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Why has Donald Trump not spoken out about the famine in Gaza? – Inside Story

26 Aug 2025 Al Jazeera

A global hunger monitor, backed by the United Nations, has declared famine in Gaza City and the surrounding areas. The confirmation that Israel has engineered a man-made catastrophe prompted outrage from many nations, with a notable exception.

Neither the White House nor the US State Department has uttered a word in response. While Israel says it’s ‘an outright lie’, how much longer can the US remain silent? Is that silence an implicit go-ahead for the Israeli military’s large-scale assault on Gaza City and the drip-feeding of aid?

August 27, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, USA | Leave a comment

Eighteen Palestinians Starve to Death in Gaza Over Three Days Due to Israeli Siege

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) has confirmed that famine is taking place in Gaza City.

by Dave DeCamp | August 24, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/08/24/eighteen-palestinians-starve-to-death-in-gaza-over-three-days-due-to-israeli-siege/

Gaza hospitals have recorded 18 more malnutrition deaths in Gaza over the past three days, according to press releases from Gaza’s Health Ministry, as Palestinians continue to starve due to the US-backed Israeli siege.

In its latest release on Sunday, the Health Ministry said at least eight Palestinians, including one child, had starved to death over the previous 24-hour period. “This brings the total number of victims of famine and malnutrition to 289, including 115 children,” the ministry said.

On Friday, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) confirmed that famine was taking place in the Gaza Governorate, which includes Gaza City and nearby towns, and that more than 500,000 people in the area were facing “catastrophic conditions characterised by starvation, destitution and death.”

The IPC said that conditions are expected to worsen and that between mid-August and the end of September, famine is expected spread to Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, and Khan Younis in the south.

The Israeli government and its supporters are denying that famine is occurring, pointing to the fact that many children suffering from severe malnutrition had pre-existing medical conditions. But the most vulnerable are always the first to be impacted when famine sets in, and there have been many cases recorded of people suffering from severe malnutrition who have no pre-existing conditions.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a report on August 21 based on virtual tours of hospitals and health centers in Gaza that examined the cases of 27 children and found that 17 of them “deteriorated into a state of severe malnutrition without preexisting health conditions” while 10 suffered from previous illnesses.

“Based on our conversations, a simple fact emerged: Anyone who claims that the images of starvation in the Strip are a result of acute genetic or other diseases, and not due to a grave shortage of food, are lying to themselves,” the report said.

The IPC said that in order to prevent further catastrophe, there must be an immediate ceasefire and the lifting of all restrictions on aid entering Gaza. But Israel is planning a major escalation to take over Gaza City, and President Trump, who has the power to stop the genocidal war by cutting off weapons shipments to Israel, has signaled he’ll back whatever the Israeli government chooses to do.

August 27, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Only Liars And Manipulators Say Gaza Isn’t Starving.

Caitlin Johnstone, Aug 24, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/only-liars-and-manipulators-say-gaza?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=171779133&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Israeli news outlet Haaretz has published a harrowing report on starvation in Gaza which further discredits the Israeli narrative that the photos of skeletal children we’ve been seeing are antisemitic Hamas propaganda, for anyone who’s still clinging to delusions about such things.

Haaretz reporters were taken by doctors on video tours of hospitals in Gaza, conducting interviews with numerous medical personnel and obtaining many photos of civilians showing signs of extreme starvation. Throughout the report we encounter story after story of severely emaciated children, mothers unable to breastfeed starving babies because of their own starvation, people with preexisting conditions severely exacerbated by malnutrition, diseases spreading due to crippled healthcare infrastructure and ruined immune systems, and wounds failing to heal due to inadequate food intake.

The article is one of the more uncomfortable things I’ve seen throughout the entirety of this genocide, and that’s saying something.

“What we saw there left no room for doubt about the scale of the horror,” write Haaretz reporters Yarden Michaeli and Nir Hasson.

“Seventeen youngsters had deteriorated into a state of severe malnutrition without preexisting health conditions; 10 suffered from previous illnesses,” they write, saying “Anyone who claims that the images of starvation in the Gaza Strip are a result of acute genetic or other diseases, and not due to a grave shortage of food, are lying to themselves.”

This comes as the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) formally declares that the people of Gaza are suffering from a famine that “is entirely man-made”, which must be halted and reversed with extreme urgency.

Israel has of course denounced the IPC’s findings as antisemitic Hamas propaganda, with the Israeli Foreign Ministry saying that “The entire IPC document is based on Hamas lies laundered through organizations with vested interests,” and Benjamin Netanyahu branding the report “a modern blood libel, spreading like wildfire through prejudice.”

You might find this response ridiculous, and of course it is, but really, what else does Israel have left? When all major human rights institutions are accusing you of horrific crimes, your only options are either (A) admit the obvious fact that there’s no way every single mainstream humanitarian organization is lying about your actions, or (B) claim that they’re all in on a giant globe-spanning conspiracy because of a nefarious prejudice against your religion.

Of course they’re going to go with (B). This is Israel we’re talking about, after all.

When a nation keeps having to publish denials that it is intentionally starving civilians, you can safely assume it’s because that nation is intentionally starving civilians. If you saw someone on social media loudly denying the latest allegations that they are a child molester over and over again for two years, you probably wouldn’t let them babysit your kids.

I have never once felt the need to publish a denial that I am intentionally starving people, because I have never intentionally starved anyone. It’s not something I’ve ever found myself needing to say even one time, let alone many many times constantly.

You don’t see the government of Ireland constantly denying that Ireland is intentionally starving civilians, because Ireland is not intentionally starving civilians.

You don’t see pro-China spinmeisters frantically churning out propaganda denying that China is intentionally starving civilians, because China is not intentionally starving civilians.

You don’t see Brazilian internet trolls aggressively swarming the comments of anyone who says Brazil is intentionally starving civilians, because Brazil is not intentionally starving civilians.

You don’t see the Pakistani government paying social media influencers to assert on their platforms that Pakistan is not intentionally starving civilians, because Pakistan is not intentionally starving civilians.

You see an intense campaign of narrative management aimed at denying that Israel has been intentionally starving civilians because Israel is intentionally starving civilians. That’s why all the constant government denials, the endless propaganda and spin pieces and PR stunts, and relentless online trolling operations have been necessary.

Most Israel apologia at this point is just people pretending to believe things they don’t really believe. Palestinians aren’t really being starved. Gaza looks like a gravel parking lot because Hamas put explosives in all the buildings. The IDF has a low civilian-to-combatant kill ratio. Gaza’s entire healthcare infrastructure was destroyed because Hamas was hiding under all the hospitals. Nobody actually believes these things. They’re just pretending to believe them in order to justify genocidal atrocities and help ensure that they continue.

