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By Kathy Kelly

Here at the United Nations in New York City, the Security Council is expected to vote on a resolution calling on all parties to respect an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

The slaughter in Gaza entraps and attacks the helpless, turning shelters into mass graves, erasing entire families, weaponizing nutrition and famine. The spiraling violence shrieks for our attention, screams for effective protection. Who will save innocent people from snipers, aerial attacks, tank-fired missiles, poisoned water, and starvation? The U.S. and many allies instead work to insulate Israel from accountability.

“Overcoming this cocoon of protection,” said international human rights lawyer and former UN official Craig Mokhiber, “requires solidarity between movements, unions, religious communities, and like-minded states working to isolate the Israeli regime and to impose economic, trade, travel, diplomatic, cultural, and other consequences to compel change.”

In NYC, on day fourteen of a Veterans For Peace and Allies Fast for Gaza, a former US Marine who helped initiate the fast, Phil Tottenham, urges us to care about Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian woman whose witness on behalf of Palestinians apparently led to her unjust imprisonment.

The current administration has slated her for deportation purely on the grounds that she criticised the government of a foreign country. Far from her home in New Jersey, she is trapped in a Texan county jail. Her plight makes me think of another prisoner, Ron Feiner, an IDF soldier who chose to face prison rather than continue attacking people in Gaza. “I’m horrified by the never-ending war in Gaza,” said Feiner, “by the abandonment of the hostages, by the continued killing of innocent people, and by the complete lack of political vision.” He is now on day nine of what could be a quite dangerous twenty-day sentence in an Israeli military prison.

The director of Gaza’s now-demolished Kamal Adwan Hospital, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, is suffering a longer and much more perious sentence at Israel’s grim Ofer Prison, where is work to heal the sick has seen him designated an “enemy combatant,” and where multiple, protracted beating sessions, – torture sessions really – have possibly cost him an eye

I think of pediatrician Dr. Alla al-Najjar, whose valuable work at the Nasser medical complex has cost her the lives of all but one of her ten children, as well as her husband, also an M.D. They were taken from her in a targeted strike on her home while she was at the hospital complex attempting to save other Gazan children. Now she continues her work, trying mightily to save 11 year old Adam, her only surviving child.

We must also note the appalling conditions of ordinary Palestinian prisoners, many of them held without charge. “They are subjected to a systematic campaign of abuse, starvation, and deliberate medical neglect,” said a recent Adameer report which goes on to describe “widespread arrest campaigns across cities, villages, and refugee camps, which have led to a massive increase in the number of prisoners and detainees.” Prisoners survive on minimal rations, and many endure brutal and life-threatening treatment.

Meanwhile, all of Gaza remains an open-air prison containing numerous centers where people, including children, are tortured by Israel’s starvation, siege and bombing.

None of this has been inflicted for the purposes of freeing the remaining hostages captured by Hamas and by the other armed groups who flooded into Israel on one day of rebellion, twenty months ago. The ceasefire agreed upon last November would, had Israel and the U.S. honored it, have provided for the release of all the hostages. But Prime Minister Netanyahu and his extremist collaborators would have lost their excuse for ethnically cleansing Gaza, and after that the West Bank.

In 1972, an iconic photo of Phan Thi Kim Phuk, “running naked, screaming in agony, her body burned by napalm dropped by the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese army,” became a catalyst which helped end the war in Viet Nam. Now, fifty years later, images of burning children in Gaza are relentless.

Recently, a video of five-year-old Ward Jalal al-Sheikh Khalil, her tiny body surrounded by flames, went viral. She and her family were sleeping in a school where forcibly displaced Palestinians had moved into classrooms and the courtyard. She survived Israel’s aerial attack, but her mother and five siblings did not. Her father remains in critical condition.

Life becomes limited when we accept that it must be a nightmare for the weak, when we confess that we are more addicted to comfort than we are to compassion – when the service of our appetites causes us to ignore the starving and those deliberately consigned to flames. We who fast might not succeed in our attempted “jailbreak” from this grim prison where we must watch the inmates die off one by one in the next ward over. But in whatever way you can, we urge you to join the attempt.

Kathy Kelly (kathy.vcnv@gmail.com) is board president of World BEYOND War. She joined the Veterans For Peace Fast for Gaza on May 22, 2025.

4 Jun 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Margaret Knapke

Many people, armed only with moral and political convictions, would be too intimidated to confront an army or navy directly. But not all.

