An aerial view showing a flooded New Road Cricket ground in Worcester, home of Worcestershire CCC. Flood warnings remained in place across the UK on Monday after Storm Ashley made its presence felt, October 21, 2024
THE “climate emergency” is not in the future. It is now, and each severe weather event exposes the fragility of systems we rely on on a daily basis.
Serious floods in western England caused by Storm Ashley are no anomaly: every year sees more such incidents. The State of the UK Climate report shows that Britain is getting wetter as well as hotter: five of the 10 wettest years on record have been in the 21st century, and rainfall over the last decade is 9 per cent higher than in the 1960s.
The consequences of such changes cannot be ignored indefinitely. England suffered its second-worst harvest on record this year, with the wheat crop down by more than a fifth, winter barley (primarily important for animal feed, but also for brewing) by more than a quarter and rapeseed (used for animal feed, cooking oil and many processed foods) by almost a third.
Britain imports about half its food: but then, climate change is a global phenomenon. France’s wheat harvest this year is nearly a fifth lower than usual. Drought has played havoc with olive oil harvests in Greece and Spain.
…
A serious government would be addressing the impact of climate change through mitigation. It would be ready to spend money on flood defences, to protect cities and to protect agriculture. It would not leave vital systems like water in the hands of a private sector that continues to pay its executives millions in bonuses even while paying millions in fines for polluting and poisoning our rivers.
It would, in short, be treating climate change as an emergency: a process which requires us to rethink the way we live from city planning to transport to food production.
The continued failure of politicians to acknowledge that is a case of system failure.
Capitalism cannot sacrifice short-term profit even facing a crisis of this scale. But that puts the responsibility on us to demand better.
People attempt to extinguish a fire at the site of an Israeli strike on tents sheltering displaced people at Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza, October 2024. Ramadan Abed/Reuters
Editor’s note: This article was commissioned by the Guardian US as part of its Rise against fascism series, which was published in September. It was spiked by editor-in-chief Katherine Viner following a disagreement about the author’s use of the term “holocaust” to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza – the Guardian suggested she amend it to “genocide” and she refused. The context of the incident is documented in this report.
Novara Media has decided to publish the piece in full, including the term “holocaust”, following consultation with several scholars of genocide and Jewish history.
The author spells her name in lower case.
Content note: This piece contains explicit references to torture and sexual assault.
United Nations Resolution 3379 defined Zionism as “a form of racism” because at its core it is a supremacist ideology that seeks to privilege Jews at the expense, even detriment and demise, of non-Jews (the resolution passed in 1975 and was revoked in 1991 following pressure from Israel and the United States). Regardless of how one defines Zionism, it manifests, among other myriad ways, in the subjugation or displacement of indigenous Palestinians.
For the past 12 months, Israel has been implementing a long-held colonial fantasy of not only “finishing the job,” but doing so with a gleeful sadism that echos the social media posts of Tzipi Navon, Sara Netanyahu’s close advisor and office manager, who called for residents from Gaza who participated in the [7 October] massacre to be tortured live on broadcast television: “First removing the nails from the hands and feet … cut off [their] genitals and let [them] see [their testicles] fried in canola oil and [force them] to eat them … Keep the tongue to the end, so that it pleases us with its screams, the ears so that [they] can hear [their] own screams and the eyes so that [they] can see us smile.”
Polling data from Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies suggests that a majority of Jewish Israelis do not think that soldiers accused of torturing Palestinians should face criminal charges.
In a rare moment of candour, the New York Times reported UN findings of systematic torture, including sexual torture. According to the UN’s report, Israeli soldiers have allegedly kept Palestinian captives in severely overcrowded prison cells, subjected them to sleep deprivation and forced nudity, threatened them with gang-rape, and penetrated or electrocuted male and female prisoners’ genitals and anuses with electrified batons and other objects. Released Palestinian hostages and Palestinian civilians in Gaza have reported being mauled and sexually assaulted by trained dogs. A lawyer who has been granted rare access to a Palestinian captive inside an Israeli detention centre reported the activation of a fire extinguisher inside the body of a 27-year-old man through a hose inserted into his rectum.
Many of those who were kidnapped, including prominent surgeons such as Dr Adnan Al-Bursh, director of the orthopaedic department at Al-Shifa Hospital, may have died after torture. Some emerged from Israeli gulags with such trauma that they have reportedly suffered memory loss; some were unable to speak; all of them broken by unspeakable torment in Israeli captivity. And they were the lucky ones who got out.
Thought of the Day was just on BBC Radio 4. I had to switch it off at the first mention of Jesus. FM, these insane God-squadders assume that they know Jesus personally. That’s part of their illness, that they assume that they’re living a divine life when often they’re just mass-murdering mass-murderers or supporters of mass-murdering mass-murderers using religion as a pretext. Is there a difference?