They’re really the worst people in the world.

August 26, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Famine Officially Declared in Gaza After 2 Years of Near-Total Israeli Blockade.


“Worst fears being realised”: aid workers in Gaza react to famine declaration | The World | ABC NEWS

“As this Famine is entirely man-made, it can be halted and reversed. The time for debate and hesitation has passed, starvation is present and is rapidly spreading. There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that an immediate, at-scale response is needed,”

Starvation is a critical part of Israel’s goal of inflicting conditions designed to bring about Palestinians’ physical destruction, as Amnesty International wrote earlier this month — and a key element of Israel’s genocide.

Since its establishment in 2004, the UN-backed IPC has only officially declared five famines.

By Sharon Zhang , Truthout, August 22, 2025, https://truthout.org/articles/famine-officially-declared-in-gaza-after-2-years-of-near-total-israeli-blockade/

The world’s leading food insecurity authority has officially declared famine in Gaza, after officials finally determined that Israel’s almost two year long, near-total blockade on the 2 million Palestinians in the Strip has created conditions so horrific they surpass those needed for a famine declaration.

The UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) confirmed that famine is occurring in Gaza in a report on Friday.

“As of 15 August 2025, Famine (IPC Phase 5) — with reasonable evidence – is confirmed in Gaza Governorate,” the group said, referring to the region of Gaza encompassing Gaza City and surrounding areas. The experts said famine conditions are expected to spread to the areas of Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis by the end of September, barring a complete cessation of Israel and the U.S.’s starvation campaign.

The group said that over half a million Palestinians are facing Phase 5 food insecurity, which is the group’s most dire classification, of “catastrophe” or “famine.” About 1.1 million Palestinians, roughly half the population, are experiencing Phase 4 “emergency” levels of hunger, while the remaining population of roughly 200,000 are experiencing a food “crisis,” of Phase 3.

Israel’s famine “is a man-made disaster, a moral indictment — and a failure of humanity itself,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “Famine is not about food; it is the deliberate collapse of the systems needed for human survival.”

Experts have long pointed out that conditions must be extremely dire for the IPC to classify a famine, as the group can only do so in response to escalated mortality and starvation rates. For months, Palestinians have pleaded for the entry of food, and humanitarian groups have warned of famine. But instead of allowing more aid, Israel and the U.S. came up with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) scheme that made getting food a death trap.

An official famine declaration is distinct from a Phase 5 classification. In order for the IPC to declare a famine, three criteria must be met. A fifth of the households in the area must be facing an “extreme lack of food”; 30 percent of children must be suffering from acute malnutrition; and the mortality rate for non-trauma deaths must be two adults per 10,000, or four children per 10,000 daily. The child malnutrition condition may also be met when 15 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition as measured by the circumference of their arms.

The IPC has only declared a famine five times since it was established in 2004; once in Somalia, twice in South Sudan, and once in Sudan last year. The declaration in Gaza marks the first time it has ever been declared outside of the continent of Africa.

IPC noted that many of the elements of the famine in Gaza are unprecedented.

“Never before has the [Famine Review Committee] had to return so many times to the same crisis; a stark reflection of how suffering has not only persisted but intensified and spread until famine has begun to emerge,” the group wrote in its report.

“As this Famine is entirely man-made, it can be halted and reversed. The time for debate and hesitation has passed, starvation is present and is rapidly spreading. There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that an immediate, at-scale response is needed,” it went on.

Israel has escalated its starvation campaign in recent months, implementing a total aid blockade for nearly three months starting in March, then pivoting to the GHF scheme where Israel rounds up Palestinians into distribution sites just to massacre them on a near-daily basis.

Gaza health officials have recorded nearly 300 deaths, including over 100 children, to starvation amid the genocide, most of them in recent weeks; the health ministry reported that two people had died in the past 24 hours in Gaza on Friday. IPC’s report notes that these deaths are likely underreported due to Israel’s destruction of monitoring and health systems.

Israeli officials and their propaganda network have denied that there is starvation in Gaza at all. These claims have been thoroughly debunked not just by humanitarian experts, but also, perhaps more importantly, by Palestinians in Gaza who say that famine and starvation is all around them, stalking everyone, adult or child.

Starvation is a critical part of Israel’s goal of inflicting conditions designed to bring about Palestinians’ physical destruction, as Amnesty International wrote earlier this month — and a key element of Israel’s genocide.

“In Gaza, survival has been redefined. It is no longer just about fleeing bombs — it is about keeping ourselves from dying of hunger. The echoing question — ‘Where do we go?’ — has now been compounded by another, more desperate one: ‘What can we eat so we don’t collapse?’” wrote Palestinian Hend Salama Abo Helow this month.

As the occupying power exercising total control of everything that enters and exits Gaza, Israel has long deprived Palestinians of food and other basic needs in the Strip. For decades, humanitarian groups have warned of widespread food insecurity in Gaza, as well as shortages of water and other human needs as a result of Israel’s blockades.

August 26, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Chris Hedges: Israel’s Assassination of Memory

 This is Kabuki theater — a way, when the genocide is over, for these Western leaders to insist they stood on the right side of history, even as they armed and funded the genocidal killers, while harassing, silencing or criminalizing those who decried the slaughter.

August 23, 2025, By Chris Hedges ScheerPost, https://scheerpost.com/2025/08/23/chris-hedges-israels-assassination-of-memory/

As Israel ticks off its list of Nazi-like atrocities against the Palestinians, including mass starvation, it prepares for yet another – the demolition of Gaza City, one of the oldest cities on Earth. Heavy engineering equipment and gigantic armored bulldozers are tearing down hundreds of heavily damaged buildings. Cement trucks are churning out concrete to fill tunnels. Israeli tanks and fighter jets pummel neighborhoods to drive Palestinians who remain in the ruins of the city to the south.

It will take months to turn Gaza City into a parking lot. I have no doubt Israel will replicate the efficiency of the Nazi SS Gen. Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, who oversaw the obliteration of Warsaw. He spent his final years in a prison cell. May history, at least in terms of this footnote, repeat itself.

As Israeli tanks advance, Palestinians are fleeing, with neighborhoods such as Sabra and Tuffah, cleansed of its inhabitants. There is little clean water and Israel plans to cut it off in northern Gaza. Food supplies are scarce or wildly overpriced. A bag of flour costs $22.00 a kilo, or your life. A report published Friday by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classifications (IPC) , the world’s leading authority on food insecurity, for the first time has confirmed a famine in Gaza City. It says more than 500,000 people in Gaza are facing “starvation, destitution and death”, with “catastrophic conditions” projected to expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis next month. Nearly 300 people, including 112 children, have died from starvation.

