Category: News

Yaba Deen,* it has been two weeks since you were born, and these are my first words to you.

In the early hours of 21 April, I waited on the other end of a phone as your mother labored to bring you into this world. I listened to her pained breaths and tried to speak comforting words into her ear over the crackling line. During your first moments, I buried my face in my arms and kept my voice low so that the 70 other men sleeping in this concrete room would not see my cloudy eyes or hear my voice catch. I feel suffocated by my rage and the cruelty of a system that deprived your mother and me of sharing this experience. Why do faceless politicians have the power to strip human beings of their divine moments?

Since that morning, I have come to recognize the look in the eyes of every father in this detention center. I sit here contemplating the immensity of your birth and wonder how many more firsts will be sacrificed to the whims of the US government, which denied me even the chance of furlough to attend your birth. How is it that the same politicians who preach “family values” are the ones tearing families apart?

Read the full piece on The Guardian

Our reporting also reveals that an initial American assessment determined that the Israeli soldier intentionally shot Shireen – and that he should have been able to tell that she was a journalist because she was wearing the blue body armor marked “press”.

A key Biden administration official familiar with the examination told us that the soldier who had killed Shireen probably could have been convicted of murder in an American courtroom. But the initial finding was rejected. Instead, the Biden administration did a 180. The US concluded that it found no reason to believe her killing was intentional and blamed it on “tragic circumstances”.

Read more on The Guardian

For two months now, Israel has been blocking the entry of food and humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, deliberately starving over two million people, including more than one million children. On 16 April, Defense Minister Katz declared Israel would continue to block the entry of food and aid into Gaza, effectively admitting it is using starvation as a method of warfare. On 25 April, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) announced that its food warehouses in Gaza were now empty.

This deadly siege is enabled by the international community in an abdication of its responsibility to protect human lives. The Israeli government and other decision-makers continue to deliberately and openly order the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity that exacerbate the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. They must be held accountable for their actions and face justice.

On 18 March, Israel renewed its campaign of killing and destruction in Gaza. Since then, it has claimed the lives of over 2,200 Palestinians in indiscriminate bombings, shelling and gunfire. Since the start of the war, Israel has killed more than 52,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including over 1,500 medical, defense and aid personnel. The number of deaths caused by hunger, lack of drinking water and the spread of disease is unknown but expected to rise as Israel’s lethal campaign continues.

Read more at B’Tselem

 

Renowned poet and author wins prize for series of New Yorker essays on suffering of Palestinians in Gaza

 

The renowned Palestinian poet and author, Mosab Abu Toha, is among this year’s Pulitzer prize winners.

Abu Toha was awarded for a series of essays in the New Yorker documenting the lives and suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, where he has lived nearly all his life.

“I have just won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary,” he wrote on X. “Let it bring hope / Let it be a tale.”

His essays portrayed the “physical and emotional carnage in Gaza that combine deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience of more than a year and a half of war with Israel”, the Pulitzer board said on Monday.

Abu Toha, 32, was detained in 2023 by Israeli forces at a checkpoint as he tried to flee his home in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza with his wife, Maram, and their three young children.

In Israeli detention, soldiers “separated me from my family, beat me, and interrogated me”, he wrote. He was able to leave and escape to the US after friends abroad applied pressure for his release.

Read more on The Guardian

 

Conditions are increasingly desperate. The resumption of humanitarian relief is essential to save civilian lives

As Israel and the US attack international courts, other nations – including the UK – must do all they can to defend and bolster them. They must also press harder for the immediate resumption of aid. What is shameful about this ICJ case is the need to bring it. What is shameful is that almost half the children in Gaza questioned in a study said that they wished to die. What is shameful is that so many civilians have been killed, and so many more pushed to the brink of starvation. What is shameful is that this has, indeed, been allowed to happen.

Read more on The Guardian

This thinly veiled attack on freedom of speech aims to curb any meaningful discussion of the Israel-Palestine conflict

On 17 April, the National Day of Action for Higher Education, dozens of scholars of Jewish studies, Holocaust studies and Middle Eastern studies – myself included – took part in an organised effort to intentionally violate the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s definition of antisemitism. 

Defying the IHRA’s definition was an integral part of this day of resistance to Maga authoritarianism, in solidarity with higher education, which saw hundreds of rallies, teach-ins and webinars across the United States. 