Twelve nonviolent human-rights activists with the international Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) are currently sailing a small boat, the Madleen, to Gaza. They hope to create a humanitarian sea corridor through Israel’s illegal blockade. If all goes well, they should arrive this weekend, with “baby formula, flour, rice, diapers, women’s sanitary products, water desalination kits, medical supplies, crutches, and children’s prosthetics.”

They know the danger. Ten volunteers were killed by Israeli commandos when they boarded the Mavi Marmara in 2010. But, as Greta Thunberg said before she embarked last Sunday, “We are doing this because no matter what odds we are against, we have to keep trying, because the moment we stop trying is when we lose our humanity.”

How Palestinians See It

The history is important, and one does not have to approve of Hamas’ attack against Israeli civilians in October 2023 to understand that.

During the Nakba in 1948, at least 750,000 Palestinians were violently displaced from their homelands by Zionist paramilitaries and nascent Israeli forces. As Palestinian-Canadian Samah Al-Sabbagh recently told a crowd, those who survived that colonial onslaught left their “homes, land, olive groves, even the freshly baked bread.”

The occupation has never stopped, and now the violence is more high-tech and all-inclusive in its reach. In Gaza, bombs (largely supplied by the United States) have destroyed homes, apartment buildings, schools, universities, hospitals, mosques, churches, and more—leaving thousands buried under rubble. Adding to that nightmare, doctors report the intentional killing of children with high-velocity bullets that can destroy surrounding tissues and organs.

The death toll is staggering. As of May 27, 2025, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza reports that at least 54,056 people, including at least 17,400 children, have been confirmed as killed in Gaza since October 2023.

For those still living, Israel’s stranglehold on international humanitarian aid has created widespread malnutrition and starvation, with babies and children the most vulnerable. “One in five people in Gaza, about 500,000 people, faces starvation, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification platform said on May 12,” according to the UN. Indeed, the UN calls Gaza the “hungriest place on Earth.”

Israel and its fellow perpetrators, including the United States, refuse to take seriously the rulings by the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, much less the many human-rights groups decrying genocide, and less still the students and people in the streets making a ruckus for justice.

Perhaps the perpetrators think that ignoring the voice of the people will make it stop, that heartbroken people will give up their moral and legal agency. They should think again.

A Global Civil Society Initiative of Unarmed Civilians

Huwaida Arraf is a Palestinian-American lawyer and activist. She has worked with the International Solidarity Movement, the Free Gaza Movement, and more recently the FFC. Her rationale for sending small, unarmed boats in nonviolent direct actions against Israeli policy? “Our governments have failed. And so the people are taking action.”

Lawyers Arraf and Luigi Daniele assert that there is a strong legal basis for citizens taking action, as world governments ignore their “clear and urgent humanitarian obligations.”

In August 2008, the Free Gaza Movement successfully delivered aid to Gaza, using two small fishing boats named Liberty and Free Gaza. Participants included 44 activists from 17 countries, and they promised that they’d keep returning “until the siege on Gaza was broken.”

Included in the aid they brought were 200 pairs of hearing aids—far short of the 9,000 requested—because so many children were experiencing hearing loss as a result of Israel’s sonic booms.

Two years later, on May 31, 2010, the Israeli navy swarmed the Mavi Marmara. This ship was part of a larger flotilla, carrying nearly 700 people, which was attempting to deliver 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid to Gaza. The Israelis killed 10 activists—one died after being comatose for four years—and wounded fifty more.

Although the UN Human Rights Council declared the attack illegal—and despite Prime Minister Netanyahu’s apology to Turkey, whose citizens were killed—Israel continued its oppressive blockade.

Between 2010 and 2024, the FFC continued to challenge the siege. But “all ships were pirated by the IOF, and participants were assaulted, kidnapped, interrogated, imprisoned, and/or deported.” (“IOF” identifies the IDF as an occupation force.)

By May 2, 2025, the FFC had prepared their next attempt. The ship was named Conscience as an appeal to the world’s conscience. It was sitting in international waters near Malta, waiting for the volunteers to board and set out for Gaza. But the crew heard drones, and Conscience was struck by two explosives.

“The bombing was a deliberate act of aggression and intimidation,” the FFC wrote on their website. “Four crew members were injured, the ship was set ablaze, communications were severed, and the vessel was left adrift and taking on water. The attack occurred in European waters, in violation of international law.”

Madleen: Never Give Up

The activists say of the Madleen, “She may be small, but her mission is powerful: To break the silence. To challenge Israel’s illegal blockade through nonviolent direct action. To stand firmly and unapologetically, with Gaza.”

