A Palestinian woman receives dialysis treatment at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital on February 8, 2024. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
The lack of medicine, food and water means thousands of people with asthma, kidney disease or diabetes are unable to treat or control their conditions
Four months of conflict in Gaza is jeopardising the health of thousands of people with chronic illnesses such as kidney disease, diabetes and asthma, doctors have warned.
The chronically ill are the hidden casualties of the war, as access to water, food and medicine is severely restricted, said Guillemette Thomas, the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medical coordinator for Palestine.
“Hospitals that are still functioning are overwhelmed with injured people, they are not able to deal with chronic illness at all,” she said. “Before the war there were 3,500 hospital beds in Gaza, now there are fewer than 1,000, and hundreds and hundreds of injured. We don’t know how many people are dying because they can’t access healthcare.”
When medication is allowed into the territory there are no safe ways of distributing it, Thomas said. “We have some insulin coming in aid trucks, but patients can’t get to the places where it is stocked because of the airstrikes. People are bombed on their way to the hospital.”
A protest against the killing of journalists in Gaza. Photo: International Federation of Journalists/X
A report by the Committee to Protect Journalists said that 78 journalists and media workers were killed in Gaza in the first three months of Israel’s war. The report added that the circumstances leading to the killing of these media professionals were difficult to ascertain due to Israel’s refusal to cooperate
Nearly three fourths of all journalists and media workers killed in 2023 were Palestinians who were killed in the first three months of the Israeli war in Gaza, said the annual report of Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released on Thursday, February 15.
According to the CPJ, at least 99 journalists and media workers were killed in 2023. This is the highest number of journalists and media persons killed in a year since 2015 and was a 44% increase from last year when the figure was 69.
Among the 78 journalists and media workers killed in the Israeli war on Gaza, 72 were Palestinians, three were Lebanese and two were Israeli journalists.
The report stated that the details of the circumstances leading to the killing of most of the journalists and media workers in Gaza were difficult to obtain due to Israel’s refusal to cooperate. A large number of family members of those journalists and media workers were also killed in the Israeli bombings and ground offensive which made the task of investigating the circumstances of their killing difficult.
A total of more than 28,700 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 69,000 others have been wounded in the Israeli war in Gaza since October 7. Many journalists have lost their entire families in Israeli attacks.
CJP claimed that at least 78 of the journalists and thirteen media workers were killed on duty in 2023. It also claimed that there were eight more journalists killed last year but the investigation into the circumstances in which they were killed was still not complete.
CJP claimed that a large number of journalists in Palestine were killed deliberately and it has raised the issue with the Israelis.
Most of the Palestinian journalists killed on duty in Gaza were in full gear and easily identifiable when they were targeted in air strikes or during Israeli ground offensives.
Deliberately targeting and killing journalists on duty is a war crime as per international law. Israel often claims that journalists killed in Gaza were members of “terrorist groups” without providing any evidence.
The numbers are much higher, say other groups
Several more journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza by Israeli forces since December, including Al-Jazeera journalist Hamza al-Dahdouh who was targeted and killed by a missile attack on the car in which he was traveling with another freelance journalist Mustafa Thuraya.
Hamza was the son of prominent journalist Wael Dahdouh, most of whose family members were killed in Israeli strikes earlier. Wael himself was injured in one of the attacks carried out by the Israelis while on duty.
According to estimates by other organizations, the number of Palestinian journalists killed is higher. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) claimed at least 95 journalists or around 8% of all registered journalists in Palestine have been killed by Israel between October 7 and December 19.
According to Palestinian Authority’s media office, the total number of media workers killed in Palestine since October 7 is 126.
PJS claims that most of the journalists killed in Gaza were deliberately targeted by Israeli forces with the intention of “assassination and murder.” Some of the journalists were also threatened by Israeli forces before they were actually killed for covering the Israeli genocide, PJS alleged.
In addition to killing Palestinian journalists, Israel has also resorted to other means of shutting down the spread of information, including media gags, denial of visas to foreign journalists, and repeated shutdowns of the internet and telecommunication services, sometimes for weeks.
