Roxanne El Baff

❗️BREAKING❗️All eyes on Masafer Yatta! Twelve Palestinian villages in the South Hebron Hills, home to 2,800 people, are at imminent risk of mass demolition and forcible displacement. Yet another war crime, yet another crime against humanity. On June 18, Israel’s High Planning Council affirmed that “Firing Zone 918" - instrumentally created to clear Palestinians from the area - is essential for military training, and that all civilian presence and planning requests are to be denied. As the world looks away, Israel accelerates its erasure of Palestinian life and land. If "No Other Land" moved you, remember: it is not just a movie, it is the LIFE that Palestinians face under Israel's colonial apartheid.

Let’s be clear: the world is watching Israel attack a civilian boat carrying no weapons—only humanitarian aid—flying a U.K. flag in international waters & carrying humanitarians of many nationalities. Israel has precisely zero authority to do so under any law. #AllEyesOnDeck #Madleen @GazaFFlotilla

Q: Why would Israel attack areas it’s designated as safe immediately after telling civilians to flee there? A: Because Israel is committing genocide.

"You don't ask the perpetrator of genocide." In a searing interview with the BBC, paediatrician Dr Tanya Haj Hassan condemned the broadcaster for echoing Israeli government talking points as she recounted her harrowing experiences in Gaza. Dr Haj Hassan, who recently returned from volunteering with Medical Aid for Palestinians, shared the devastating story of her colleague, Dr Alaa, a paediatric emergency doctor at Nasser Hospital. While Dr Alaa was on call at the hospital, her home was bombed and nine of her children were killed, their bodies charred and dismembered beyond recognition. Her husband remains in critical condition. Dr Haj Hassan described a healthcare system in collapse: intensive care units overflowing with maimed, orphaned children – many the sole survivors of their families. She also questioned why the BBC has delayed the release of 'Medics Under Fire', a documentary it commissioned about systematic attacks on Gaza’s healthcare workers, calling for its immediate release.

I’ve seen the silhouettes of so many people—so many children—burning alive, that I can’t look at fire anymore without feeling sick to my stomach. WE MUST STOP THIS MASSACRE. May the Palestinians forgive us.

This is 25-year-old Palestinian photojournalist Fatima Hassouna. It was just announced that she is the subject of a new documentary, to be screened at a festival in France. Hours later she was massacred by Israeli soldiers together with 10 members of her family.

❌ALARMING❌The Israeli government's formally announced intention to permanently annex the entire occupied West Bank is such a serious and egregious violation of int'l law, that if not halted, the collapse of the multilateral system built on universal principles (such as sovereignty, self-determination, primacy of int'l law) will be unavoidable.

Here we f* go again!

Shocked by Israeli forces' raid on East Jerusalem's Educational Bookshop—an intellectual lighthouse and family-run gem resisting Palestinian erasure under apartheid. Internationals in Jerusalem: please show up, stand with the Muna family, and protect this vital hub. Don't leave them alone!

الجنوب ❤️

Watching Elon Musk and others slip so seamlessly from liberalism to fascism is a reminder of how porous the boundaries are between those two positions…

I cannot emphasize this enough. There is life-saving aid at the border, including blankets, clothing, shoes, and materials for shelter, and Israel is actively blocking it. That is genocidal. middleeastmonitor.com/20241127-israe…

Israel bombed in Lebanon yesterday and today, they opened fire on farmers, on a funeral, snipers shot at journalists. They are advancing into towns they were repelled from in the fighting. They are tearing up olive trees. Not a single person has fired back. The moment somebody does, the USA and its allies will call "ceasefire violation". I feel heartsick.

There was no warning on central Beirut. Even if your false claim is correct: so the warning was at 1am? We really don’t give a damn abou your sympathy. Cherry picking information is becoming a lame strategy: Isr/ dropped/fired at least 10x the number of rockets H fired. Also the first H/ rocket was towards mazerr3 Sheba (Lebanese occupied territory).

„With no warning, and without a sign of the impending slaughter, an entire residential block was brought down in central Beirut at 4 am. Floors and floors of sleeping bodies, all turned to dust by 4 hideous bombs.“

This was instantaneously my deepest fear as the news of the ICC arrest warrants came in. It is noticeable that as of January, at every move at the int'l justice level, there has been an immediate intensification of lethal violence against the Palestinians in Gaza. This also needs to be thorrougly investigated, Prosecutor @KarimKhanQC.

My favorite paper at #EMNLP2024: „OATH-Frame: a novel framework to understand, synthesize and characterize large-scale public attitudes towards societal issues through a collaboration between social work experts and LLM“ by @jaspreetranjit_ et al. dill-lab.github.io/oath-frames/

#EMNLP2024 Findings Improving Argument Effectiveness Across Ideologies using Instruction-tuned Large Language Models Roxanne El Baff, @khalid_ikh, Milad Alshomary, Kai Konen, Benno Stein, and Henning Wachsmuth 📜#elbaff_2024" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">webis.de/publications.h…

Amid ongoing conflict in Lebanon’s south and Beqaa Valley, Dr. Hélène Sader, professor of history and archaeology at AUB, warns that unexcavated heritage sites, housing significant Phoenician, Roman, and Ottoman artifacts, are at serious risk of destruction.​ @work/Pages/28/When-War-Threatens-Cultural-Heritage.aspx" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">aub.edu.lb/communications…

It is with great sadness that we learned today of the tragic death of Farah Mokdad, a first-year student in the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, who was the victim of an Israeli airstrike on her home in the Bekaa Valley. Farah was a bright, committed, and motivated student whose enthusiasm and dedication to her studies and community made a lasting impression on all those who knew her. Her absence will be deeply felt across our community.   We extend our sincerest condolences to Farah’s family, friends, and loved ones.