The IHRA definition of antisemitism, which is endorsed by Washington, is a thinly veiled attack on freedom of speech, academic freedom and free inquiry. It prevents scholars from describing and discussing the significance of well-documented historical and contemporary facts. 

The definition attempts to censor discussions of the settler-colonialism, systemic racism, apartheid and now genocide that have informed the history and current policies of the state of Israel. According to the examples cited by the IHRA, stating that Israel is a racist endeavour constitutes antisemitism, even if one doesn’t say anything about Jews as a people or Judaism as a religion. 

…..

Read more at: https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/why-i-violated-ihra-definition-antisemitism

IDF materials show that soldiers reloaded their magazines multiple times while shooting at 12 aid workers who tried to identify themselves ■ Before the shooting, the force was alerted to increased ambulance traffic in the area ■ The aid vehicles were on a permitted route that didn’t require coordination ■ The commander decided on his own to deviate from his assigned mission

The Israeli army unit that killed aid workers in Gaza’s Rafah last month had received a report about increased ambulance traffic on the route shortly before the incident. The soldiers fired at the vehicles continuously for three and a half minutes – even from point-blank range – reloading their ammunition multiple times, despite attempts by the aid workers to identify themselves.

Read more on Haaretz (the article is paywalled).

“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” — Hannah Arendt.

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden had a chance to demonstrate that he had limits to what Israel could do to Palestinians. Senator Bernie Sanders introduced Joint Resolutions of Disapproval to try and stop the constant flow of weapons that Israel uses to destroy Gaza. Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley voted along with 15 Senators to stop arming Israel. Unfortunately, Senator Wyden voted to continue the mass killing and starvation of the Palestinians of Gaza.

I read today that Israel killed another eight Palestinian children, burned to death in their tents in a so-called Gaza “Safe Zone.” The survivors smelled the stench of burning human flesh, the flesh of children. This criminality is what Wyden is paying for. 

The life of a Palestinian child is worth nothing to Wyden. Or rather, he is willing to spend and continue to spend billions of dollars to kill her, kill her family, and destroy every aspect of her existence.

The other week, Israeli soldiers executed fifteen medical rescue workers; the rescuer’s vehicles were marked with flashing emergency lights. Israeli soldiers systematically killed them, and then Israeli bulldozers came in and buried them, still wearing their medical gloves, some with their hands tied behind their backs. Israel buried them and their vehicles under the sand. 

The life of a Palestinian medical worker means nothing to Wyden. Or rather, he is willing to spend billions of dollars to kill them.

The brutal Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was quoted for saying, “Death solves all problems. No man, no problem.”

I fear that Senator Wyden has embraced the same for Palestinians, “No Palestinian, no problem.”

Kill children in droves. No child, no problem.

Kill medical workers by the score. No doctor, no problem.

Murder journalists daily. No news, no problem.

Destroy schools and mosques and churches and hospitals. No hospital, no problem.

Deny food and medical aid to hundreds of thousands. No food, no problem.

There is no red line, no stopping Wyden’s support for genocide—a brutal rejection of human rights, the sanctity of life, international law, and our values. Wyden and most in Congress, Democrat or Republican, uplift their own version of Stalin’s infamous phrase: No Palestinian, no problem.

Peter Miller – April 2025

 

 

Friday, May 30, 2025 · 7:30 PM (Doors open at 6:30 PM)

First Unitarian Church · 1211 SW Main St, Portland, OR

For more information and tickets, go to https://www.jpao.org/events

Turmoil spreads at company over Israel’s extensive use of its AI and cloud computing services in Gaza war

or the second time in the last month, Microsoft employees disrupted high-level executives speaking at an event celebrating the company’s 50th anniversary on 4 April, in protest against the company’s role in Israel’s ongoing siege on Gaza.

The AI executive Mustafa Suleyman was interrupted by the employees Ibtihal Aboussad and Vaniya Agrawal. The two were fired within days. The Microsoft president, Brad Smith, and the former CEO Steve Ballmer were shouted down at Seattle’s Great Hall on 20 March by a current and former employee.

The March event was preceded by a rally outside that also included current and former employees of the tech giant. Protesters projected a sign on to the hall’s wall saying: “Microsoft powers genocide” – a reference to Israel’s extensive use of the company’s AI and cloud computing services since 7 October 2023, as “the IDF’s insatiable demand for bombs was matched by its need for greater access to cloud computing services,” the Guardian reported.

Read more at The Guardian