans had to give up their seats on the bus if a white person wanted to sit down. She would not give up her seat. The police came and took her to jail.”

There were also two versions created for the new textbook review; the Times points out it’s not clear which one the company submitted, and as it turns out, Studies Weekly was rejected because it messed up its paperwork, so we’ll never know what the Florida Department of Education thought of the Rosa Parks lessons.

One version mentions race only indirectly:

“Rosa Parks showed courage. One day, she rode the bus. She was told to move to a different seat because of the color of her skin. She did not. She did what she believed was right.”

Another version eliminates race altogether, making it really unclear whether Parks was a hero or just kind of a jerk.

“Rosa Parks showed courage. One day, she rode the bus. She was told to move to a different seat. She did not. She did what she believed was right.”

It’s really something of a wonder that there wasn’t a third revision that simply said “Rosa Parks showed courage. She rode a bus. Good for her! Buses are big and scary!”

A fourth-grade lesson about discrimination following the Civil War and Reconstruction had similarly bizarre edits. In the initial version, the lesson explained that even after the war, many people in former Confederate states “believed African-Americans should be enslaved” and that they were “not equal to anyone in their community.” (Yes, that’s already problematic since it suggests white is the norm, but oh my, it gets very much worse.)

That got revised to the far weirder observation that “many communities in the South held on to former belief systems that some people should have more rights than others in their community.”

And where the initial discussion of Southern “Black Codes” made very clear that African Americans were regularly denied their basic rights, the second version still uses the term “Black Codes,” but says only that it became “a crime for men of certain groups to be unemployed” and that “certain groups of people” were prevented from serving on juries. Sounds like members of those certain groups were treated like they were particular individuals.

For the little it’s worth, the Times also adds that

The Florida Department of Education suggested that Studies Weekly had overreached. Any publisher that “avoids the topic of race when teaching the Civil Rights movement, slavery, segregation, etc. would not be adhering to Florida law,” the department said in a statement.

The story also notes that it’s not clear yet whether other publishers attempted similar decolorization; to find out, we may have to wait until Florida announces the textbooks that passed muster.

Until then, we’ll just have to hope none of the textbooks explain that the Voting Rights Act was passed after John Lewis and a certain group of his friends took a leisurely Sunday stroll across a bridge.

[NYT (gift link)]

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Red States About Five Minutes Away From Legalized Lynching Of Trans People

The rightwing war on transgender Americans keeps advancing through red state legislatures, and among the more notable developments is that, as many warned, the bigots who want trans people to disappear have moved, in many states, from banning gender affirming care for minors to attempting to ban or severely restrict healthcare for trans adults as well. It’s just getting uglier and uglier, as Republican legislators compete to see who can use the power of state government to most creatively make trans people’s lives worse.

The bigoted legislation is being spewed like a firehose of hate across the country, and it can be difficult to keep track of. Fortunately, the ACLU and the Equality Federation both have online bill trackers if you want to see what horrible ideas are being floated in your state.

But holy Crom Jebus Bodhisattva Hank Gritt Galactus, these bastards are busy working to genocide trans people by limiting their access to medical care, all the while lying about wanting to “protect” children.

Forget that lie: It’s about making trans people of all ages suffer for the sin of existing.


A quick review of the ongoing madness, in no particular order:

Mississippi

Gov. Tate Reeves signed a bill Wednesday outlawing gender-affirming treatment — puberty blockers, hormone therapy, or surgery — for anyone under 18. That makes Mississippi the seventh state to ban such care for minors, after Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, South Dakota, and Utah. The bans in Alabama and Arkansas have been blocked in federal court, and we assume the lawsuits against Mississippi’s ban — all the others — will soon be flying too. [ABC News]

It’s worth noting up front here that genital surgery for minors is extremely rare. Top surgery (mastectomy) for patients under 18 is only slightly more common; in one of its trans panic articles, the New York Times noted there are no official stats, but that 11 leading pediatric clinics in the US reported 203 procedures on minors in 2021; it’s also not something that anyone just rushes into. State laws vary, but nearly all minor patients get extensive counseling and need at least one parent’s permission. [NYT]

North Dakota

A raft of anti-trans bills is moving through the state Legislature, including a ban on gender-affirming treatment, with possible prison sentences and/or heavy fines for healthcare providers who provide such care. Another bill would prohibit changing birth certificates “due to a gender identity change,” unless it’s to correct a clerical error. People who have had genital surgery could change their birth certificates with proof from a medical professional, which is already the state’s standard.

Still another would “define ‘father,’ ‘female,’ ‘mother,’ ‘male’ and ‘sex,’ and would mandate school districts and vital statistics agencies identify people based solely on their sex assigned at birth,” with no exceptions. The state Senate passed a bill requiring parental permission for K-12 teachers to use trans kids’ preferred pronouns. And the state House also passed two separate bans on trans athletes in girls’ and women’s sports (one for public schools, one for colleges and universities), although there have been no complaints from athletes anywhere in the state. [Advocate]

Tennessee

Last week, the Legislature passed a ban on gender-affirming care for minors; the vote in the House was disgustingly lopsided, 77-16, with three Democrats even joining in on bashing trans kids. Gov. Bill Lee signed it yesterday, making Tennessee Number Eight in the nation, along with that stupid ban on drag shows (Wonk link), which purportedly harm The Children.

