Leeds May Day march. Photo: Neil Terry Photography
WORKERS rallied across Britain this weekend for May Day and International Workers’ Day in solidarity with all those in struggle for peace and justice, and in particular with their brothers and sisters in Palestine.
At Cardiff’s rally on Saturday — coinciding with World Press Freedom Day — the NUJ’s David Nicholson warned comrades that journalism was under attack at home and around the world, not least in Gaza and the West Bank.
“There were 1,000 journalists and media workers working in Gaza when Israel invaded in October 2023,” he said. “Almost 20 per cent have been killed by the Israeli military, with 171 dead and hundreds injured.
“This targeting of journalists is a war crime, and the NUJ and the International Federation of Journalists are building a case for the International Criminal Court.“
The Israeli government will not allow international journalists into Gaza — what have they got to hide,” he said.
UK Labour Party government Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are participants and complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide providing Israel with army and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli airstrike early this morning on Yaffa School, in Gaza City, April 23, 2025
MEDIA workers will gather outside the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) conference in Blackpool tomorrow to show support for their Palestinian colleagues and call on Israel to stop its troops targeting journalists.
Union members from across Britain and Ireland will read out the names of the more than 200 media workers killed in Palestine in the past 18 months, highlighting that journalists have been the “eyes and ears of the world as the tragic events there have unfolded daily.”
They are also calling for greater solidarity with workers “still putting their lives on the line every day to bring the world the news” from Gaza.The demonstration will also highlight journalists’ opposition to the ban on international media from entering Gaza to bear witness to the events there, “which is contributing to the suppression of information about what is happening.”
US President Donald Trump speaks after signing an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House on April 9, 2025. 9Photo by Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images)
“Is it a constitutional crisis yet?” asked one journalist.
Despite a federal court ruling last week, journalists with the Associated Press were blocked from reporting on several White House events on Monday, leading to fresh accusations that President Donald Trump is openly violating court orders as well as core constitutional protections, in this case freedom of speech and the press.
“Our journalists were blocked from the Oval Office today,” said Lauren Easton, an AP spokesperson, following a press event with Trump and El Salvador President Nayib Bukele. “We expect the White House to restore AP’s participation in the pool as of today, as provided in the injunction order.”
A pair of AP photographers were later allowed to attend an event on the South Lawn, but a print journalist was barred from entry.
According to the AP:
Last week’s federal court decision forbidding the Trump administration from punishing the AP for refusing to rename the Gulf of Mexico was to take effect Monday. The administration is appealing the decision and arguing with the news outlet over whether it needs to change anything until those appeals are exhausted.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit set a Thursday hearing on Trump’s request that any changes be delayed while case is reviewed. The AP is fighting for more access as soon as possible.
“Is it a constitutional crisis yet?” asked Missouri-based journalist Steve Lambson in response to the latest developments.
“More contemptuous behavior by this administration,” added attorney Bernadette Foley. “What will the courts do about it? What will GOP do?”
In the federal court ruling last week, the presiding judge wrote that access to presidential events “must be reasonable and not viewpoint-based,” though the White House has been clear the decision was a punitive response to editorial decisions by AP with which it disagreed.
“While the AP does not have a constitutional right to enter the Oval Office,” the judge said, “it does have a right to not be excluded because of its viewpoint. … All the AP wants, and all it gets, is a level playing field.”
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Attacks on journalists and hospitals continue in Gaza. Pictured here are Hossam Shabat and Mohammad Mansour who were killed on Monday, March 24 in airstrikes. Photos via X
Israel’s genocide in Gaza is in full swing as the Trump administration unleashes its ally and provides it with all the weapons it needs.
One week after the resumption of Israel’s genocidal aggression on Gaza, Netanyahu appears determined to continue on a path of massacres and devastation rather than return to negotiations to restore the ceasefire.
For almost a year and a half, using the most advanced military technology, Israel systematically targeted journalists and media workers, hospitals, and shelters full of civilians. The attacking of such “strategic” targets across Gaza by Israeli forces has resumed with the return to genocide.
Bombardment of hospitals
The Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital
On Friday, March 21, the IOF blew up the only cancer health facility in the war-torn enclave; the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital in central Gaza. The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza clarified that the IOF detonated the hospital after using it “as a headquarters” for its troops throughout the time they have been occupying the Netzarim Corridor, which separates the northern part of the Gaza strip from its south.
The ministry described the bombardment of the hospital as a “heinous crime” and affirmed that “this criminal behavior by the occupier is consistent with the systematic destruction of the healthcare system and is part of the ongoing genocide.”
For its part, the Turkish Foreign Ministry denounced the destruction of the hospital, which was built by Türkiye and operated by local authorities in Gaza, in a statement on Friday. The ministry said that the attack is part of Israel’s broader policy that aims at “making Gaza uninhabitable”.
“The deliberate targeting of a hospital providing healthcare services to civilians in Gaza is part of Israel’s policy to render Gaza unlivable and force the Palestinian people to displacement,” the statement said.
The ministry further urged the international community to take “firm and effective steps against Israel’s unlawful attacks and systematic state terrorism.”
Nasser Hospital
Israel’s systematic targeting of hospitals and healthcare workers has continued with a new deadly air strike that hit the surgical unit at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis in Northern Gaza on Sunday, March 23.
The assault killed at least two people and injured several staff members. One of those killed was identified as Ismail Barhoum, a member of Hamas’s political bureau in the Gaza strip, who was receiving medical treatment in the surgical unit at the time of the assault. The other slain person is a 17-year-old boy.
Barhoum was reportedly admitted to Nasser hospital as he had sustained critical injuries in an Israeli airstrike around one week ago.
