“What Will Chris Smalls Do Next?” asked New York (7/16/22). Apparently it didn’t like the answer.

US media know who Chris Smalls is.

• The New York Times (4/6/22) ran a profile: “Christian Smalls Is Leading a Labor Movement in Sweats and Sneakers.”
• New York (7/18/22) put him on its cover, saying, “Chris Smalls Did the Impossible: Organize an Amazon Warehouse.”
• “He Was Fired by Amazon Two Years Ago,” an NPR report (4/2/22) declared. “Now He’s the Force Behind the Company’s First Union.”
• “He Came Out of Nowhere and Humbled Amazon,” read a Time headline (4/25/22). “Is Chris Smalls the Future of Labor?”

Last week, Smalls took on another Goliath. As part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, he tried to deliver life-saving aid—including food and baby formula—to the people of Gaza, who are suffering from a severe famine deliberately engineered by the Israeli government.

The Handala, the ship carrying the aid, was illegally seized in international waters by Israel’s military, and Smalls was singled out for violence, choked and kicked by Israeli soldiers, apparently because he’s Black. Past attempts to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza have been dealt with even more harshly by Israel: In 2010, 57 activists aboard the aid ship Mavi Marmara were shot—nine of them killed—on their way to Gaza (Guardian, 6/4/10).

A near-complete blackout

The IDF targeting the one Black man on the aid ship is sadly unsurprising,” noted the New Republic (7/29/25), “as is the lack of uproar from US politicians and large media outlets.”

A popular political figure dramatically assaulted trying to save lives: Sounds like a newsworthy story, doesn’t it? But Smalls’ mission, his brutal detention and his subsequent release got next to no coverage in US corporate media.

He was covered in the British Guardian (“US Labor Activist Chris Smalls Assaulted by IDF During Gaza Aid Trip, Group Says,” 7/31/25). He was covered in progressive US outlets like Common Dreams (6/26/25), the New Republic (7/29/25) and Democracy Now! (7/31/25).

He was covered by outlets with a Black or Mideastern focus (Grio, 7/29/25; Black Enterprise, 7/30/25; Ebony, 7/31/25; Middle East Eye, 7/29/25; Middle East Monitor, 7/30/25).

But as independent labor reporter Mike Elk (Payday Report, 7/29/25) pointed out:

Despite Smalls having been profiled by every major media outlet in the US when he successfully led the union drive at Amazon, not a single major media outlet has covered his violent detention by the IDF.

In fact, the only news report we could find in a general-interest US news outlet was from Smalls’ hometown paper, the Staten Island Advance (7/29/25), which reported that a “Staten Island Labor Leader Was Reportedly Detained in Israel After Gaza-Bound Aid Vessel Was Intercepted.”

Regular readers may recall a similar news blackout, not quite as absolute, when Greta Thunberg, probably the most famous climate activist in the world, was blocked by Israel from delivering aid to Gaza on another Freedom Flotilla ship (FAIR.org, 6/5/25).

Characters that corporate media once found fascinating, risking their lives to save innocents: It would be hard to make up a story with more dramatic potential. Yet corporate media knew that these were stories to steer clear of—almost unanimously, in Smalls’ case.

The only thing worse than war crimes

“The government…recently accused Harvard of civil rights violations,” the New York Times (7/28/25) reported—without explaining that this mean allowing anti-genocide protests to make pro-Israel students feel uncomfortable.

The reason, of course, is the corporate media’s longstanding bias toward Israel—something FAIR (e.g., 8/22/23; Extra!, 11–12/93, 1–2/01, 9/14) has been documenting for decades. But it’s still puzzling; obviously, not every negative story about Israel gets killed. US media have even begun to gingerly acknowledge that Gaza is on the brink of mass starvation—with varying degrees of admission of Israel’s responsibility for this (FAIR.org, 7/29/25).