“The war [Israeli war in Gaza] is unprecedented in terms of threats to journalists” Jodie Ginsberg, Chief Executive Officer of the CPJ, told Al-Jazeera.
Israel has a long history of targeting and killing journalists. In 2022, Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed when she was reporting the Israeli military raid on Jenin. CPJ claims there were at least 20 such cases before the current war in Gaza but no one has ever been charged or held responsible for these killings.
People during a pro-Palestine protest in Whitehall, central London, to call for a ceasefire in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, February 12, 2024
Palestine supporters to mobilise worldwide in call for a ceasefire as Israel mounts attack on Gaza’s last refuge
PALESTINE supporters in Britain and worldwide are expected to mobilise in huge numbers in a Global Day of Action on Saturday as Israel mounts its attack on the Gazan people’s last refuge, Rafah.
With 1.4 million people, mainly refugees, crammed into a city which is customarily home to less than 200,000, the feared effects of the Israeli onslaught have provoked mounting anger and increased calls for a ceasefire.
In Parliament next week, a Commons motion from the Scottish National Party calling for a ceasefire is expected to polarise MPs’ opinions and test Sir Keir Starmer’s authority over his own backbenchers.
Israel’s embassy in London will be among the targets for protests on Saturday for the first time since the weekly demonstrations began in October.
Thousands of people are expected to lobby Scottish Labour’s annual conference in Glasgow to demand that the party call for a ceasefire.
The SNP’s Commons motion calling for a ceasefire is expected to be heard on Wednesday, a week before the Rochdale by-election which has seen Labour dump its own candidate over his comments on Israel’s war on Gaza.
The motion “recognises that the only way to stop the slaughter of innocent civilians is to press for a ceasefire now.”
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign event at Mother Emanuel AME Church on January 8, 2024 in Charleston, South Carolina. (Photo: Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
The electoral base that Biden is going to need for re-election is heavily against his support for Israel’s war on Gaza. There is no way to hide from that fact.
For more than four months, President Biden has been the main enabler for Israel’s mass murder of Palestinian people in Gaza. Every day, hundreds of civilians are killed by U.S. weaponry and, increasingly, by hunger and disease. The cruelty and magnitude of the slaughter are repugnant to anyone who isn’t somehow numb to the human agony.
Such numbing is widespread in the United States. Some factors include ethnocentric, racial, and religious biases against Arabs and Muslims. The steep pro-Israel tilt of news media runs parallel to the slant of U.S. government officials, with language that routinely conveys much lower regard for Palestinian lives than Israeli lives.
And while the credibility of the Israeli government has tumbled, the brawny arms of the Israel lobby—notably AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel—still exert enormous leverage over the vast majority of Congress. Few legislators are willing to vote against massive military aid that makes the carnage in Gaza possible.
Instead of candor, the routine choices have been euphemisms and silence. But—morally and politically—that’s a big mistake.
A chilling example is Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. On Monday night, he took to the Senate floor and condemned Israel in no uncertain terms. “Kids in Gaza are now dying from the deliberate withholding of food,” he said. “In addition to the horror of that news, one other thing is true. That is a war crime. It is a textbook war crime. And that makes those who orchestrate it war criminals.”
Watching video from Van Hollen’s impassioned speech, you might assume that he would vote against sending $14 billion in further military aid to those “war criminals.” But hours later, he did just the opposite. As journalist Ryan Grim noted, “the senator’s speech pulsed with moral clarity—until it petered out into a stumbling rationale for his forthcoming yes vote.”
In contrast, three senators in the Democratic caucus—Jeff Merkley, Peter Welch, and Bernie Sanders—voted no. Sanders delivered a powerful speech calling for decency instead of further moral collapse from the top of the U.S. government.
While the Senate deliberated, the White House again made clear that it wasn’t serious about getting in the way of Israel’s planned assault on the city of Rafah. That’s where most of Gaza’s 2.2 million surviving residents have taken unsafe refuge from the Orwellian-named Israel Defense Forces.