European leaders, along with Joe Biden and Donald Trump, remind us of the real lesson of the Holocaust. It is not Never Again, but, We Do not Care. They are full partners in the genocide. Some wring their hands and say they are “appalled” or “saddened.” Some decry Israel’s orchestrated starvation. A few say they will declare a Palestinian state.

This is Kabuki theater — a way, when the genocide is over, for these Western leaders to insist they stood on the right side of history, even as they armed and funded the genocidal killers, while harassing, silencing or criminalizing those who decried the slaughter.

Israel speaks of occupying Gaza City. But this is a subterfuge. Gaza is not to be occupied. It is to be destroyed. Erased. Wiped off the face of the earth. There is to be nothing left but tons of debris that will be laboriously carted away. The moonscape, devoid of Palestinians of course, will provide the foundation for new Jewish colonies.

“Gaza will be entirely destroyed, civilians will be sent to…the south to a humanitarian zone without Hamas or terrorism, and from there they will start to leave in great numbers to third countries,” Israel’s Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich announced at a conference on increased Jewish settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

All that was familiar to me when I lived in Gaza no longer exists. My office in the center of Gaza City. The Marna boarding house on Ahmed Abd el Aziz Street, where after a day’s work I would drink tea with the elderly woman who owned it, a refugee from Safad in northern Galilee. The coffee shops I frequented. The small cafes on the beach. Friends and colleagues, with few exceptions, are in exile, dead or, in most cases, have vanished, no doubt buried under mountains of debris. On my last visit to Marna House, I forgot to return the room key. Number 12. It was attached to a large plastic oval with the words “Marna House Gaza” on it. The key sits on my desk.

The imposing Qasr al-Basha fortress in Gaza’s Old City — built by Mamluk Sultan Baibars in the 13th century and known for its relief sculpture of two lions facing each other — is gone. So too is the Barquq Castle, or Qalʿat Barqūqa, a Mamluk-era fortified mosque constructed in 1387-1388, according to an inscription above the entrance gateway. Its ornate Arabic calligraphy by the main gate once read:

“In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, Most Merciful. The mosques of God shall establish regular prayers, and practice regular charity, and fear none except God.”

The Great Omari Mosque in Gaza City, the ancient Roman cemetery and the Commonwealth War Cemetery — where more than 3,000 British and commonwealth soldiers from World War I and World War II are buried — have been bombed, and destroyed, along with universities, archives, hospitals, mosques, churches, homes and apartment blocks. Anthedon Harbor, which dates to 1100 B.C. and once provided anchorage for Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman ships, lies in ruins.

I used to leave my shoes on a rack by the front door of the Great Omari Mosque, the largest and oldest mosque in Gaza, in the Daraj Quarter of the Old City. I washed my hands, face and feet at the common water taps, carrying out the ritual purification before prayer, known as wudhu. Inside the hushed interior with its blue-carpeted floor, the cacophony, noise, dust, fumes and frenetic pace of Gaza melted away.

The razing of Gaza is not only a crime against the Palestinian people. It is a crime against our cultural and historical heritage — an assault on memory. We cannot understand the present, especially when reporting on Palestinians and Israelis, if we do not understand the past.

History is a mortal threat to Israel. It exposes the violent imposition of a European colony in the Arab world. It reveals the ruthless campaign to de-Arabize an Arab country. It underscores the inherent racism towards Arabs, their culture and their traditions. It challenges the myth that, as former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak said, Zionists created, “a villa in the middle of a jungle.” It mocks the lie that Palestine is exclusively a Jewish homeland. It recalls centuries of Palestinian presence. And it highlights the alien culture of Zionism, implanted on stolen land.

When I covered the genocide in Bosnia, the Serbs blew up mosques, carted away the remains and forbade anyone to speak of the structures they had razed. The goal in Gaza is the same, to wipe out the past and replace it with myth, to mask Israeli crimes, including genocide.

The campaign of erasure banishes intellectual inquiry and stymies the dispassionate examination of history. It celebrates magical thinking. It allows Israelis to pretend the inherent violence that lies at the heart of the Zionist project, going back to the dispossession of Palestinian land in the 1920s and the larger campaigns of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948 and 1967, does not exist.

The Israeli government bans public commemorations of the Nakba, or catastrophe, a day of mourning for Palestinians who seek to remember the massacres and expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians carried out by Jewish terrorist militias in 1948 for this reason. Palestinians are even prevented from carrying their flag.

This denial of historical truth and historical identity permits Israelis to wallow in eternal victimhood. It sustains a morally blind nostalgia for an invented past. If Israelis confront these lies it threatens an existential crisis. It forces them to rethink who they are. Most prefer the comfort of illusion. The desire to believe is more powerful than the desire to see.

Erasure calcifies a society. It shuts down investigations by academics, journalists, historians, artists and intellectuals who seek to explore and examine the past and the present. Calcified societies wage a constant war against truth. Lies and dissimulation must be constantly renewed. Truth is dangerous. Once it is established it is indestructible.

As long as truth is hidden, as long as those who seek truth are silenced, it is impossible for a society to regenerate and reform itself. The Trump administration is in lock step with Israel. It too seeks to prioritize myth over reality. It too silences those who challenge the lies of the past and the lies of the present.

Calcified societies cannot communicate with anyone outside their incestious circles. They deny verifiable fact, the foundation on which rational dialogue takes place. This understanding lay at the heart of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Those who carried out the atrocities of the apartheid regime confessed their crimes in exchange for immunity. By doing so they gave the victims and the victimizers a common language, one rooted in historical truth. Only then was healing possible.

Israel is not only destroying Gaza. It is destroying itself.

August 25, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, culture and arts, Gaza, history, Israel | Leave a comment

Never Forget The Lies They Told About Gaza. Never Forgive Them.

Caitlin Johnstone, Aug 24, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/never-forget-the-lies-they-told-about?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=171797262&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

A joint investigation by The Guardian and +972 Magazine found that the IDF’s own records show that civilians make up at least 83 percent of those killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza. The report notes that the real number is likely significantly higher, since the number given doesn’t include the thousands upon thousands of dead civilians who are still unaccounted for in Gaza because they are trapped under the rubble, or those killed by indirect means such as starvation or disease.

The pro-Israel spin machine frantically tried to discredit this report as soon as it came out, but their arguments have been soundly debunked.

They claimed that Israel has a phenomenally low civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio, then Israel’s own data proved that civilians comprise the vast majority of those killed by the IDF.

They denied that Israel is starving Gaza, then the IPC came out with a report saying that Israel is starving Gaza.