Anyway back to today’s Thoughts of the Day, I was intending a light one today about how things often go wrong when you’re on a deadline. I’m still isolating having caught Covid, very nearly over it now but FM can that sneak up on you when you’re not expecting it and on a deadline? That can knock you out for a week at least. Imagine you had the work’s laptop at home too because of that looming deadline. I suppose that someone could collect the work’s laptop if you put it in the freezer overnight, but how do you get it from the freezer to the front door? You can hardly leave it outdoors all night.
Then there’s a simple puncture of course – you need to race those so-important documents to the airport. They’re so important plans for World War 3. Oh FM you got a puncture, that’s a nasty big nail in your tyre. You can’t help it of course, could strike at any time and there’s no spare.
FM, you stood on your glasses, had to wear some emergency ones and all those shipping containers got sent to Ireland, Iran and Iraq instead of Israel. They could take months to get back on course.
Jewish Voice for Peace activists and allies protest at NBC headquarters in New York City on February 26, 2024. (Photo: Jewish Voice for Peace New York)
“The president needs to start answering to the American people—not the far-right Israeli government indiscriminately bombing the people of Gaza,” said Jewish Voice for Peace.
The historic wave of Jewish-led protests against U.S. complicity in Isreal’s genocidal war on Gaza continued Monday as members of the group Jewish Voice for Peace were arrested for occupying NBC headquarters in New York City in a bid to disrupt the taping of President Joe Biden’s appearance on a popular late-night TV show.
JVP activists wearing shirts reading “Not In Our Name” unfurled banners and chanted slogans inside 30 Rockefeller Center in Midtown Manhattan, where Biden was taping an interview with the eponymous host of the “Late Night Show With Seth Meyers.”
“Biden, Biden, you can’t hide, you are funding genocide,” the protesters chanted. Banners implored the president to “Stop Arming Genocide” and push for a “Lasting Cease-Fire” in Gaza, where more than 100,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded and around 90% of the population has been forcibly displaced since the October 7 attacks on Israel.
JUST NOW: Hundreds of Jews and allies just took over NBC’s famed 30 Rockefeller Center headquarters in NYC to disrupt @POTUS appearance on @LateNightSeth and make it clear that supporters of genocide are not welcome in our city. 50 protesters were arrested. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/z0bTC7VtcE
“President Biden’s deadly foreign policy has expedited weapons sales to Israel,” said Jewish Voice for Peace New York, which also criticized the administration for ignoring the International Court of Justice’s provisional ruling last month that Israel is “plausibly” perpetrating genocide, suspending funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, and vetoing three U.N. cease-fire resolutions.
“The president needs to start answering to the American people—not the far-right Israeli government indiscriminately bombing the people of Gaza, destroying 70% of infrastructure, including hospitals, universities, and the electricity and water grids,” the group added.
Jay Saper of JVP said Monday that “our Jewish tradition teaches us that life is precious.”
“As Jewish New Yorkers, we are absolutely outraged that President Biden is actively supporting a genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza,” he added.
In addition to taping Tuesday’s “Late Night” episode, Biden and Meyers visited the on-site Van Leeuwen ice cream parlor, where the president ordered mint chip in a sugar cone. While there, a reporter asked when there would be a cease-fire in Gaza.
“My national security adviser tells me that we’re close, we’re close; it’s not done yet,” Biden replied. “My hope is by next Monday we’ll have a cease-fire.”
Biden gets ice cream with Seth Meyers . Ceasefire: “My national security adviser tells me that we’re close, we’re close, it’s not done yet. And my hope is that by next Monday." Border: "I've been planning to go Thursday. What I didn't know is my good friend apparently is going" pic.twitter.com/Lwde3FB6yk
Early in the war, Biden proclaimed his “rock-solid and unwavering” commitment to Israel while refusing to call for a cease-fire. As Israeli bombs and bullets killed and maimed tens of thousands of Palestinians—mostly women and children—the president asked for over $14 billion in additional U.S. military aid to Israel, which already receives nearly $4 billion from Washington annually. Biden also repeatedly circumvented Congress to expedite emergency military assistance to the key Middle East ally.
Health workers, holding banners and placards, gather at the Nasser Hospital to protest Israeli army’s attacks on northern Gaza and the prevention of the entry of necessary equipment and supplies to the besieged hospitals in Khan Yunis, Gaza on October 19, 2024. (Photo by Doaa Albaz/Anadolu via Getty Images)
As the situation inside Gaza is increasingly described as “indescribable,” medical NGOs blocked from providing care to Palestinians trapped inside besieged territory demand world leaders to stop turning ‘blind eye’ to Israeli war crimes and violations of humanitarian law.
As more Israeli bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza killed dozens of people Saturday, health workers from both inside and out of the besieged territory are again pleading with world leaders to bring an end to the indiscriminate attacks and imposed humanitarian crisis that witnesses on the ground increasingly say there are no words to describe.
At al Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis and elsewhere in Gaza, doctors and other medical staff on Saturday staged protests and held press conferences to call attention to the ongoing attacks in northern areas, including the latest targeting of Jabalia in which reporting indicated anywhere from 33 to over 50 people—including civilian men, women, and children—were killed.