The Madleen set sail on June 1, one day after the fifteenth anniversary of the murderous assault on the Mavi Marmara. Activists gathered in Catania, Sicily, in preparation for their launch. The boat is named for Gaza’s first gender-role-defying fisherwoman; she personifies FFC’s steadfastness.

The ship’s namesake, Madleen, fell in love with the sea as a young child. When she was only 13 years old, she took over her injured father’s fishing boat and became the main breadwinner for her family. Although Madleen’s focus was on her family’s survival—not politics—she shared the fishermen’s encounters with Israeli patrols. She recounted, “They often directly attacked my boat. They stole my fishing nets more than once. The thing was that each time they attacked me, I would get a little stronger. I never gave up.”

Years later, she hopes her two daughters will become “two strong fisherwomen.”

May Madleen and the activists happily meet in Gaza this month. And may this stubbornly committed “civil society initiative of unarmed civilians” help the world see that legal and moral obligations are not overridden by governments’ corrupt colonial agendas.

To that end, the FFC asks that people raise their voices and contact the media and government officials to express support for breaking the siege against Gaza.

Readers can track the progress of  the Madleen in real time and explore ways to support the FFC’s work. They promise: “We sail until Palestine is free.”

Margaret Knapke is a longtime Latin America solidarity activist who is deeply inspired by the courage of environmentalists and human-rights defenders in the Global South.

5 Jun 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Jonathan Cook

Israel has been caught once again in a lie. For a genocidal state, there are no red lines. No one should be surprised that Israel is using its bogus ‘aid system’ to lure Palestinians into a death trap

It is entirely unsurprising that Israel has yet again been caught out in a lie – a lie that the BBC once again spread far and wide on its news services.

Israel claimed that it had not fired at starving Palestinians queueing on Sunday morning to get food from one of its highly militarised “aid distribution hubs” – a system Israel imposed on Gaza in place of a long-established and successful aid network run by the United Nations.

More than 30 Palestinians are known to have been killed and dozens more injured in the weekend incident.

Israel blamed Hamas fighters for shooting Palestinian civilians, saying they were trying to stop the crowds from taking food boxes. the Israeli military dished up a video, taken by one of its drones, as supposed proof.

The BBC broadcast that video on its main shows, and then did one of its standard “Israel said, the Palestinians said. Who can really know the truth?” reports of the incident.

The BBC should never have taken Israel’s disinformation seriously – not least because Israeli claims are always shown to be lies when subjected to any serious independent scrutiny. The default position should be that Israel is lying until it can demonstrate convincingly that it is not.

Doctors treating the dead and wounded immediately pointed out that their injuries were consistent with Israeli gunfire. The victims had single shots to the head or chest, in line with targeting by Israeli snipers. Others suffered shrapnel wounds from tank shells. Hamas has no tanks.

Now expert analysis of the video itself – paradoxically confirmed by BBC Verify – shows that the footage was filmed in Khan Younis, far from Rafah, where the Palestinians aid seekers were killed. It is also apparent from the shadows that the video was taken in the evening, not in the morning when the Palestinians in Rafah were shot.

Despite this, the BBC still writes: “The circumstances of this strike are unclear.”

No, it is entirely clear that the Israeli army disseminated lies, and that the BBC lapped up those lies and spread them to its audiences via its main news shows, before tentatively retracting the lies quietly on a live feed on its website.

The reality is that the video doesn’t show Hamas fighters shooting Palestinians to stop them getting aid. Rather it shows a criminal Palestinian gang – of the kind Israel has been cultivating and allying with – looting aid so that it can be sold back to Palestinians on the open market, where prices have been massively inflated by Israel’s blockade on food.

There are no police in Gaza maintaining law and order because Israel kills any Palestinian seen wearing a police uniform.

It was for these very reasons that international aid organisations refused to take part in Israel’s scheme. They understood it was never about distributing humanitarian aid because the UN was best placed to do that.

It was not even chiefly about weaponising aid to lure Palestinians into what are effectively Israeli military bases so that soldiers can use biometric data to snatch any Palestinians they want, disappearing them into Israel’s torture camps, as they have been doing.

Rather it is about giving the appearance of providing food – most of it useless because it is dried staples that need cooking, when there is almost no water or fuel available – while continuing to starve the vast majority of Palestinians. And it is about using the aid hubs as another front for killing Palestinians.

In other words, after taking the aid system out of the UN’s hands, Israel is successfully enfolding the so-called “humanitarian effort” into its genocide.

If that sounds too cynical, mark this. Israel again shot at crowds gathering on Tuesday morning to get aid from one of its “distribution hubs”, killing at least 27 Palestinians and wounding more than 180.