They tried to claim that the skeletal children we’re seeing in Gaza looked that way because of pre-existing conditions, then the Israeli press published an extensive report showing that children with no pre-existing conditions are being starved.

They tried to deny that Israeli soldiers were massacring civilians at aid sites, then the Israeli soldiers themselves told the Israeli press that they were being ordered to massacre civilians at aid sites.

Never forget all the monsters who tried to gaslight you and convince you that you are crazy and hateful for saying these things are happening. Never, ever forgive them.

The IDF has admitted to uprooting thousands of olive trees in the West Bank on Thursday. The routine destruction of Palestinian olive trees is not the most shocking or evil thing that Israel does to the Palestinians, but it does speak to what its true intentions are in a unique way.

Similar to the way white people killed off all the bison to help eliminate the American Indians, killing olive trees deprives Palestinians of an important means of earning a living, and strikes at an important aspect of Palestinian identity and culture.

Olive trees can live for thousands of years; people with a strong attachment to the land treasure and protect them, while the Israelis who claim to be “indigenous” to the area are destroying them and replacing them with highly flammable foreign plants. You can tell who the actual indigenous population is by watching their behavior.

Normal person: Genocide is bad

Crazy person: Woah hey, let’s not get political

Right wingers are like “No no you don’t understand, Israel is protecting western civilization. If we don’t help Israel genocide the Palestinians and starve their children and burn their babies and bomb their hospitals and demolish their cities, one day we could wind up ruled by evil murderous savages.”

Normal person: Oh no those people over there are committing genocide!

Crazy person: Okay but what religion are they?

The way Zionists talk about Palestinian hatred of Jews you’d think the Palestinians immigrated to Israel from somewhere else in 1948 in order to attack Jewish people.

In 1937, Winston Churchill stated the following while arguing in favor of allowing Jews to settle in Palestine:

“I do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to those people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, or, at any rate, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place. I do not admit it. I do not think the Red Indians had any right to say, The American Continent belongs to us and we are not going to have any of these European settlers coming in here. They had not the right, nor had they the power.”

Churchill knew exactly what he was looking at in the Zionist agenda to colonize Palestine. There was no confusion whatsoever. It wasn’t until much later that history was revised through propaganda to spin this as something other than the western settler-colonialist project that it has always been.

The other day I wrote the following in a rant about religious Zionists:

“Someone like Mike Huckabee is never telling the truth or saying what he really thinks is going on when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians, he’s just making whatever mouth noises he needs to make to help fulfill a Biblical prophecy and secure his eternal reward. Such people have no place in the conversation. They should be completely excluded from the debate, because they are not actually participating in it. They’re just lying and manipulating for reasons that have nothing to do with truth or morality.”

The very next day, Antiwar published an article titled “Mike Huckabee Claims Israeli Settlements in the Occupied West Bank Are Not Illegal Under International Law”.

Like I said. Huckabee does not believe this obvious falsehood, he’s just saying whatever words he needs to say to help advance the agendas of his weird Christian cult. These freaks consider themselves so pious and righteous, but in reality they are some of the most conniving, unethical deceivers our world has ever seen.

It just occurred to me that at some point in the future they’re going to try to demand that we condemn whatever radicalized groups and militias wind up emerging as a result of the Gaza genocide.

That’s gonna be cute.

August 25, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Children at gravest risk as full-fledged famine unfolds in Gaza

23 August 2025 AIMN Editorial, Plan International Australia , https://theaimn.net/children-at-gravest-risk-as-full-fledged-famine-unfolds-in-gaza/

As famine grips Gaza, putting over a million children at risk, Plan International is demanding a ceasefire and unrestricted humanitarian access.

Famine has taken hold in Gaza Governorate and will expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis without urgent action, according to a new report from the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) published today, Friday 22 August.

Preventable catastrophe

Responding to the IPC’s latest report, Dr. Unni Krishnan, Global Humanitarian Director at Plan International said:

“The fatal consequences of Israel’s weaponisation of hunger and blocking of humanitarian aid are devastatingly clear for all to see. No conflict should ever reach this point. What we are seeing in Gaza today is an entirely man-made and preventable catastrophe that is leaving more than a million Palestinian children – and 2.2 million people in total – struggling to stay alive.

Famine in Gaza is not a failure of logistics or aid – it is the outcome of brutal war and deliberate starvation.”

Dr. Unni Krishnan, Global Humanitarian Director at Plan International:

“Plan International has recently managed to deliver urgently needed aid into Gaza, but far more is needed. The continued illegal blockade of life-saving supplies means children and families are being condemned to die, painfully and needlessly.

Profound impact on generation of children

“Children in Gaza are not only being starved, they are also being maimed and permanently disabled in staggering numbers due to the Israeli army’s excessive use of force and newly intensified military campaign. Since the escalation of conflict in Gaza, disabilities have risen by 60% and Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees in the world. Hunger, injury and forced displacement into militarised zones are all highly traumatic events and will have a profound impact on an entire generation of children.

“The world cannot look away. Every hour lost costs more lives. Famine in Gaza is not a failure of logistics or aid – it is the outcome of brutal war and deliberate starvation. We demand – without delay – an immediate and sustained ceasefire, a complete halt to arms transfers to Israel, and the full lifting of Israel’s illegal blockade on humanitarian aid. This must include safe and unrestricted humanitarian access, so that we can reach more children and families with food and the basics needed for survival.”

August 24, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

The Trump Administration’s Halt on Medical Evacuations From Gaza Is a Death Sentence for Palestinian Children

 August 21, 2025 , By Bilal Irfan and Alyssa Seliga / Mondoweiss, https://mondoweiss.net/2025/08/the-trump-administrations-halt-on-medical-evacuations-from-gaza-is-a-death-sentence-for-palestinian-children/

The Trump administration’s decision to halt all visitor visas for Palestinians from Gaza, which came after pressure from right-wing activists, will be a death sentence for children who require life-saving medical treatment.

The U.S. State Department’s decision this weekend to halt all visitor visas for people from Gaza, which includes the medical-humanitarian visas that have brought injured children to American hospitals, will cost Palestinian lives. Officials say this process will be subject to a “full and thorough review”. For a child with infected burns or a deep trauma wound, a pause is a verdict on their life. The freeze did not arise from new intelligence or any novel identification of problems in the temporary visitor visa pathway. It followed a social-media panic with the circulation of mischaracterized videos of injured children arriving under the care of a U.S. nonprofit being labeled as a “security threat,” rhetoric amplified by political allies. The State Department then announced it was stopping visas while it re-examines procedures.