“The world is watching, and history will judge us by how we respond to this grave injustice. I call upon each and everyone one of you to join this fight for the preservation of our shared humanity.” —Dr. Khaled Saleh, FAJR Scientific
Al-Jazeera reports that hospitals, which have repeatedly been bombed by Israel over the last year, were not immune from this latest round:
Three partially functioning hospitals treating severely wounded patients and sheltering thousands of displaced Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza are now out of service after coming under intense Israeli fire, a Gaza health official told Al Jazeera, as the siege on Jabalia enters its third week, with at least 33 more people killed in the northern area.
Israeli forces bombed al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia early on Saturday, and have also shelled Kamal Adwan and the Indonesian hospitals in Beit Lahiya over the past few hours, Al Jazeera correspondents have reported.
Saturday’s attacks come days after Israel barred at least six medical service NGOs from continuing their life-saving work in Gaza. According to the Washington Post:
Two of those medical NGOs, Glia and the Palestinian American Medical Association (PAMA), confirmed to The Washington Post that they were notified by the WHO this week about the bans. Both groups have worked in Gaza for years preceding the war.
“WHO is concerned about the impact of these denials on Gaza’s strained healthcare system,” the organization said Thursday in a statement. It added that international emergency medical teams (EMTs) deployed to Gaza are essential to keeping the system operational, as only 17 of the enclave’s 36 hospitals remain functionaland “healthcare needs far exceed the system’s capacity.”
Dr. Khaled Saleh, chair of FAJR Scientific, which provides surgical expertise and trauma specialists to war-torn regions and was another of the groups notified by the WHO that it had been barred from entering Gaza, said in a statement that the move by the Israeli government filled him with “deep sadness and concern for the current state of our global family, questioning our shared humanity and ethics.”
Blocked from providing aid to people in dire need, Saleh called on people worldwide to push for an end to Israel’s blocking of vital medical aid and those seeking to provide it.
“This is a devastating blow to humanity, representing a level of destruction that we have not witnessed since World War II, yet our world leaders turn a blind eye,” he said.
“As a member of the global community,” Saleh continued, “I implore all of you who value compassion, ethics, and the sanctity of human life to stand with us and raise your voices against this unconscionable decision. Together, we must advocate for the voiceless and demand restoration of the fundamental right to access to medical care.”
Israel’s ban on the medical NGOs comes after a string of healthcare professionals who spent time in the Gaza strip have gone public with what they witnessed on the ground, telling tales of unspeakable horror and trying to shake the world out of its complacency on what experts say is a genocide in motion being carried out by Israeli forces.
Earlier this week, the UN humanitarian office, OCHA, said that Israel’s continued blocking of food and medical supplies to Jabalia and other ares in the northern was “having life-threatening impacts” for the people there.
OCHA spokesperson Farhan Haq said the OCHA was calling on Israeli authorities “to allowed safe, sustained and unimpeded access to Jabalia and all areas of the north where people are in desperate need of assistance.”
In a post on Friday, Oxfam International mourned the killing of Dr. Ahmad Al-Najar and midwife Laila Jneid, both of whom worked with Juzoor, “killed by Israeli airstrikes on Jabalia,” the group said. “They were providing lifesaving health care in Gaza. Attacking aid workers is a war crime.” Oxfam repeated its demand for a “cease-fire now” and said healthcare workers should never be a target.
In a dispatch on Friday, Dr. Taghreed Al-Imawi, Juzoor staff and an OBGYN doctor at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, described the untenable situation on the ground.
“The situation is beyond horrific and is very difficult and indescribable,” said Al-Imawi. “Dead people, severed body parts and injured people everywhere. We are receiving emergency calls from all the areas of the north. Ambulances are not able to reach the injured. We have seen more than 23 pregnant women among the injured coming to the hospital since last week, wounded either by shrapnel or gunfire, suffering from fractures. Some were in a critical condition. Kamal Adwan Hospital and other semi-operational hospitals have received displacement orders but there is no way to evacuate in any case.”
“The pediatrics section is closed as it is full of injured people,” Al-Imawi added, “the surgery section is full of injured people, even the reception, the hospital has been shelled several times and targeted by snipers, people are terrified to come to the hospital now.”
Having recently returned from a field mission in Gaza, pediatric nurse Becky Platt, working through Save the Children—who posted her testimony Saturday—described a situation on the ground that was “like nothing I’ve seen before.”
Platt said the horrific situation is “both in terms of healthcare need and just in terms of the whole humanitarian context—seeing homes and landscapes completely devastated and seeing just the absolute level of human suffering and need as absolutely mind blowing.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1847518629484478816
“No child should have to be in pain,” she said. “And it just feels like your hands are tied when you can’t do what you know that you could do easily at home or in another context. I think that when it really hits. It’s just—it’s just not fair. It’s not okay that we’ve got children with devastating injuries who don’t have access to pain relief.”
For his part, Dr. Saleh of FAJR Scientific, said it was up to everyone in the world to make their voices heard.
“The world is watching,” he said, “and history will judge us by how we respond to this grave injustice. I call upon each and everyone one of you to join this fight for the preservation of our shared humanity.”