Several witnesses say there was no aid available when they arrived.

There is no way to be too cynical about what Israel is doing. Israel is utterly committed to its genocide – and a genocidal state has no red lines.

Jonathan Cook is a British independent journalist, who has covered issues of Palestine and Israel for much of his over 20-year career.

5 Jun 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Nauman Amin

This article examines the systematic starvation inflicted upon Gaza’s population following the events of October 2023. Beyond indiscriminate bombings and infrastructural devastation, Israel’s imposition of a “complete siege” amounts to a calculated policy of deprivation—weaponizing hunger, water, fuel, and medical supplies to collectively punish over two million people. The article situates this within the broader frameworks of apartheid, settler colonialism, and global imperial complicity, and argues that this is not a collateral consequence of war, but an intentional act of genocidal violence. Drawing from legal frameworks, global solidarity movements, and historical analogies, the piece contends that academic neutrality in such a context is a moral failure. The call is for engaged, intersectional resistance that challenges both the local manifestations and global enablers of such violence.

Since October 7, 2023, Gaza has endured more than shelling and urban devastation. It has been subjected to a meticulously engineered famine—a cessation of food, medicine, fuel, and water so absolute that it amounts to a weaponized starvation. “They are starving us as a method of warfare,” warned Human Rights Watch, documenting how entire neighborhoods were cut off from all supplies. This is neither collateral damage nor an unintended consequence; it is a deliberate strategy of collective punishment and genocide, rooted in an apartheid logic that has held Gaza under siege for two decades. Any neutral posture in the face of such atrocity is a moral failure. Israel’s blockade of Gaza is an atrocity, and opposing it must be the clarion call of every conscience committed to justice, liberation, and human dignity.

For twenty years, Gaza’s borders have been sealed, its skies surveilled, its economy strangled. Yet the post–October 2023 siege represents an escalation of historic proportions. Within hours of the October 7 attacks, Israel declared a “complete siege”: no imports, no exports, no electricity, no fuel. Power plants were starved of diesel; bakeries and flour mills—Gaza’s last sources of local grain—were bombed into ruin. “Not a switch will be flicked on,” vowed Energy Minister Katz, even as clean water ran out. Water treatment facilities collapsed for lack of pumps. Hospitals, already operating at the brink, became morgues of the malnourished, treating dehydration and starvation rather than wounds.

These measures were not the product of battlefield exigencies but of explicit policy. When Israeli Minister Ben Gavir proclaimed that “all humanitarian aid must stop,” they revealed an intent to weaponize deprivation. They signaled that Gaza’s civilian population would be held hostage—prisoners of hunger—until they submitted or perished. This is the logic of settler colonialism: control territory by any means necessary, displace or extinguish the indigenous, and render any form of viable life impossible.

Under international law, the deliberate starvation of civilians is a war crime and, when directed at a protected group, meets the threshold of genocide. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits “collective penalties” and the Rome Statute criminalizes the use of starvation as a method of warfare. Yet Gaza’s siege is textbook collective punishment: entire neighborhoods deprived of food, over two million people barred from sustenance, entire generations at risk of stunted growth or death. By spring 2025, at least 57 Palestinians—mostly children and the elderly—had already starved to death, succumbing to a protracted death by inches as their blood sugar plummeted and their organs failed. 90% of families in the north had spent at least over 24 hours without a single meal.

Even international aid officials have been unequivocal: former UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths warned recently that “what is going on in Gaza is weaponization of aid to create starvation and children are dying because of it”. There is no way to look at the aid blockade in any other way, Griffiths stressed, noting that even the small amount of aid being allowed in is designed to draw Gazans out of their homes on a one-way trip. This explicit denunciation by a veteran UN relief official underscores that starving Gaza’s population is a deliberate strategy, not a tragic accident.

This is not an unfortunate by-product of combat; it is a central component of Israel’s military doctrine toward Gaza. Airports and seaports remain closed; the Rafah crossing—the only potential lifeline—has been sealed or restricted at will. Aid convoys, when permitted, are delayed for days at checkpoints, their contents spoiled by heat or theft, then subjected to arbitrary “security inspections” that further erode their efficacy. Over 3,000 aid trucks now sit stranded on the border, with most basic supplies rotting in the sun. Even now, only about 100 aid trucks have been allowed into Gaza – a fraction of daily needs and “a drop in the ocean” compared to pre-war levels. Prime Minister Netanyahu even announced that displaced Gazans would receive aid “and then… they don’t necessarily go back” to their homes, explicitly tying life-saving food to forced displacement. Warehouse facilities have been struck, “accidentally,” creating a chilling deterrent against any remaining logistical cooperation.

