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After Hamas fired rockets and invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,400 hundred people and abducting more than 200, Israel’s response has been under intense scrutiny. Israel’s actions have been informed by the rules of International Humanitarian Law, or the law of armed conflict, which places obligations on parties to war whether they are states like Israel or non-state actors like the terror group Hamas.

Felice Gaer Baran, an internationally renowned human rights expert who for more than four decades brought life and practical significance to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international commitments to prevent grave human rights abuses around the world, died on November 9, 2024 in New York City, following a lengthy battle with metastatic breast cancer. She was 78. At the time of her death, she was the director of the American Jewish Committee’s Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights (JBI).

American Jewish Committee welcomed today’s decision upholding Meta’s prohibition of and policy for removing Holocaust denial content by the Oversight Board, an independent entity established by Meta.

American Jewish Committee (AJC) welcomes the publication by the UN Special Adviser on Prevention of Genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, of a new policy paper on combating Holocaust and genocide denial. The paper was produced in collaboration with AJC’s Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights (JBI). “Holocaust denial is rooted in antisemitism,” emphasizes Nderitu in the policy paper’s foreword, adding that her office is also “extremely worried about the increasingly frequent distortions of the Holocaust’s scope and intentionality.” Nderitu emphasizes that denying the facts of the Holocaust and other genocides generates fear among victims, “constitutes a warning sign of societal fragility” and “can inspire and fuel hatred of, or even incite violence against, communities that previously experienced atrocity crimes.”

After several days of terror threats, Israel announced that it has launched Operation Breaking Dawn on Aug. 5 as part of an effort to target the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group in the Gaza Strip, which had been planning a significant terror attack against the Jewish state.