Violence against women and girls in Gaza.....

A couple says they allowed their 17-year-old son to marry his 16-year-old cousin after their older son and the girl's father were killed. The teenager is now pregnant so will not return to school. "She needs to care for her child," her father-in-law says, "her education would be in vain."

So they marry off young teens so they don't have to look after them, then deny pregnant teens access to education.

The whole Islamist mindset about women is so deeply fucked it's terrifying. Earlier in the year it was articles about Afghani men selling their daughters into forced child marriages, now it's Gaza men selling their daughters for flour.

Those poor women and girls. Forced to marry their rapists, forced to have babies when they are children themselves.

How can any of us help them? It's heartbreaking.

You appear to think you're discussing whether Israel should let journalists in. You're not
My first post on this thread is my opinion. This has not changed. No need to gaslight me.
I have been clear what I think access by journalists would bring to the region.

I’m not sure much can be done against cultural practices

Well progress was being made before the conflict. Bit defeatist to think nothing can be done:
Before the Conflict: Child marriage rates had been dropping across the Palestinian territories. Data showed a decline from roughly 26–28% in 2009 down to about 11–18% by 2022.
The ongoing conflict has reversed prior progress. United Nations agencies, including the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), report a steep rise in child marriages and adolescent pregnancies.

Right, and letting journalists in wouldn't create an international peacekeeping force. That means you don't think the conditions necessary to protect women and children would be in place. Same as me.

You appear to think you're discussing whether Israel should let journalists in? You're not. Me and you agree on that part. This is about whether letting them in would have the consequences the poster I initially replied to thinks it would.

Reminds me of that old joke.

Man: Who will be here to protect you if all men are wiped from the face of the earth?
Woman: Protect me from whom?

Read my very first post on this thread I said access to both.

I have not seen any reasonable argument made as to why there is no access.

You said the protection needs to come from international peace keepers in the area. Presumably you don't think the journalists would also be international peacekeepers. That means the thing you think is needed would still not be present even if journalists were let in.

Hamas murder people who say things they don't like, and they lie. Gazan men's mistreatment of women and children makes them look bad, hence the attempts to swerve it on this thread from people who would rather the focus was elsewhere.

You are of course free to argue that we can't be certain of this if you want. But if certainty is your barometer, again that needs to apply equally to the poster confidently asserting that letting journalists in would create protection. What we aren't going to have is a double standard.

I’m not sure much can be done against cultural practices like thinking it’s ok to marry off young girls, unfortunately.

Do you think that hamas give a shit about a march in the uk or what uk women think? Women are treated like shit in general in these countries

Absolutely shocking, hopefully more light is shone on this ever increasing calamity for the women and children. Same goes for Sudan and Afghanistan. What can reasonably be done though when it’s so endemic?

Not what I said. I said
It will throw eyes on what is happening Independent journalists can be a platform for investigating evidence and a voice for those abused. What's your argument for them not getting access?

I don’t think it should be minimised as “just men”.

Appreciate it’s a predominantly female site we’re on but that comment was too harsh on most men who certainly wouldn’t see it as acceptable to see girls married at the age of 12, for example.

Right, so you don't actually think Israel letting journalists in is going to create any protection for abused women and children in Gaza. That means we agree.

I read Johnathan Cook journalist

This is his take on Isreal Palestine. Worth a read.

One final, horrifying subtext to Miliband’s speech announcing a trade ban on the settlements should not go unremarked.

In desperately trying to keep alive the West’s two-state solution, Burnham’s government is not just ignoring reality: the fact that there is no partner in Israel – electable or otherwise – to implement such a vision.

Burnham and Miliband are also insisting, in the entirely improbable event that a Palestinian state can be extracted from Israel, that the Palestinian people should be required to make peace with an unrepentant, heavily militarised, racist state that has recently committed genocide in Gaza.

None of the 11 states that joined the UK this week in sanctioning the settlements can apparently imagine Palestinians ever living in anything more than a small, demilitarised, economically dependent pseudo-state, with no real choice over its leaders, or control over its borders and economy.

Similarly, there is no suggestion that a neighbouring, territorially reduced Israeli state would need to be reformed ideologically, or made to engage in any kind of truth and reconciliation process, or face sanctions until it sees the error of its genocidal ways.

The Jewish supremacist ideology of Zionism, the dehumanising logic of the Israeli settler-colonial mindset, and the religious fundamentalism of large swaths of the Israeli population - all critical to the rationalisation of the Gaza genocide - would remain unchallenged.