The human suffering defies comprehension. Within weeks of the siege’s inception, the United Nations World Food Programme warned that nearly half of Gaza’s households faced “severe” hunger levels; by late 2024, food prices had spiked manyfold, and entire families scavenged for scraps. Hospitals have run out of pediatric nutritional supplements, and clinics have become triage centers for dehydration rather than trauma. Clean water, once a basic right, is now a luxury, with infectious diseases surging as Palestinians drink brackish, untreated runoff.

To understand Gaza’s engineered starvation, one must situate it within the broader architecture of Israeli apartheid and global imperialism. Gaza is a laboratory of enforced statelessness: no freedom of movement, no sovereignty, no access to basic resources. It relies on international aid—and yet that aid is strangled at the border, manipulated by political calculations in Tel Aviv and Washington. This current starvation policy can be traced back to January 2024, when Israel and the United States spearheaded the withdrawal of funding from UNRWA, cutting off critical food and schooling support for Gaza’s refugee population. U.S. military financing underwrites Israel’s blockade; European banks fund settlement infrastructure in the West Bank; arms manufacturers profit from perpetual conflict. Local acts of resistance—fishing boats shot at for venturing beyond limits, citrus groves bulldozed to expand buffer zones—are all tethered to the same imperial logic that deems Palestinians disposable.

Gaza’s starvation is not an isolated tragedy but a symptom of interlocking systems of oppression: settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and imperialism. The dispossession of Palestinian land parallels the expropriation of Indigenous territories in the Americas, the subjugation of African nations under colonial rule, and the exploitation of resources in the Global South. Solidarity with Gaza is thus inseparable from anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and ecological struggles worldwide.

Academic neutrality is untenable when genocide is underway. Scholarship divorced from activism sanitizes atrocity and shames its victims. An engaged, radical critique compels us to move from witness to resistance. This entails: immediate lifting of the siege, targeted sanctions & divestment, and intersectional solidarity.

Gaza’s manufactured starvation is a conscious act of war—a genocidal strategy cloaked in administrative decrees and “security” rhetoric. This is not a distant tragedy but a present atrocity, unfolding in real time. Neutral observers risk becoming complicit in genocide through silence and inaction. For scholars, activists, and citizens of conscience, there is no permissible neutrality: our research, teaching, writing, and protesting must cohere around a single moral imperative—dismantle the siege and restore Gaza’s right to life, dignity, and freedom.

When children die for lack of bread, when families bury their young in mass graves, when the international community pleads for “humanitarian corridors” that never materialize, history will judge us not by our objectivity but by our courage to confront injustice. Let us choose solidarity over silence and humanity over genocide. Any other stance is not merely inadequate—it is a betrayal of our common humanity.

Nauman Amin (numan.amin24@gmail.com) is a development practitioner working at the intersection of climate and livelihoods.

1 Jun 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ralph Nader

Opposition by former high officials in Israeli’s military and national security establishment and Israeli allies – France, England, and Germany—to the aimless killing of civilian families in Gaza is increasing. The mainstream, U.S. media has no excuse to cease its incomplete and biased reporting on the horrific genocidal mass slaughter in Gaza. Former Deputy Minister of Economy Yair Golan called out Netanyahu for “engaging in baby killing as a hobby.”

These denunciations fortify the long-standing documented condemnations by sixteen Israeli human rights groups, including “Breaking the Silence,” whose most recent report details how Israeli platoons in Gaza use Palestinians as “human shields.”

It is time to examine the shortcomings—some imposed and some self-inflicted—in the U.S. mass media’s coverage of an out-of-control brutal Israeli regime, weaponized and funded daily first by Biden and now by Trump.

1. Start with the vast undercount of deaths in Gaza (population 2.3 million) since October 7, 2023. Curiously, the media disbelieves Hamas claims, except for its Ministry of Health report of fatalities. Hamas, the elected government of Gaza, only reports the deaths that can be confirmed by name from hospitals, clinics, and mortuaries, most of which have been destroyed or gutted. So, day after day, newspapers dutifully reported Hamas’ fatality toll—now at 54,300.

Nobody in the academic community, UN, and international relief world believes this low number. Their unofficial estimates ranging from 250,000 to 500,000 deaths. Most of these groups readily agree that almost all the survivors of the deadly bombardments of civilians and their homes, markets, hospitals, and food, fuel and other emergency infrastructures, such as destroyed water mains and electric circuits, are either sick, injured, near death, and starving.

