Greta Thunberg arrested supporting Palestine Action hunger strikers in London
Education union leaders call for ‘immediate release’ of hunger-striking prisoners
A campaigner during the Defend Our Juries protest in support of Palestine Action at The Peace Garden, Tavistock Square, central London, November 22, 2025600 educators sign open letter urging government to protect lives of prisoners jailed for more than a year without trial over alleged direct action linked to Palestine solidarity
EDUCATION union leaders called for the “immediate release” of hunger-striking prisoners today after two Palestine Action-linked detainees were taken to hospital.
Thirty-year-old Amu Gib, held at HMP Bronzefield in Surrey while awaiting trial, is on day 50 of a hunger strike, while 28-year-old Kamran Ahmed, held at Pentonville prison in London, is on day 42.
They are among eight prisoners admitted to hospital since the action began on Balfour Day, November 2, according to Prisoners for Palestine, which warned that deaths were likely without urgent intervention.
Dozens of members of the national executive committees of the National Education Union (NEU), University and College Union (UCU) and the Educational Institute of Scotland are among 600 educators and trade unionists who have signed an open letter urging the government to protect the lives of prisoners jailed for more than a year without trial over alleged direct action linked to Palestine solidarity.
The unions represent more than 600,000 staff across schools, colleges and universities.
The letter condemns an escalation in repression against Palestine activists and highlights police statements that protesters using the word “intifada” could face arrest.
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Israeli Cabinet Approves 19 New Apartheid Colonies in Occupied West Bank
Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“The ONLY reason Israel gets away with this naked thievery is US military and political support,” said one observer.
Israel’s Cabinet on Sunday finalized approval of 19 new Jewish-only settler colonies in the illegally occupied West Bank, a move the apartheid state’s far-right finance minister said was aimed at thwarting Palestinian statehood.
Cabinet ministers approved the legalization of the previously unauthorized settler outposts throughout the occupied Palestinian territory, bringing the total number of new settlements in recent years to 69.
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The move will bring the overall total number of exclusively or overwhelmingly Jewish settlements—which are illegal under international law—to more than 200, up from around 140 just three years ago.
Included in the new approval are two former settlements—Kadim and Ganim—that were evacuated in compliance with the now effectively repealed 2005 Disengagement Law, under which Israel dismantled all of its colonies in the Gaza Strip and four in the West Bank.
“This is righting a historic injustice of expulsion from 20 years ago,” Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—who is a settler—said on Sunday. “We are putting the brakes on the rise of a Palestinian terror state.”
“We will continue to develop, build, and settle the inherited land of our ancestors, with faith in the righteousness of our path,” Smotrich added.
Following an earlier round of approval for the new settlements last week, Palestinian presidential spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh said, “All Israeli settlement activity is illegal and constitutes a violation of international law and international legitimacy resolutions.”
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres earlier this month denounced Israel’s “relentless” settlement expansion.
Such colonization, said Guterres, “continues to fuel tensions, impede access by Palestinians to their land, and threaten the viability of a fully independent, democratic, contiguous, and sovereign Palestinian state.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials—some of whom, including Smotrich, deny the very existence of the Palestinian people—have vowed that such a state will not be established.
While Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza—is under pressure from right-wing and far-right government officials, settlers, and others to annex all of the West Bank, US President Donald Trump recently said that “Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.”
Some doubted Trump’s threat, with Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) executive director Sarah Leah Whitson reacting to the new settlements’ approval by posting on X that “the ONLY reason Israel gets away with this naked thievery is US military and political support.”
Israel seized and occupied the West Bank including East Jerusalem along with Gaza in 1967, ethnically cleansing around 300,000 Palestinians. Many of these forcibly displaced people were survivors of the Nakba, the Jewish terror and ethnic cleansing campaign that saw more than 750,000 Palestinians flee or be forced from Palestine during the foundation of the modern state of Israel.