On this view, it seems, long-established impulses towards apartheid and genocide would simply evaporate, even as the West continues to indulge Israel’s every whim.

This isn’t a recipe for peace, even of the flawed kind. It is a demand that the Palestinian lamb continue to dwell with the Israeli wolf.

The truth that Burnham’s government refuses to face, as with every government before it, is that peace won’t magically arrive with Palestinian statehood. A Palestinian state – or, more likely, a single state embracing Palestinians and Israeli Jews – can emerge only when Israel has been dismantled as a heavily armed settler-colonial state, as happened with apartheid South Africa.

Israeli society will need to be re-educated through a painful truth and reconciliation process, as also happened in apartheid South Africa. Israelis will have to be made to confront the facts about a century of atrocities committed against the native Palestinian people.

Britain is not contemplating doing any of this – because the threads from unravelling the crimes of Israel and the Zionist movement would lead straight to the door of 10 Downing Street and other western powers.

This is an extract from my latest article. Read more here: www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/milibands-settlement-trade-ban-cosmetic-work-must-sanction-israel

No they wouldn't just like Israel don't, but neither of those are excuses for not letting them get access. Independent war correspondents are fairly confident they can report effectively from the area. So why are they still being blocked.

It remains massively optimistic to think this will create mechanisms for protection
It will throw eyes on what is happening. The protection though needs to come from international peace keepers in the area. As I mentioned up thread Gaza is closed off from any international protection. Disarmament and security was meant to be part of the Board of peaces responsibility, does anyone have any update on this?

If your standard is we can't know this, it applies equally to the poster who confidently asserted that normal scrutiny would create protection for those who need it most. Strange how you didn't say that to them...

As I said, I'm in favour of Israel letting journalists in. It remains massively optimistic to think this will create mechanisms for protection, hence there was a massive gap where the poster making that claim explains how this would happen.

Oh come on, Of course we know that Hamas wouldn't want accurate reporting.

You have no way of knowing any of that. Independent war correspondents are very experienced at reporting from conflict zones. There is no reason why they should not get access. Why are Israel blocking it?

I think that's rather optimistic.

Israel should let journos in, but Hamas wouldn't want them reporting on stories that portray either them or Gazan culture generally in a bad light. They'd try and prevent it. And even in the unlikely event that journalists were able to cover this properly, that doesn't create mechanisms to prevent it.

Well, that's just men for you isn't it?

But yes, especially men from conservative, misogynistic cultures. Places like Sudan, Afghanistan, and Gaza, where the population is mostly Muslim, have horrendous rates of violence against women and children.

Shocking details in that report that you won’t see widespread condemnation of. Even from those usually vocal about Gaza.

Usual inflammatory accusations from you. I think you will find the majority of people vocal about Gaza have been warning about this, have been continually looking for internationa media access to Gaza. I do remember you being quite supportive of the Board of Peace, one of their key responsibilities is disarmament and security, why no ire at them? They are the only ones allowed access to Gaza. There were many voices on here that had concern about the Board of peace and felt UN peacekeepers and international oversight was the best option but this was shut down and here we are months later with little if any progress made by the board of peace and civilians vulnerbale to this kind of abuse from Hamas and other armed military gangs.

This. Society has completely broken down, law and order no longer exists, Hamas and other armed military gangs are in control. No access for international media, UN and other NGOs, closed borders, starvation, death, sickness, injury, destruction of all social infrastructure (schools, hospitals, universities etc), people surviving in tents amongst rubble.

Let the international community in to support the population, let UN peacekeepers in to protect women.

There is no governance in Gaza so the international community let's these women suffer. @mids2019 can you explain this further for me, what are the international community expected to do? Israel are controlling their access. What is the Board of Peace doing? weren't they set up to oversee the "peace" and rebuilding of Gaza that seemed to be the plan US and Israel went with, where is their accountability? Disarmament and Security is one of their core responsibilities.

If there was something like normal scrutiny then protection would be afforded to those who need it most.

Rape happens in every country, and men will
behave worse when living in war zones with no authority.

Palestinian women don’t like having their children starved or shot by the IDF either, but they continue without international condemnation.

You don’t need to try and make Palestinian humans appear different to any other humans to promote Zionist propaganda. Palestinians deserve their country back no matter what horrors occur during war and occupation.