The media has no hesitation in estimating the number of Syrians killed during the civil war over the Assad dictatorship (500,000), or the number of Ukrainian deaths following Russia’s invasion. Somehow, they can’t see that Hamas has an interest in undercounting to avoid greater condemnations by its people for not protecting them. The media should put their reporters to work on documenting a more realistic death toll. At 500,000 fatalities, the intensity of political, diplomatic, and civic pressure is quite different than the fictional 54,300 figure.

2. Netanyahu’s ban on all independent journalists from entering Gaza, including U.S. and Israeli reporters, makes it difficult to get more facts and sources on the ground. The Israeli army has killed over 300 Palestinian journalists, some with their families. Some of their apartments were targeted by U.S.-made missiles. Last year, 75 major media organizations protested this exclusion in a full-page ad in the New York Times. Signers included the New York Times, Washington Post, and Associated Press. Their effort to cover the carnage in Gaza was to no avail. Bibi Biden would not back them up. The censorship continues under Trump.

However, these are powerful media outfits with reporters close by in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. They can do much more to get the gates to Gaza opened to tell the world the grim stories of the mass killing fields that are creating the risk of a wider Middle East War. Why the media does not press harder is itself an untold media story.

3. All this world-shaking violence started when, whether by colossal blunder or contrivance, Netanyahu’s ultra-modern border security apparatus collapsed in all its parts on October 7, 2023. He has tellingly blocked any official investigation. This is a story that must be probed until Netanyahu’s responsibility for enabling Hamas is exposed. Earlier he had bragged about supporting and helping to fund Hamas year after year because of Hamas’ opposition to a two-state solution.

Instead, absence of a full investigation allowed Netanyahu to turn his blunder into a U.S.-backed series of attacks against Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. As an elderly Nazi holocaust survivor told the New York Times after October 7th, “This should never have happened.”

4. The coverage of courageous Israeli human rights groups—including soldiers, rabbis and joint Israeli and Palestinian initiatives inside Israel—is very thin. The U.S. media has given vastly more coverage to disputed claims by Netanyahu et. al of mass rapes on October 7th, debunked by Israeli media scrutiny, then it gives these truthful strivers for peace. Why?

Moreover, what could possibly be the reason for the major U.S. newspapers completely ignoring the Veterans for Peace’s (VFP) constant street protests via its 100 Chapters in the U.S. including its present 40-Day Fast in communion with the starving Palestinian families in Gaza? Just this week, The Washington Post had a prominent two-page spread showing adopted dogs in Ukraine since the invasion.

5. The slant in coverage is on the other side as well. The immensely powerful “Israel government can do no wrong” domestic lobby, led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has escaped investigation or even an arm’s length deep feature in major newspapers. Yet in Congress, powerful AIPAC has a “minder” attached to every Senator and Representative and has sponsored primary challenges to lawmakers brave enough to mildly criticize it for being Netanyahu’s bullhorn. AIPAC won’t even support getting American reporters inside Gaza or allowing airlifts of horribly burned or amputated Gaza children to ready and able hospitals in the U.S.

The slant infects words used and words suppressed. The New York Times and CBS regularly refer to Hamas’ terrorism, but Netanyahu has killed vastly greater numbers of Palestinian civilians for political purposes, and that mass slaughter is referred to as “Israeli military operations.” In repeating day after day that 1200 Israelis were killed, the press does not say, as they do for Hamas, that Israel’s government does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. In fact, about 400 of the 1200 were Israeli soldiers and some police officers.

All this mass bloodshed is getting to former elected Israelis. This week in an op-ed in Haaretz, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accused Netanyahu of “war crimes” in Gaza. Look for many more members of Israel’s political and security establishment to start speaking out and protesting.

“What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians,” wrote Olmert. “We’re not doing this due to loss of control in any specific sector, not due to some disproportionate outburst by some soldiers in some unit. Rather, it’s the result of government policy—knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated. Yes, Israel is committing war crimes.”

Shockingly, Donald Trump is still afraid of Netanyahu who arrogantly broke the ceasefire Trump took credit for and thumbed his nose at Trump by doubling down on the deepening Palestinian Holocaust and ignoring Trump’s warnings about people starving in Gaza. Month after month, Netanyahu blocks thousands of trucks with humanitarian aid on Gaza’s borders paid for by American taxpayers.

Soon this pressure cooker will explode in ways either predicted by the Pentagon or unforeseen as a “Black Swan” event. The deadly impact of Israel’s war against a long-defeated small Hamas guerrilla force on our own country’s weakening democratic institutions —from freedom of speech to Congress—is reaching the awareness of ever more Americans.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and the author of “The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future” (2012).