Many believe the attack was launched to assassinate Barhoum. However, analysts and activists suggest that it also targeted four non-Palestinian physicians, who were frequently interviewed by western media outlets about the crimes committed by the IOF that they witnessed during the genocide in Gaza.
These physicians are:
Dr. Mark Perlmutter
Dr. Feroze Sidwha
Dr. Tanya Haj Hassan
Dr. Tammy Abughnaim
They were operating for hundreds of days on ICU patients and saving lives with limited medical supplies amid daily power outages.
Analyzing the attack, the Palestinian Youth Movement highlighted the significant role these physicians would play as witnesses at future international tribunals against Israeli officials via a post published on Instagram.
“The ability of these world-class surgeons to serve as highly educated, Western-based, ‘credible’ outside witnesses to the genocide, put their lives at existential risk from the moment they began their work during the genocide. The doctors knew this, yet despite the grave danger they continued to be under, they never stopped working and serving their patients, refusing to abandon them even after Israel’s ceasefire violations that caused the all-out war to resume,” the group wrote.
Surviving the attack, American trauma surgeon Dr. Feroze Sidwha wrote on his account on X: “I was at Nasser Hospital in Gaza when it was bombed today. One of my patients, a 17-year-old boy, was killed. He would have gone home tomorrow. If I had been changing his dressings, as I planned to this evening, I probably would have been killed too. Attacking hospitals is a war crime, and it needs to stop.”
Two Palestinian journalists killed in one hour
Amidst the resumption of its genocidal aggression on the Gaza strip, Israel has resumed the systematic targeting of journalists in an attempt to silence the truth. On Monday, March 24 two Palestinian journalists were assassinated in two separate attacks in one hour.
Palestine Today correspondent Mohammad Mansour was killed in an Israeli airstrike north of Khan Younis, before another airstrike hit the car of Al Jazeera Mubasher correspondent Hossam Shabat in Salah al-Din Street in the northern Gaza strip.
Videos of Mansour’s family bidding him a farewell were posted online. The videos showed the journalist’s grief-stricken father carrying his microphone and trying to make Mansour hold it again with his lifeless hands.
“Speak up, speak up, tell the whole world about what has been happening, the image can express everything,” Mansour’s father said as he was sobbing over his son’s dead body.
Hossam Shabat’s team shared his final message via his official X account, which he seems to have requested be published after his death.
“If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed—most likely targeted—by the Israeli occupation forces. When this all began, I was only 21 years old—a college student with dreams like anyone else. For the past 18 months, I have dedicated every moment of my life to my people. I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury. I slept on pavements, in schools, in tents—anywhere I could. Each day was a battle for survival. I endured hunger for months, yet I never left my people’s side,” he wrote.
“By God, I fulfilled my duty as a journalist. I risked everything to report the truth, and now, I am finally at rest—something I haven’t known in the past 18 months. I did all this because I believe in the Palestinian cause. I believe this land is ours, and it has been the highest honor of my life to die defending it and serving its people.”
“I ask you now: do not stop speaking about Gaza. Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories—until Palestine is free,” Hossam urged the free people of the world at the end of his message.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned the assassination of the two journalists in a statement on Monday.
“CPJ is appalled that we are once again seeing Palestinians weeping over the bodies of dead journalists in Gaza,” CPJ’s Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna said.
“This nightmare in Gaza has to end. The international community must act fast to ensure that journalists are kept safe and hold Israel to account for the deaths of Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour. Journalists are civilians and it is illegal to attack them in a war zone,” De la Serna added.
Israel appears indifferent about the lives of its captives
Since October 2023, Israeli fighter jets have been launching arbitrary shelling across the Gaza strip putting the lives of everyone there at imminent risk, including Israeli captives.
The Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, released a new video on Monday showing the two Israeli captives Elkana Bohbot and Yosef Haim Ohana, speaking to the Israeli public about their suffering.
Ohana emphasized that the video was not broadcast as an act of psychological warfare on Hamas’ part, but was instead something that he and Bohbot requested from their captors to have their voices heard by their people.
The captive stressed that closing the border-crossings and blockading humanitarian aid to Gaza by their government has left them with no food to consume. He also affirmed that Hamas fighters were “keen and concerned”, providing them with everything they needed.
Ohana said that he received a “severe blow” by his government when it decided to resume its aggression on Gaza on March 18, as the IOF’s aerial attacks could have killed them, and that they saw death before their eyes.
With an obvious outrage at the Israeli government, Bohbot said: “Enough with this government silencing our voice.”
“The prisoners who were with us before and now released, give them a chance to speak and express their opinions. Stop silencing their voices. Let them Speak. Let the truth come out,” he added.
Ohana and Bohbot called on released captive Ohad Ben Ami to recount his experiences in captivity, thus, that would pressure the Israeli government for speeding up their release.
The US has “unleashed Israel” with all the weapons it needs to proceed with genocide
Confirming the US’s full support and partnership in the renewed genocide in Gaza, Deputy US Special Envoy to “the Middle East” Morgan Ortagus told Fox News on Sunday, that the Trump administration “has unleashed Israel and provided all the weapons needed to continue the war.”
While the US seeks to reaffirm its partnership in murdering Palestinians, Israel continues to commit daily massacres across the Gaza strip, raising the official death toll to over 50,021 people killed since October 2023, according to the latest report published by Palestinian health authorities.
Widely respected institutions such as The Lancet medical journal, and UN human rights bodies have asserted that the death tally is likely severely undercounted, with the actual number being up to 40% higher.
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Leeds May Day march. Photo: Neil Terry Photography