An exchange at a White House news conference on Monday underscored that Biden is determined to keep enabling Israel’s continuous war crimes in Gaza:
Reporter: “Has the president ever threatened to strip military assistance from Israel if they move ahead with a Rafah operation that does not take into consequence what happens with civilians?”
Spokesman John Kirby: “We’re going to continue to support Israel. They have a right to defend themselves against Hamas and we’re going to continue to make sure they have the tools and the capabilities to do that.”
Later this week, Politico summed up: “The Biden administration is not planning to punish Israel if it launches a military campaign in Rafah without ensuring civilian safety.” Citing interviews with three U.S. officials, the article reported that “no reprimand plans are in the works, meaning Israeli forces could enter the city and harm civilians without facing American consequences.”
Biden continues to serve as an accomplice while mouthing platitudes of concern about the lives of civilians in Gaza. Month after month, he has done all he can to supply the Israeli military to the max.
With just eight months until the voting starts that could propel Donald Trump back into the presidency, the prospect of his return to power is all too real.
Under an apt headline—“Biden Is Mad at Netanyahu? Spare Me.”—The Nation senior editor Jack Mirkinson wrote this week: “In the real world, Biden and his legislative partners have continued to arm Israel; the Democratic leadership in the Senate actually brought people in on Super Bowl Sunday to take a vote on a bill that would, along with rearming Ukraine, send Israel another $14.1 billion for what is euphemistically dubbed ‘security assistance.’”
Ever since October, inspiring protests and activism in the United States have challenged U.S. support for Israel’s military assault on Gaza. However, boosted by revulsion at the atrocities that Hamas committed against Israeli civilians on October 7, the usual rationales for supporting Israel’s violence against Palestinians have been hard at work.
In this election year, an additional factor looms large. With just eight months until the voting starts that could propel Donald Trump back into the presidency, the prospect of his return to power is all too real. And with Biden set to be the Democratic Party’s nominee, countless individuals and groups are careful to avoid saying much that’s critical of the president they want to see re-elected.
Instead of candor, the routine choices have been euphemisms and silence. But—morally and politically—that’s a big mistake.
The electoral base that Biden is going to need for re-election is heavily against his support for Israel’s war on Gaza. Polling shows that young people in particular are overwhelmingly opposed. Most have seen through the thin veneer of his weak pleas for Israel to not kill so many civilians.
No amount of evasions, silences or doubletalk can make Biden’s policies morally acceptable. But—while the administration combines its PR hand-wringing with military arms-supplying—Biden apologists go on and on with evasion and verbal gymnastics to defend the indefensible.
A far better course of action would be actual candor about current realities: Joe Biden’s moral collapse is enabling the Israeli government to continue, with impunity, its large-scale massacre of Palestinian people. In the process, Biden is increasing the chances that the Republican Party, led by fascistic Donald Trump, will gain control of the White House in January.
Demonstrators blockade the entrance of the BAE Systems site in Govan, Glasgow in solidarity with Palestinians and call for an immediate ceasefire, February 15, 2024
by Matt Kerr Scotland reporter
MORE than 100 demonstrators blockaded Scotland’s largest industrial site today to call for a halt of arms to Israel. Amid the ongoing slaughter in Gaza, more than 100 Glaswegian activists answered the call from Palestine trade unionists to disrupt Israeli arms supplies, descending on Govan at 5am to blockade BAE Systems during a shift change.
The controversial company is Britain’s biggest supplier of military hardware and maintains extensive long-term links with Israel, supplying high-tech weaponry.
Demonstrators did not limit their aims to disrupting BAE systems and called both the Westminster and Scottish governments to account for their actions.
Protesters not only demanded that the Tory government immediately stop the bombing of Yemen, but also challenged the Scottish government. One demonstrator, Aisha, a 37-year-old school teacher, said: “The Scottish government funds weapons manufacturers like BAE through Scottish Enterprise.
“This is absolutely disgusting and directly contradicts any lip-service the Scottish Parliament and First Minister pays towards backing a ceasefire or supporting Palestinians.