But even as media admit that Palestinian children are dying for lack of food, people who risk their lives to try to feed them aren’t treated as heroes—or even as curiosities. It’s as if, however bad Israel’s actions are, trying to stop or counteract them is somehow worse—even shameful, something to avert one’s eyes from.

It’s the only way to make sense of the continuing debate over academia’s response to the pro-Palestine protests that roiled campuses in 2024. The New York Times (7/28/25) recently reported:

Harvard University has signaled a willingness to meet the Trump administration’s demand to spend as much as $500 million to end its dispute with the White House…more than twice as much as the $200 million fine that Columbia University said it would pay when it settled antisemitism claims with the White House last week.

The “antisemitism claims” referred to here amount to accusations that these and other colleges did not do enough to squelch the protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza—which has since been identified as a genocide by prominent human rights groups like Amnesty International (12/5/24), Human Rights Watch (12/19/24) and B’Tselem (7/28/25).

Where is the debate over whether universities went too far in suppressing the free speech rights of students who were opposed to genocide? That seems like a discussion we’re never going to have. Apparently the only thing worse than crimes against humanity is trying to stop them.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Jim Naureckas.

• Dems blast Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” provisions on Medicaid and environment
• GOP budget bill would bar states from regulating Artificial Intelligence
• Displaced Gazans sleep in streets as Israel escalates offensive campaign
• Big City Mayors urge state lawmakers to support state’s Homeless, Housing Assistance, and Prevention program
• Bay democrats, environmentalists slam Newsom plan to fast-track Delta tunnel
• Judge dismisses charges against Newark NJ mayor arrested during congressional visit to ICE detention center

The post Dems blast Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” cuts to Medicaid and environment; Displaced Gazans sleep in streets as Israel escalates offensive campaign – May 21, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

As Israel unveils its final genocide push, and mass death from starvation looms in Gaza, western media and politicians are tentatively starting to speak up.

Who could have imagined 19 months ago that it would take more than a year and a half of Israel slaughtering and starving Gaza’s children for the first cracks to appear in what has been a rock-solid wall of support for Israel from western establishments.

Finally, something looks like it may be about to give.

The British establishment’s financial daily, the Financial Times, was first to break ranks last week to condemn “the West’s shameful silence” in the face of Israel’s murderous assault on the tiny enclave.

In an editorial – effectively the paper’s voice – the FT accused the United States and Europe of being increasingly “complicit” as Israel made Gaza “uninhabitable”, an allusion to genocide, and noted that the goal was to “drive Palestinians from their land”, an allusion to ethnic cleansing.

Of course, both of these grave crimes by Israel have been evidently true not only since Hamas’ violent, single-day breakout from Gaza on 7 October 2023, but for decades.

So parlous is the state of western reporting, from a media no less complicit than the governments berated by the FT, that we need to seize on any small signs of progress.

Next, the Economist chimed in, warning that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers were driven by a “dream of emptying Gaza and rebuilding Jewish settlements there”.

At the weekend, the Independent decided the “deafening silence on Gaza” had to end. It was “time for the world to wake up to what is happening and to demand an end to the suffering of the Palestinians trapped in the enclave.”

Actually much of the world woke up many, many months ago. It has been the western press corps and western politicians slumbering through the past 19 months of genocide.

Then on Monday, the supposedly liberal Guardian voiced in its own editorial a fear that Israel is committing “genocide”, though it only dared do so by framing the accusation as a question.

It wrote of Israel: “Now it plans a Gaza without Palestinians. What is this, if not genocidal? When will the US and its allies act to stop the horror, if not now?”

The paper could more properly have asked a different question: Why have Israel’s western allies – as well as media like the Guardian and FT – waited 19 months to speak up against the horror?

And, predictably bringing up the rear, was the BBC. On Wednesday, the BBC Radio’s PM programme chose to give top billing to testimony from Tom Fletcher, the United Nation’s humanitarian affairs chief, to the Security Council. Presenter Evan Davis said the BBC had decided to “do something a little unusual”.