The racism and misinformation at the heart of that panic deserve naming. Some have labeled the process of evacuating children with amputations and burns as being potentially linked to terrorism and even characterized their joyful cries as “jihadi chants.” That is textbook dehumanization: take a population of wounded kids and code them as a threat to justify exclusion. Many have commented on the chain reaction from such posts to the administrative action. The line from a viral smear to a federal policy that blocks chemotherapy, skin grafts, or prosthetics for children should shame us, and the speed with which it occurred. 


It also wildly overstates the scale of what has actually happened. In total, many of the NGOs running these U.S. transfers report a few dozen total children to date, not a “flood”. Individual city stories have been about twos and threes: a pair treated in Dallas; several children welcomed in Boston. This is the opposite of a large-scale pipeline; it’s a narrow, highly vetted corridor that exists because Gaza’s health system has been shattered.

To understand how few make it here, you have to understand the pathway. First, a physician in Gaza refers a child for care that no longer exists at home. The case goes to a Ministry of Health committee, then to the World Health Organization (WHO) for medical triage. Only after a receiving hospital issues a formal acceptance, often after weeks of back-and-forth with surgeons, translated records, and imaging, does the family usually even begin the paper chase: passports, exit permissions from the Israeli military’s Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Jordanian clearances when the bridge route is used, U.S. visa appointments, and finally a WHO-escorted convoy. Each step is a separate queue with its own failures and reversals; a single “not yet” in any queue can kill the case. 

The numbers give us a picture of why this corridor matters. According to WHO and OCHA, as of mid-August more than 14,800 people in Gaza need urgent medical evacuation outside the Strip. Since October 2023, about 7,560 patients, including roughly 5,248 children, have been medically evacuated abroad, with most of those transfers occurring before Israel’s closure of Rafah last year made departures far rarer and slower – in fact, a 92% decrease was recorded in successful evacuations thereafter. On August 13, the WHO managed to move 38 patients, 32 of them children, to care options in Belgium, Italy, and Türkiye. Such operations are far smaller than the need. Pausing the U.S. share of that global effort may look like a minor adjustment from Washington, yet for an injured child in Gaza, it reads as a door slammed shut – and possibly a death sentence. 

American hospitals have long accepted international charity cases. Pediatric centers have taken on many cases from around the world, because these are areas where some U.S. teams are among the best in the world and where outcomes can be life-changing and transformative. Now, it is only anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia that are preventing U.S. hospitals from playing a similar role with children from Gaza. Other countries and regions have been accepting far more cases than the United States. Since October 2023, the top five referral destinations have been Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Turkey, and EU countries. The cases include children with trauma wounds, patients with cancer, congenital anomalies, cardiovascular issues, and even ophthalmology-related needs. 

Behind every statistic is a child and a clock. We have seen and heard of many such cases. For example, Fatima (anonymized name for safety), a child with multiple burn injuries, cleared one hurdle after another: hospital acceptance in the U.S., COGAT approval, a slot on a convoy list. Starvation and infection outpaced the paperwork. 

 She died just days ago, after being pushed from one evacuation list date to another as her body gave way. Another girl whose cases moved with unusual speed from referral to hospital acceptance to even getting family clearances was now seeking an expedited passport to submit her DS-160s when the U.S. freeze hit. Try explaining to her mother that a stranger’s tweet now stands between her child and a reconstructive surgeon. 

And yet, these are not isolated incidents or tragedies. Gaza’s health system has been bombed, besieged, and starved into dysfunction. Key Palestinian medical specialists have been killed or abducted by the Israeli military, and hospitals where care could have been provided have been repeatedly attacked. That is why children who could once be treated locally now need referrals abroad for prosthetics, complex orthopedics, neurosurgery, oncologic care, and skin reconstruction. The pathway is not some loophole, rather it is one of the only viable medical options for these children. Prior to the current genocide, 50-100 patients were leaving Gaza daily for medical treatment abroad. 

The pathway is, in fact, fraught with ethical dilemmas. Children are frequently separated from their caregivers or loved ones, and families are separated or torn apart as some relatives are denied exit approval (often men) by Israel, leaving others to stay behind. We have met such families and children who have come to the U.S., have heard from their stories and the trauma they have endured – the physical scars and the psychological ones – and the ones that cannot even be named. 

What should happen now is simple. First, immediately reinstate the processing of medical-humanitarian visas for children and their companions. Second, we should push towards affirming the right of return for these children – many families fear never being able to return to Gaza after accepting treatment abroad, with some even choosing to stay in Gaza out of such fears. Third, restoration of medical corridors for Palestinian patients in Gaza to occupied East Jerusalem and the wider occupied West Bank, so that they do not need to leave their country and homeland just for treatment if it is available. Finally, stop letting demagogues dictate whether a Palestinian child gets to live. The moral bar here is not high.

How sad it is that the government in Washington can be spurred by a bad-faith tweet to close a lifeline for children, any shred of decency as Americans should compel us to open it.

August 23, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, USA | Leave a comment

Jeffrey Sachs: The US Can End the Gaza Genocide Now

 August 21, 2025, By Jeffrey D. Sachs and Sybil Fares / Common Dreams, https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/how-to-end-gaza-genocide

President Donald Trump wants a Nobel Peace Prize, and his efforts toward peace in Ukraine, if successful, could possibly help him earn one—but only if he also ends US complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Under Trump, as under former President Joe Biden, the US has served as Israel’s partner in mass murder, annexation, starvation, and the escalating torment of millions of Palestinians. The genocide can, and will, stop if Trump wills it. So far he has not.

Israel is committing genocide—everyone knows it, even its staunchest defenders. The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem has recently made a poignant acknowledgment of “Our Genocide.” In Foreign Affairs, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew recently admitted that extremist parties in Netanyahu’s government openly aim to starve Palestinians in Gaza. Lew frames his piece as praise for the former Biden administration (and for himself) for their supposedly valiant efforts to prevent mass starvation by pressuring Israel to allow minimal food entry, while blaming Trump for easing that pressure.

Yet the actual importance of the piece is that an ardent Zionist insider certifies the genocidal agenda sustaining Netanyahu’s rule. Lew recounts that in the aftermath of October 7, Israelis frequently pledged that “not a drop of water, not a drop of milk, and not a drop of fuel will go from Israel to Gaza,” a stance that still shapes Israel’s cabinet policy. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) can use Lew’s article as confirmation of Israel’s genocidal intent.

The genocide in Gaza, coupled with the annexation in the West Bank, aims to fulfill the Likud vision of a Greater Israel that exercises territorial control between the Sea and Jordan. This will destroy any possibility of a Palestinian state, and any possibility of peace. Indeed, Bezalel Smotrich, the extremist minister of finance and minister in the ministry of defense, recently vowed to “permanently bury the idea of a Palestinian state” while the Knesset has recently called for annexation of the occupied West Bank.

