Study Finds 96% of Gaza Children Fear Imminent Death—And Half Want to Die

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

A Palestinian girl is in shock after surviving an Israeli bombing of an UNRWA school in the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza, Palestine on July 14, 2024.  (Photo: Salama Nabeel Eaid Younes/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“The world’s failure to protect Gaza’s children is a moral failing on a monumental scale,” said one advocate.

Amid a relentless Israeli onslaught that has wrought monumental physical and psychological destruction in Gaza, a report published this week revealed that nearly all children in the embattled Palestinian enclave believe their death is imminent—and nearly half of them want to die.

The Gaza-based Community Training Center for Crisis Management, supported by War Child Alliance, surveyed more than 500 Palestinian children in Gaza last June and found that 96% of them fear imminent death, 92% are not accepting of reality, 79% suffer from nightmares, 77% avoid discussing traumatic events, 73% display signs of aggression, 49% wish to die because of the war, and many more “show signs of withdrawal and severe anxiety, alongside a pervasive sense of hopelessness.”

“This report lays bare that Gaza is one of the most horrifying places in the world to be a child,” War Child U.K. CEO Helen Pattinson said in a statement. “Alongside the leveling of hospitals, schools, and homes, a trail of psychological destruction has caused wounds unseen but no less destructive on children who hold no responsibility for this war.”

In a first of its kind report, our Gaza based partner Community Training Centre for Crisis Management asked injured, separated and disabled children and their caregivers about the toll of the ongoing war on their lives. Their answers are devastating but sadly not a surprise.1/5

War Child UK (@warchilduk.bsky.social) 2024-12-12T11:31:17.537Z

Israel’s 434-day assault on Gaza—which is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case—has left tens of thousands of children deadmaimedmissing, or orphaned and hundreds of thousands more forcibly displacedstarved, or sickened. Doctors and others including volunteers from the United States have documented many cases in which they’ve concluded Israeli snipers and other troops have deliberately shot children in the head and chest.

“The harm caused to Gaza’s children goes beyond statistics. Behind every number is a name, a life, and a future that is being extinguished before it can even begin,” Iain Overton, executive director of the U.K.-based group Action on Armed Violence, said in response to the new report.

“The world’s failure to protect Gaza’s children is a moral failing on a monumental scale,” he added. “We must act decisively and compassionately to ensure that these children’s voices are heard and their futures protected.”

In October, the U.K.-based charity Oxfam International said that Israel’s yearlong assault on Gaza has been the deadliest year of conflict for women and children anywhere in the world over the past two decades. A year ago, the United Nations Children’s Fund called Gaza “the world’s most dangerous place to be a child.” Earlier this year, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres for the first time added Israel to his so-called “List of Shame” of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts.

“The international community must act now before the child mental health catastrophe we are witnessing embeds itself into multi-generational trauma, the consequences of which the region will be dealing with for decades to come,” Pattinson stressed. “A cease-fire must be the immediate first step to allow War Child and other agencies to effectively respond to the intense psychological damage children are experiencing.”

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Addressing the complicity of allies like the United States, Germany, and Britain, who provide weapons and diplomatic cover for Israel, progressive U.K. parliamentarian Jeremy Corbyn wrote on social media in response to the new report, “Every single supplier of arms to Israel has blood on its hands—and the world will never forgive them.”

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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The Labour Party Can’t Abandon Working People – Jeremy Corbyn

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https://labouroutlook.org/2023/03/01/the-labour-party-cant-abandon-working-people-jeremy-corbyn/

Image of Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party
Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party

At a time when the Tories are accelerating their assault on democracy, the Labour leadership should be fortifying its defense. However, it will not be able to defend democracy if it isn’t prepared to respect it within its own movement. Across the country, left-wing members are being barred from applying to be a candidate, denying local parties the chance to vote for popular, working-class, talented people in a fair and democratic selection process. As Keir Starmer himself promised in 2020, “Local Party members should select their candidates for every election.” Reneging on this pledge sends an alarming signal to those whose trust you now seek to garner.

It also displays a lack of respect for those to whom we owe our very place in Parliament. Labour members are the ones who give up their time to knock on doors in the pouring rain. Labour members are the ones who campaign for local change in their communities. Labour members are the ones who keep the party afloat. The Labour membership is the soul of the Labour Party — you cannot crush one without the other.