As always, the bill sponsors insist they want to “protect” kids from being who they are. 97.5 percent of adolescents who come out as trans continue to identify as trans or nonbinary after five years, but the bill’s sponsors pushed the lie that once kids get through puberty, they give up on that trans nonsense and settle down.

As with similar bills, Tennessee’s subjects healthcare providers to criminal penalties for treating trans youth, but the bill includes this bizarre exception: Doctors would be allowed to continue treating patients who began treatment before the bill’s effective date of July 1 this year, but would have to end all treatment by March 31, 2024. Hooray, you have a year to leave the state before your transition is cut off, kids. Shortly after Gov. Lee signed it, the ACLU announced it will sue to block the law from going into effect. [CBS News / AP / Pink News]

Tennessee has even worse legislation on the way, too. HB1215, currently making its way through the state House, would prohibit private managed care companies from contracting with the state’s Medicaid alternative, TennCare, if they provide any gender-affirming health services at all, even for adults. To be clear, this isn’t just a ban on gender affirming care for Medicaid patients in Tennessee: It would ban insurers from contracting with TennCare if they offer such care anywhere in the US.

Even though the federal government covers the majority of Medicaid, state Rep. Tim Rudd (R) explained that the bill was absolutely necessary to make sure Tennessee taxpayers’ dollars don’t fund transgender care in other states. Presumably Rs will now ban the sales of car brands in the state if the manufacturers allow vehicles to be sold to trans people anywhere. [Tennessee HB1215 / AP]

Oklahoma

On Tuesday, the Oklahoma House passed its version of a ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth and sent it to the state Senate. The bill includes a special extra Secret Sauce ban on insurance coverage for gender-affirming care — not only for minors, but for adults, too.

The bill’s author, Rep. Kevin West (R), was very proud of his work, claiming that the bill would “protect children and parents from being pressured into agreeing to harmful experimental transition procedures…” although gender affirming care is not “experimental” — at the risk of a tautology, it’s often covered by insurance, and insurance companies don’t cover experimental treatments. And that line about saving kids and parents from being “pressured” — a word that isn’t in the bill text — is a marvelously dishonest construction. Heavens, no one would ever want gender-affirming care; it’s simply that every trans person everywhere was brainwashed.

The Washington Post notes that another bill, SB 129, would go even farther, banning gender-affirming treatment up to the age of 26. The bill was originally titled the “Millstone Act,” a reference to the Biblical injunction that anyone who harms a child should “have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” The title was stripped out Wednesday, apparently in recognition that Oklahoma is landlocked and the penalty would be impractical. [Oklahoman / WaPo]

Kentucky

In an attempt to outdo all the other anti-trans legislation in the country, Kentucky Republicans in late February introduced HB 470, which independent journalist Erin Reed says “takes nearly every anti-trans youth bill from nearly every state in 2023 and combines them all into one single cruel piece of legislation. It then adds wrinkles not seen in any other state.”

It has all the expected bans on lifesaving gender-affirming medical care for anyone under the age of 18, but would go even farther: It would ban Medicaid coverage, end all public funding for trans youth care, and even investigate doctors and revoke their licenses if they provide gender-affirming care to youth. But there’s even more, as Reed details:

one section would require schools to disclose transgender students’ information to their parents, and another section would ban gender marker changes for transgender youths. A unique provision in this bill would also prohibit legal name changes for youth, but only if the name change is for “gender transition purposes.”

An amended version of the bill passed out of committee and went to the full House for debate (and — spoiler — passage) yesterday. Protesters chanted “Shame! Shame!” as the committee members headed to the House chamber.

The amended version of the bill stripped out a provision that would have been a whole new front in the war on care for trans youth, by banning counseling aimed at helping kids with social transition. Apparently the Rs decided it would be too difficult to enforce, or to defend in court — who knows, really?

The now-deleted provision would have effectively forced all mental health providers to enforce cisgender identity on trans youth, by banning “social transition services,” which the bill had defined as

any encouragement, advocacy, or affirmation including pronouns, affirming a name change, and affirming “sex specific behaviors that vary from those typically associated with a person’s sex.” It then states that mental health counselors are banned from any of this and by doing so, they could lose their licenses.

Eliminating that provision doesn’t make the bill any better; it still includes all the other cruelty, including the non-counseling portions of the ban on social transition, like changing the gender marker on official documents and the prohibition on changing a minor’s name for “gender transition purposes.” Kentucky may have stripped it from the bill for now, but look for future bills that will take the plunge and ban social transition counseling. There’s no reason to think there’s any bottom to the war on trans people.

HB 470 was passed and sent on to the state Senate yesterday. [Kentucky HB 470 / Erin in the Morning]

[Image: Ted Eytan, Creative CommonsLicense 2.0]

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