The US aids and protects Israel every day in these horrific crimes against the Palestinian people. The US provides billions of dollars in military support, goes to war alongside Israel, and offers diplomatic cover for Israel’s crimes against humanity. The vacuous mantra that “Israel has the right to defend itself” is the US pat excuse for Israel’s mass murder and starvation of innocent civilians.

Generations of historians, psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, and inquiring minds will ask how the descendants and co‑religionists of the Jews murdered by Hitler’s genocidal regime came to become genocidaires. Two factors, deeply intertwined, come to the fore.

First, the Nazi Holocaust lent credence among Jews to the Zionist claim that only a state with overwhelming military power and ready to use it can protect the Jewish people. For these militarists, every Arab country opposed to Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestine became a dire foe to be crushed by war. This is Netanyahu’s doctrine of violence, which was first unveiled in the Clean Break strategy, and which has produced nonstop Israeli mobilization and war, and a society now gripped by implacable hatred even of innocent women and children in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. Netanyahu has dragged the US into countless devastating and futile wars out of Netanyahu’s blindness to the reality that only diplomacy, not war, can achieve Israel’s security.

Second, this non-stop resort to violence reignited a dormant strain of Biblical Judaism, notably based on the Book of Joshua, which presents God’s covenant with Abraham as justification for genocides committed in conquering the Promised Land. Ancient zealotry of this kind, and the belief that God would redeem his chosen people through violence, fueled suicidal revolts against the Roman Empire between 66 and 135 AD. Whether the genocides in the Book of Joshua ever occurred (probably not ) is beside the point. For today’s zealots, the license to commit genocide is vivid, immediate, and biblically ordained.

Aware of the danger of self-destructive zealotry, the rabbis who shaped the Babylonian Talmud proscribed Jews from attempting to return en masse to the promised land (Ketubot 111a). They taught that Jews should live in their own communities and fulfill God’s commandments where they are, rather than seeking to recapture a land from which they had been exiled following decades of suicidal revolt.

Whatever the fundamental reasons for Israel’s murderous turn, Israel’s survival among nations is at risk today as it has become a pariah state. For the first time in history, Israel’s Western allies have repudiated Israel’s violent ways. France, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada have each pledged to formally recognize the State of Palestine at the upcoming UN General Assembly in September. These countries will finally join the will of the overwhelming global majority in recognizing that the two-state solution, enshrined in international law, is the true guarantor of peace.

The majority of the American people, are rightly revulsed by Israel’s brutality and are also turning their support massively to the Palestinian cause. In a new Reuters poll released today, 58% of Americans now believe that the UN should recognize the State of Palestine, against just 32% who oppose that. American politicians will surely note the change, at Israel’s peril, unless the two-state solution is rapidly implemented. (Logical arguments can also be given for a peaceful one-state, bi-national solution, but this alternative has essentially no backing among UN member states and no basis in the international law regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict that has developed over more than seven decades.)

This Israeli government will not change course on its own. Only the Trump administration can end the genocide through a comprehensive settlement agreed by the world’s nations at the UN Security Council and UN General Assembly. The solution is to stop the genocide, make peace, and salvage Israel’s standing in the world by creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel on the June 4, 1967 borders.

Trump must force Israel to see reality: that Israel cannot continue to rule over the Palestinian people, murder them, starve them, and ethnically cleanse them. For decades, the entire Arab and Islamic world has supported the two-state solution, and advocated to normalize relations with Israel and guarantee security for the entire region. This solution is in full accordance with international law, and was again espoused clearly by the UN General Assembly in the NY Declaration last month at the conclusion of the United Nations High-Level International Conference on the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution (July 29, 2025).

Trump has come to understand that to save Ukraine, he must force it to see reality: that NATO cannot expand to Ukraine as that would directly threaten Russia’s own security. In the same way, Trump must force Israel to see reality: that Israel cannot continue to rule over the Palestinian people, murder them, starve them, and ethnically cleanse them. The two-state solution thereby saves both Palestine and Israel.

An immediate UN Security Council vote to grant Palestine permanent membership in the UN next month would put an end to Israel’s zealous delusions of permanent control over Palestine, as well as its reckless territorial ambitions in Lebanon and Syria. The focus of the crisis would then shift to immediate and practical issues: how to disarm non-state actors within the framework of the new state and regional peace, how to enable mutual security for Israel and Palestine, how to empower the Palestinians to govern effectively, how to finance the reconstruction, and how to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to a starving population.

Trump can make this happen at the UN in September. The US, and only the US, has vetoed the permanent membership of Palestine in the UN. The other members of the UN Security Council have already signalled their support.
Peace in the Middle East is possible now—and there is no time to lose.

August 23, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Israeli Military To Call Up 60,000 Reservists as It Prepares for Gaza City Ethnic Cleansing Campaign.

Under the plan, the IDF will forcibly evacuate over 1 million civilians from the city, then spend over a year destroying it.

by Dave DeCamp | August 19, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/08/19/israeli-military-to-call-up-60000-reservists-as-it-prepares-for-gaza-city-ethnic-cleansing-campaign/

About 60,000 Israeli reservists will receive call-up orders that the Israeli military will issue tomorrow as it’s preparing for a major offensive on Gaza City, The Times of Israel reported on Tuesday.

The report said that reservists will have two weeks before they need to report for duty and that not all of them will take part in the offensive on Gaza City since some will replace IDF troops deployed in other areas of Gaza.

The Israeli military’s plans to take over Gaza City involve the ethnic cleansing of over 1 million Palestinian civilians from the area. Since civilians are expected to remain in the city after evacuation orders, the IDF is prepared to use artillery strikes as its means of forcibly moving them, according to Haaretz.

While the IDF hasn’t yet launched its ground offensive, it has ramped up strikes on Gaza City in recent weeks with a focus on the eastern Zeitoun neighborhood. Thousands of Palestinians have already fled the area, and an investigation from Al Jazeera found that many of the Israeli attacks were hitting displacement shelters.

Once the city is taken over, the IDF plans to spend more than a year destroying it, similar to how it made the northern cities of Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia, and Jabalia uninhabitable. The IDF will demolish homes in Gaza City under the guise of “dismantling Hamas infrastructure,” but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously told a Knesset committee that the IDF’s destruction of homes would force Palestinians to leave Gaza altogether.

The idea of the Gaza City offensive is to force all the Palestinians to the south, and from there, Israel will pressure them to leave Gaza, but it remains unclear where they could go. Israel has reportedly been in talks with several countries on taking in a large number of Palestinian refugees, but so far, none have publicly committed to the idea.