Only a democratic party can provide the space that is needed to empower those with the creative ideas and transformative solutions this country desperately needs. Today, the division between rich and poor and the threat of ecological collapse are greater than ever before. Our aim should be to unite disenfranchised communities around a more hopeful alternative.

https://labouroutlook.org/2023/03/01/the-labour-party-cant-abandon-working-people-jeremy-corbyn/

Continue ReadingThe Labour Party Can’t Abandon Working People – Jeremy Corbyn

Starmer claims Corbyn will not stand as a Labour candidate at next election

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Jeremy Corbyn, Islington North Labour MP

For the Many, Not the Few

Uproar as Starmer bans Corbyn from standing as Labour candidate at next election

LABOUR “does not belong to one man but to its members,” campaigners declared today after Sir Keir Starmer vowed Jeremy Corbyn would never again be a Labour MP and told critics of his leadership to quit the party.

The increasingly right-wing Labour leader, who expelled his predecessor from the parliamentary party in 2020, claimed the party he took over nearly three years ago is “unrecognisable and we are not going back.”

In a speech in east London, Sir Keir hailed a decision by watchdog the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to lift Labour out of two years of special measures over its “past failings” on anti-semitism.

But Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) slammed the “alarming news,” stressing: “Jews like us do not feel safe in Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.”

The socialist group said its research shows that Jews have been “at least 37 times more likely to be investigated for anti-semitism than an average Labour Party member” since the former shadow Brexit secretary took the reins in April 2020.

Uproar as Starmer bans Corbyn from standing as Labour candidate at next election

When will we react to Starmer’s war on the whole labour movement?

KEIR STARMER’S Times interview exposes a Labour leader as arrogant as he is dishonest.

Few would disagree with his claim that Labour is “unrecognisable” compared with 2019 — but an honest media would ask this would-be prime minister some searching questions about that.

How does he defend standing to lead the party on a platform of continuing the socialist policies of Jeremy Corbyn, and why, if he was lying then, should we trust him in government?

When he tells anyone unhappy with the way he has changed the party that they are welcome to leave, what gives him the right?

Why should an MP only elected in 2015 tell activists and campaigners of decades’ standing to take a hike? More importantly, why should affiliated unions — which have already seen one of their number, the BFAWU, disaffiliate in disgust — allow a leader to abuse a position he obtained under false pretences to fundamentally change the character of the party they founded?

When will we react to Starmer’s war on the whole labour movement?

Continue ReadingStarmer claims Corbyn will not stand as a Labour candidate at next election

Jeremy Corbyn: On Human Rights Day, the UK government must reflect on its own inaction and complicity

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Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party

JEREMY CORBYN warns that on Human Rights Day Britain is trying to jettison its obligations under international treaties and turning its back on the most vulnerable

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/human-rights-day-government-must-reflect-its-own-inaction-and-complicity

If we walk away from the European Convention and human rights legislation, we will leave a terrible legacy for future generations.

There has been a resurgent pushback against human rights around the world. Let us not be part of it; let us go in the opposite direction.

Human rights have to be universal. They do not mean going to war with somebody. They do not mean abandoning or demonising the most vulnerable.

They mean engagement to try to achieve a more peaceful, caring and compassionate world for us all.

Continue ReadingJeremy Corbyn: On Human Rights Day, the UK government must reflect on its own inaction and complicity

We all just want to stop oil

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Bought my coach ticket X

Cost of Living Crisis and Climate Crisis: The Same Crisis

Enough is enough. When did we decide to just sit there and be OK with people in the fifth richest country in the world having to choose between food and heating? When did that happen? When did we decide that we are just going to sit there and let civilisation as we know it to collapse because the government is refusing to cut carbon emissions in line with the cries of the world’s most renowned climate scientists. When did that happen?

People have woken up to the fact that there is only one crisis – the crisis of an elite which cares no more about old people dying of the cold than it does about young people dying of hunger before they get to middle age. This elite refuses to see the misery it is already inflicting on the Global South. The global majority already faces looting, exploitation and climate breakdown. Know one thing for sure – this is murder, plain and simple. Today’s fossil capitalism profits from yesterday’s barbarous imperialism. And they will carry on unless we stop them. No one is coming to save us – not the politicians, not the NGOs, not the entrepreneurs – the only way things will change now is through People Power. It has been the case throughout our history, and so it is today.

We All Want to Just Stop Oil is bringing together the wider environmental and progressive labour movements, faith communities, charities, people from social institutions and famous people – along with thousands of ordinary people who have never before been involved in anything like this – to create mass civil resistance. This is how we will overcome entrenched power – ongoing organised peaceful civil disobedience – slow marches, sit downs, blockades, etc., week after week. They may arrest people but we will not be afraid. We will be courageous, and our contagious courage will spread. They may imprison people but that will make us even more determined to show our solidarity. Their time is up. Our time is now.

On 23 July we are gathering to connect and build. Then, thousands of us will mobilise around the country to prepare for an Autumn of popular mass action – like Extinction Rebellion did in April 2019, forcing the government to respond by occupying central London. But this time involving many more people from a wide coalition of groups, building a deeper, more powerful movement.

Continue ReadingWe all just want to stop oil