1 Jun 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- Dr. Hamdi Al-Najjar, a Palestinian physician, has died from injuries he sustained when Israel bombed his family home in southern Khan Younis. His death comes days after the same attack killed nine of his ten children.

His wife, Dr. Alaa Al-Najjar, a pediatrician, had just left their home to resume her shift at Nasser Hospital when the Israeli missile hit. Moments earlier, Hamdi had returned home.

The airstrike wiped out nearly the entire family. Their nine children—Yahya, Rakan, Raslan, Gubran, Eve, Revan, Sadin, Luqman, and Sidra—were killed instantly.

Only one child, Adam, survived. He remains hospitalized with injuries.

Dr. Alaa, now a grieving mother and widow, was forced to identify her children’s burned bodies in the same hospital where she treats Gaza’s wounded.

Israel has repeatedly targeted Gaza’s medical community. Over the past 20 months, doctors, nurses, and emergency workers have been killed, kidnapped, or injured. Airstrikes have hit hospitals, clinics, and ambulances.

The Al-Najjar family tragedy has become a symbol of this systematic targeting.

International human rights organizations continue to call for independent investigations. But Gaza’s healthcare workers say they are running out of time—and colleagues.

1 Jun 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

Gaza (Quds News Network)- A senior doctor at Nasser Medical Complex says Gaza is facing a full-scale health disaster, especially among children, as Israeli attacks and siege continue.

“We receive a murdered child every 40 minutes. A killed woman every 60 minutes. And a dead person every 15 minutes,” said Dr. Ahmad Al-Farra, director of the pediatric department at Nasser Hospital, in an interview with Al Jazeera.

Dr. Al-Farra confirmed that Israeli authorities continue to block essential medical supplies, including vaccines and treatment for children.

“The occupation is preventing the entry of the rotavirus vaccine,” he said. “Our pediatric wards are full. We are overwhelmed with cases of severe diarrhea and gastroenteritis.”

Gaza’s medical infrastructure has collapsed under bombardment. According to Dr. Al-Farra, 75% of Gaza’s hospital bed capacity has been destroyed by Israeli airstrikes.

“No lactose-free milk. No therapeutic milk. No vaccines. And no medical aid has reached us so far,” he added.

Children in Gaza are now suffering from preventable diseases due to lack of vaccination. Thousands of babies are at risk of deadly infections. Malnutrition is growing, and clean water is scarce.

Israel’s genocide in Gaza has devastated the health system. Hospitals have been bombed. Ambulances destroyed. Medical workers killed, arrested, or forced to flee.

Doctors Without Borders, the WHO, and other agencies have repeatedly warned that Israel is systematically targeting Gaza’s healthcare system.

At least 493 healthcare workers have been killed since October 2023, according to the health ministry. Major hospitals in northern Gaza, like Al-Shifa and Kamal Adwan, were raided or bombed. In the south, Nasser Hospital now struggles to operate with limited resources and wounded staff.

1 Jun 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By middle east monitor

The Chairman of the International Committee for Breaking the Siege of Gaza, Zaher Birawi, said yesterday he expects Israeli forces to intercept the Freedom Flotilla ship before it arrives in the Gaza Strip.

Birawi expressed hope that the flotilla would receive international and popular protection and succeed in reaching Gaza to help end the blockade, which has been in place for 17 years.

The ship Madeleine, carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, set sail from the port of Catania on the Italian island of Sicily earlier yesterday. The voyage is expected to take seven days.

Madeleine is the 36th vessel launched by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition in its ongoing efforts to break the Israeli blockade on Gaza.

Israeli forces resumed their assault and tightened blockade on the Gaza Strip on 18 March, ending a two-month ceasefire that had come into effect on 19 January. However, Israel had violated the terms of the agreement throughout the truce period.

Since the start of the Israeli offensive on Gaza on 7 October 2023, backed fully by the United States, the Israeli military has continued its operations, resulting in more than 178,000 deaths and injuries, mostly among Palestinian women and children. Thousands remain missing, while hundreds of thousands have been displaced under extremely dire humanitarian conditions amid imminent famine.

The assault has also caused widespread destruction, including the demolition of homes, residential towers, hospitals, and much of the Strip’s infrastructure.

2 Jun 2025

Source: middleeastmonitor.com

By The New Arab Staff

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has revealed that at least 50,000 Palestinian children in Gaza have been killed or wounded since the start of Israel’s military assault in October 2023.