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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

August 22, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Stopping The Gaza Holocaust Is The First Step Toward A Healthy World

Caitlin Johnstone, Aug 13, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/stopping-the-gaza-holocaust-is-the?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=170832055&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Nicole on Facebook writes, “I would love to hear you explain how Palestine is the moral question of our time. Why it’s so important. How it’s related to every movement and should be a concern to everyone.”

Palestine is the moral question of our time because the abuse of the Palestinians is the most glaring, in-your-face symptom of the imperial disease. You can see the effects of so many of the empire’s abusive dynamics in how this thing is playing out, from racism to colonialism to militarism to war profiteering to mass media propaganda to empire-building to government corruption to suppression of free speech to ecocide to the heartless, mindless, soul-eating nature of the capitalist system under which we all live.

But there’s more to it than that. The primary reason to place Palestine front and center as the moral issue of our time is because if we can’t sort out the morality of an active genocide backed by our own western governments, we’re not going to be able to sort out anything else. Stopping the Gaza holocaust and bringing justice to the Palestinians is the very first step toward a healthy civilization.

Palestine is the moral issue of our time for the same reason if you saw someone in your family torturing another member of your family to death, it would be the most urgent matter happening in your life at that moment. You’d have other problems in your life, but that would come first.

If we’re the sort of society that would allow a live-streamed genocide to take place with the support of our own government and its allies, then we’re not the sort of society that can steer away from its trajectory toward dystopia and armageddon. If you’re the sort of individual who would allow a live-streamed genocide to take place with the support of your own government and its allies, then you’re not the sort of individual who can help steer our species away from disaster.

Gaza is not the only thing that matters in the world. But if you’re not forcefully opposing the Gaza holocaust, you definitely don’t have a healthy enough conscience to address any of the world’s other problems.

I sometimes see Israel supporters refer to pro-Palestine sentiment as “virtue signaling”, which is funny because it means they view themselves as holding the unpopular, unvirtuous position. But really there’s nothing particularly virtuous about supporting Gaza, and it’s not some cool, special thing you’d want to signal about yourself. It’s just what you do when you’re not an extremely shitty person. It’s the basic, bare-minimum expectation of normal human morality.

I don’t want to be friends with anyone who doesn’t oppose the Gaza holocaust. I don’t want to follow any commentators or analysts who don’t speak out against the Gaza holocaust. At this point I don’t even want to listen to any music or read any poetry from people who don’t take a stand against the Gaza holocaust. Since 2023 I’ve moved from rejecting anyone who actively sided with Israel to rejecting anyone who is even complicit in their silence.

The other day I saw some Australian influencer forcefully trying to assert that it’s okay not to take a position on Gaza, and nobody in her replies was buying it. Supporting Israel and aligning with US foreign policy comes with a lot of career benefits for high-profile individuals, and you don’t get to both enjoy those perks and also keep ethical people interested in what you have to say. You can’t have it both ways. You have to choose between the perks and the people. You actually do.

Opposition to the Gaza holocaust is the very first step in assessing if someone is worth my time. If you can’t even meet the basic, bare-minimum expectation of opposing an active genocide, then you are too callous and apathetic to be my friend. If you can’t even get this basic, kindergarten-level moral question right, then your mind is too shallow and your heart too hardened for me to be interested in your analysis, your ideas, your politics, or your art.

There are so many terrible things in our world, and there is so much work that needs to be done to address them. I don’t know what ideas, strategies and movements will get us out of this mess, but I do know that if any are going to emerge they’re going to come from the people who’ve been taking a strong stand against Israel and its western allies these last two years. Those are the individuals, movements, and political factions to pay attention to going forward. Nobody else is equipped to help.

August 17, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Over 100 Children Have Died of Severe Hunger Amid Israeli Siege: Gaza Health Ministry.

“People are being starved, children are being killed, families have lost everything,” said the United Nations agency for Palestinian Refugees.


Brad Reed, Aug 11, 2025, https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-children-starvation-2673875979

The Gaza Health Ministry announced on Monday that more than 100 children in Gaza have died of severe hunger during Israel’s siege of the territory.

As Al Jazeera reported, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said that a total of 222 Palestinians have died from hunger during the siege, including 101 children. The vast majority of these deaths have come in just the last three weeks when the hunger crisis in Gaza started to garner international media attention, the ministry said.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East on Monday emphasized the direness of the situation in a statement calling for a cease-fire to allow more aid into Gaza.

“People are being starved, children are being killed,” the agency said. “Families have lost everything. Political will and leadership can stop an escalation and end the war. Every heartbeat counts.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that there is no starvation crisis in Gaza and has said such reports are part of a “fake” propaganda campaign waged by Israel’s enemies.

However, it isn’t just the Gaza Health Ministry warning of a hunger crisis in the region, as international charity Save the Children last week said that 43% of pregnant and breastfeeding women who showed up to its clinics in Gaza last month were malnourished, which represented a threefold increase since March, when the Israeli military imposed a total siege on the area.

The latest numbers about starvation in Gaza come as the Israeli government is pushing forward with a plan to fully invade and occupy Gaza, which experts have warned will only exacerbate the humanitarian crisis among its people.

“If these plans are implemented, they will likely trigger another calamity in Gaza, reverberating across the region and causing further forced displacement, killings, and destruction,” said Miroslav Jenca, the United Nations assistant secretary general, over the weekend.

August 16, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Anas Al-Sharif’s Final Message

Editor’s Note: Anas Al-Sharif was one of the multiple journalists that was murdered by Israel in Gaza yesterday. This was the message he wanted to be shared with the world upon his death.

 By Anas Al-Sharif / X August 11, 2025, https://scheerpost.com/2025/08/11/anas-al-sharifs-final-message/

This is my will and my final message. If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice. First, peace be upon you and Allah’s mercy and blessings.

Allah knows I gave every effort and all my strength to be a support and a voice for my people, ever since I opened my eyes to life in the alleys and streets of the Jabalia refugee camp. My hope was that Allah would extend my life so I could return with my family and loved ones to our original town of occupied Asqalan (Al-Majdal). But Allah’s will came first, and His decree is final. I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification—so that Allah may bear witness against those who stayed silent, those who accepted our killing, those who choked our breath, and whose hearts were unmoved by the scattered remains of our children and women, doing nothing to stop the massacre that our people have faced for more than a year and a half.

I entrust you with Palestine—the jewel in the crown of the Muslim world, the heartbeat of every free person in this world. I entrust you with its people, with its wronged and innocent children who never had the time to dream or live in safety and peace. Their pure bodies were crushed under thousands of tons of Israeli bombs and missiles, torn apart and scattered across the walls.