Since 1967, Israel has steadily seized more and more Palestinian land in the West Bank while building and expanding colonies there. Settlement population has increased exponentially from around 1,500 colonists in 1970 to roughly 140,000 at the time of the Oslo Accords in 1993—under which Israel agreed to halt new settlement activity—to around 770,000 today.
Settlers often attack Palestinians and their property, including in deadly pogroms, in order to terrorize them into leaving so their land can be stolen. Israeli colonists have also attacked Israel Defense Forces soldiers they view as standing in the way of their expansion.
In July 2024, the International Court of Justice—where Israel is currently facing a genocide case related to the Gaza war—found the occupation of Palestine to be an illegal form of apartheid that must be ended as soon as possible. The ICJ also ruled that Israeli settler colonization of the West Bank amounts to annexation, also a crime under international law. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that an “occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
As the world’s attention focused on Gaza during the past two years, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 1,039 Palestinians—at least 225 of them children—in the West Bank. This year, at least 233 Palestinians, including at least 52 children, have been killed so far, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East.
On Saturday, Israeli occupation forces shot and killed two Palestinians in the northern West Bank, including a 16-year-old boy, Rayan Abu Muallah, who the Israel Defense Forces said was shot after he threw an object at its troops.
Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Patient survival ‘clearly linked’ to nursing numbers
https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/patient-survival-clearly-linked-nursing-numbers
ALANDMARK study into excess patient deaths across NHS hospitals has found a “very clear and consistent” link between nurse staffing and patient mortality — and that replacing them with lower-paid workers makes no difference.
Dramatic variations in patient death rates were revealed in the first-ever analysis of staffing and death rates over time, sparking calls for NHS England to investigate trusts where deaths have risen.
Study leader Professor Alison Leary told the Sunday Times that the data across 122 NHS trusts over four years showed “a very clear and consistent relationship between the absence of registered nurses available to patients and excess deaths.”
“Although organisations have tried to make up for the lack of registered nurses with other staffing groups, this has not improved survival,” added the chair of workforce modelling at London South Bank University and a senior consultant for the World Health Organisation.
The study, covering December 2020 to May 2024, found that hospitals with lower-than-expected death rates had the highest nurse staffing, with an average of 5.65 hours of registered nurse care per patient per day.
Those with higher-than-expected deaths meanwhile had significantly fewer nurses available to care for patients, with just 4.59 hours of nurse care per patient per day.
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Article continues at https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/patient-survival-clearly-linked-nursing-numbers
Euro-Med rights group says US cover enables Israel’s genocide and ‘slow death’ in Gaza
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The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor has accused the United States of providing political cover that allows Israel to perpetuate genocide in the Gaza Strip and impose a “slow death” on the civilian population.
In a statement published on Sunday, the Geneva-based organisation said US support has enabled Israel to maintain the status quo in Gaza, despite the catastrophic humanitarian situation. It argued that Washington has effectively made any progress towards a ceasefire conditional on the return of the last body from Gaza, a position the group described as “shameful complicity” in ongoing crimes.
The Monitor said such US-backed conditions contribute directly to continued ceasefire violations, the sustained siege, mass displacement of civilians, and the destruction of what remains of homes and livelihoods across the Gaza Strip.
It stressed that “the fate of more than two million people in Gaza should never be tied to political or military conditions that may be difficult, or even impossible, to fulfil on the ground,” adding that fundamental human rights must be guaranteed “immediately and unconditionally”.
The organisation said the scale of devastation in Gaza, combined with the systematic destruction of search-and-rescue equipment and emergency vehicles, has made fulfilment of Israeli conditions for progress on the ceasefire extremely difficult. It said these conditions are being used as a pretext to prolong the siege and deepen humanitarian suffering.
The Monitor added that US support for Israel in this context reinforces an illegitimate conflation between negotiation processes and guaranteed human rights. It said such rights must be implemented without conditions, compromises or political exploitation, regardless of the circumstances.
READ: Famine conditions offset in Gaza, but 1.6M to still face crisis-level hunger: IPC
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