In a post on its official X account on Monday, the UN agency said that civilians, including children, humanitarian workers, medical staff, and journalists, continue to be killed and injured in Gaza amid Israel’s indiscriminate offensive.

UNRWA’s statement comes as Israel’s army chief, Herzi Halevi, ordered an expansion of military operations in northern and southern parts of the enclave. According to an Israeli military statement, the aim was to “create conditions for the return of hostages and defeat Hamas”, though rights groups warn that the operations were contributing to mass civilian casualties and widespread devastation.

The military also claimed it would set up new distribution centres for humanitarian aid – an effort international organisations have dismissed as ineffective and exclusionary.

Israel has closed border crossings to humanitarian aid for more than 90 days, deliberately pushing 2.4 million people toward famine. A new Israeli- and US-backed aid mechanism launched last month, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, has also come under fire.

UN bodies have cast doubt on the group’s legitimacy, and its operations in so-called “safe zones” in southern Gaza have repeatedly ended in chaos, including deadly shootings by Israeli forces at distribution points.

On Sunday, Israeli forces opened fire on crowds waiting for aid in Rafah, killing 32 Palestinians and wounding over 250, according to Gaza’s media office.

On Sunday afternoon, artillery fire killed three Palestinians, including a disabled child, and wounded over 20 in the al-Mawasi area west of Khan Younis. Other strikes destroyed a kidney dialysis clinic in the north and hit areas near the al-Dhabit junction in central Gaza.

The health ministry said 37 Palestinians were killed in the last 24 hours, with 136 injured. Many more remain trapped under rubble or in inaccessible areas as rescue teams struggle to reach them.

Beyond the physical toll, Gaza is witnessing a mental health emergency, particularly among children. A recent study by the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme found that 70 percent of displaced children show symptoms of PTSD, anxiety, and depression.

Ten-year-old Lana Khalil Sharif, from Khan Younis, developed vitiligo and premature greying of her hair after surviving a nearby airstrike. Her mother told The New Arab’s Arabic language edition that doctors linked her condition to severe trauma. The girl has since become socially withdrawn and refuses to go outside.

In another case, six-year-old Malak Ahmed, who was born with autism, lost her father in an Israeli strike on Nuseirat. She has since developed serious health complications and now requires treatment unavailable in Gaza.

Children who survive attacks are increasingly left orphaned and emotionally scarred. Jude Abu Saleh, four, lost both parents in a bombing and now suffers from frequent nightmares, panic attacks, and extreme separation anxiety, according to his aunt, who is now his guardian.

Doctors are also reporting unexplained illnesses among children, including cases like 10-year-old Rahaf Ayad, whose hair and weight have dramatically declined, leaving her skeletal and immobile. Her condition has baffled local doctors, who say the lack of medical infrastructure prevents proper diagnosis.

The war has rendered Gaza’s healthcare system nearly inoperable. Israel has destroyed 38 public hospitals, shut down 81 health centres, and disabled over 160 clinics. Since March, no medical supplies, fuel, or food have been allowed through border crossings, creating a catastrophic humanitarian crisis.

Dr Amal Abu Abada, head of community centres at the Gaza Mental Health Programme, told The New Arab that chronic fear and repeated trauma were driving serious psychological and physiological conditions in children.

“The more the fear grows, the worse the health becomes,” she said.

2 Jun 2025

Source: newarab.com

Athens /PNN /

Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of the Greek capital on Saturday in a show of solidarity with the Palestinian people and in protest against Israel’s ongoing military campaign in the Gaza Strip.

The march, organized by Greece’s largest labor union, the All-Workers Militant Front (PAME), stretched over 2.5 kilometers from central Athens to the Israeli Embassy.

Protesters waved Palestinian flags and held banners condemning what they described as a campaign of genocide against Gaza, chanting slogans in support of Palestinian freedom and independence.

Participants included a wide cross-section of Greek and Arab activists, members of the Palestinian community in Greece, and international supporters. One of the most moving moments of the march came when Arjwan Al-Farra, a young Palestinian girl wounded in Gaza, recited lines from Mahmoud Darwish’s famous poem “On This Land.”

Mohammad Eqneibi, head of the General Union of Palestinian Workers in Greece, delivered a speech, highlighting the urgent need for global solidarity in the face of ongoing violence and displacement.

Palestinian Ambassador to Greece Yussef Dorkhom expressed his gratitude to the protesters for their continued support.“Together, with unwavering determination, we will bring an end to this brutal assault,” he said.

31 May 2025

Source: english.pnn.ps