I urge you not to let chains silence you, nor borders restrain you. Be bridges toward the liberation of the land and its people, until the sun of dignity and freedom rises over our stolen homeland. I entrust you to take care of my family. I entrust you with my beloved daughter Sham, the light of my eyes, whom I never got the chance to watch grow up as I had dreamed.

I entrust you with my dear son Salah, whom I had wished to support and accompany through life until he grew strong enough to carry my burden and continue the mission.

I entrust you with my beloved mother, whose blessed prayers brought me to where I am, whose supplications were my fortress and whose light guided my path. I pray that Allah grants her strength and rewards her on my behalf with the best of rewards.

I also entrust you with my lifelong companion, my beloved wife, Umm Salah (Bayan), from whom the war separated me for many long days and months. Yet she remained faithful to our bond, steadfast as the trunk of an olive tree that does not bend—patient, trusting in Allah, and carrying the responsibility in my absence with all her strength and faith.

I urge you to stand by them, to be their support after Allah Almighty. If I die, I die steadfast upon my principles. I testify before Allah that I am content with His decree, certain of meeting Him, and assured that what is with Allah is better and everlasting.

O Allah, accept me among the martyrs, forgive my past and future sins, and make my blood a light that illuminates the path of freedom for my people and my family. Forgive me if I have fallen short, and pray for me with mercy, for I kept my promise and never changed or betrayed it.

Do not forget Gaza… And do not forget me in your sincere prayers for forgiveness and acceptance.

Anas Jamal Al-Sharif

06.04.2025

August 13, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, PERSONAL STORIES | Leave a comment

Slaying and Censoring the Journalists: The Murder of Anas al-Sharif

12 August 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, Australian Independent Media

“Assassination,” wrote George Bernard Shaw in The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet, “is the extreme form of censorship.” Such extremism visited Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif and his colleagues in Gaza City late on August 10. Resting in a tent located outside the main gate of Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, he was killed alongside Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh, camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa, and freelance reporter Mohammed al-Khaldi.

Palestinian journalist Wadi Abu al-Saud recalls the drone attack taking place at 11.22pm. Having entered the tent opposite, he had raised his phone to make a call when an explosion occurred. “A piece of shrapnel hit my phone. I looked back and saw people burning in flames. I tried to extinguish them. Anas and the others had died instantly from the airstrike.” In two subsequent videos, al-Saud vows to “return to my life as a citizen. The truth has died and the coverage has ended.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The murder of al-Sharif and his colleagues by Israeli forces constituted the effective wiping out of Al Jazeera’s team, one of the few able to offer consistent, unsmothered coverage about the IDF’s remorseless campaign in Gaza. Since the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas, Israel has prohibited foreign reporters from entering Gaza except under strict invigilation by the Israeli military. Those accompanied by the IDF have been at the mercy of Israeli selectiveness as to where to go and barred from speaking to Palestinians.  ………………………………………………. https://theaimn.net/slaying-and-censoring-the-journalists-the-murder-of-anas-al-sharif/

August 13, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, media | Leave a comment

Israeli military plans to occupy Gaza City in major escalation of war

The plan will “take months, lead to the death of the hostages, the killing of many soldiers, cost tens of billions to the Israeli taxpayers, and lead to a political collapse,”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested earlier that Israel’s military will ‘take control of all Gaza’.

Israel’s security cabinet has approved a plan by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the military occupation of Gaza City, located in the north of the Palestinian enclave.

“The [Israeli military] will prepare to take control of Gaza City while providing humanitarian aid to the civilian population outside the combat zones,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement early on Friday announcing the takeover plan.

Two Israeli government sources told the Reuters news agency that any resolution by the security cabinet would now need to be approved by the full government cabinet, which may not meet until Sunday.

Occupying Gaza City marks a major escalation by Israel in its war on the Palestinian territory and will likely result in the forced displacement of tens of thousands of exhausted and starving residents who are experiencing famine conditions as Israel continues to block humanitarian aid from entering the territory.

United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Israel’s plan to escalate the assault on Gaza was “wrong”.

“This action will do nothing to bring an end to this conflict or to help secure the release of the hostages. It will only bring more bloodshed,” he said in a statement.

Axios news reporter Barak Ravid, who first reported the security cabinet’s approval of the plan, quoted an unnamed Israeli official as saying the operation will involve the forced displacement of “all Palestinian civilians from Gaza City to the central camps and other areas by October 7”.

“A siege will be imposed on the Hamas militants who remain in Gaza City, and at the same time, a ground offensive will be carried out in Gaza City,” Ravid wrote on X, citing the official.

On Thursday, in advance of the security cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said Israel would “take control of all Gaza”.

In a television interview with US outlet Fox News, Netanyahu also said Israel does not want to be “a governing body” in Gaza and would hand over responsibility to an unspecified third party.

“We don’t want to keep it. We want to have a security perimeter. We don’t want to govern it,” he said.

Netanyahu’s comments followed reports in Israeli media earlier this week that the Israeli leader would imminently announce plans to fully occupy the entirety of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas said Netanyahu’s comments “represent a blatant reversal of the negotiation process and clearly expose the real motives behind his withdrawal from the last ceasefire round, despite our nearing a final agreement.”

“His plans to expand the aggression confirm beyond doubt that he seeks to abandon his own prisoners, sacrificing them to serve his personal interests and extremist ideological agenda,” the group said in a statement.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said the decision to take over Gaza City was a “disaster that will lead to many more disasters”.

The plan will “take months, lead to the death of the hostages, the killing of many soldiers, cost tens of billions to the Israeli taxpayers, and lead to a political collapse,” he wrote in a post on X.

“This is exactly what Hamas wanted: for Israel to be trapped in the field without a goal, without defining the picture of the day after, in a useless occupation that no one understands where it is leading.”

Shihab Rattansi, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Washington, DC, said Israel’s move to occupy Gaza has been “telegraphed for several days now”.

“Donald Trump has all but greenlit whatever Benjamin Netanyahu wants to do. He said it would be up to the Israelis,” Rattansi said.

It is unclear how many people still live in Gaza City, the enclave’s largest population centre before Israel’s war on the territory that has now killed more than 61,000 Palestinians since October 2023.

Hundreds of thousands of people fled Gaza City under forced evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military in the opening weeks of the war, but many returned during a brief ceasefire at the start of this year.

A major ground operation in Gaza City could displace many thousands and further disrupt efforts to deliver food to the famine-stricken territory, where almost 200 people have now died from starvation and malnutrition.

“There is nothing left to occupy,” Gaza resident Maysaa al-Heila said on hearing of the planned takeover of the city.

“There is no Gaza left,” al-Heila told The Associated Press news agency.

August 11, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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