Unusual indeed. It played Fletcher’s speech in full – all 12 and a half minutes of it. That included Fletcher’s comment: “For those killed and those whose voices are silenced: what more evidence do you need now? Will you act – decisively – to prevent genocide and to ensure respect for international humanitarian law?”

We had gone in less than a week from the word “genocide” being taboo in relation to Gaza to it becoming almost mainstream.

Growing cracks

Cracks are evident in the British parliament too. Mark Pritchard, a Conservative MP and life-long Israel supporter, stood up from the back benches to admit he had been wrong about Israel, and condemned it “for what it is doing to the Palestinian people”.

He was one of more than a dozen Tory MPs and peers in the House of Lords, all formerly staunch defenders of Israel, who urged British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to immediately recognise a Palestinian state.

Their move followed an open letter published by 36 members of the Board of Deputies, a 300-member body that claims to represent British Jews, dissenting from its continuing support for the slaughter. The letter warned: “Israel’s soul is being ripped out.”

Pritchard told fellow MPs it was time to “stand up for humanity, for us being on the right side of history, for having the moral courage to lead.”

Sadly, there is no sign of that yet. Research published last week, based on Israeli tax authority data, showed Starmer’s government has been lying even about the highly limited restrictions on arms sales to Israel it claimed to have imposed last year.

Despite an ostensible ban on shipments of weapons that could be used in Gaza, Britain has covertly exported more than 8,500 separate munitions to Israel since the ban.

This week more details emerged. According to figures published by The National, the current government exported more weapons to Israel in the final three months of last year, after the ban came into effect, than the previous Conservative government did through the whole of 2020 to 2023.

So shameful is the UK’s support for Israel in the midst of what the International Court of Justice – the World Court – has described as a “plausible genocide” that Starmer’s government needs to pretend it is doing something, even as it actually continues to arm that genocide.

More than 40 MPs wrote to Foreign Secretary David Lammy last week calling for him to respond to allegations that he had misled the public and parliament. “The public deserves to know the full scale of the UK’s complicity in crimes against humanity,” they wrote.

There are growing rumblings elsewhere. This week France’s President Emmanuel Macron called Israel’s complete blockade on aid into Gaza “shameful and unacceptable”. He added: “My job is to do everything I can to make it stop.”

“Everything” seemed to amount to nothing more than mooting possible economic sanctions.

Still, the rhetorical shift was striking. Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, similarly denounced the blockade, calling it “unjustifiable”. She added: “I have always recalled the urgency of finding a way to end the hostilities and respect international law and international humanitarian law.”

“International law”? Where has that been for the past 19 months?

There was a similar change of priorities across the Atlantic. Democratic Senator Chris van Hollen, for example, recently dared to call Israel’s actions in Gaza “ethnic cleansing”.

CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, a bellwether of the Beltway consensus, gave Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Sharren Haskel, an unusually tough grilling. Amanpour all but accused her of lying about Israel starving children.

Meanwhile, Josep Borrell, the recently departed head of European Union foreign policy, broke another taboo last week by directly accusing Israel of preparing a genocide in Gaza.

“Seldom have I heard the leader of a state so clearly outline a plan that fits the legal definition of genocide,” he said, adding: “We’re facing the largest ethnic cleansing operation since the end of the Second World War.”

Borrell, of course, has no influence over EU policy at this point.

A death camp

This is all painfully slow progress, but it does suggest that a tipping point may be near.

If so, there are several reasons. One – the most evident in the mix – is US President Donald Trump.

It was easier for the Guardian, the FT and old-school Tory MPs to watch the extermination of Gaza’s Palestinians in silence when it was kindly Uncle Joe Biden and the US military industrial complex behind it.

Unlike his predecessor, Trump too often forgets the bit where he is supposed to put a gloss on Israeli crimes, or distance the US from them, even as Washington ships the weapons to carry out those crimes.

But also, there are plenty of indications that Trump – with his constant craving to be seen as the top dog – is increasingly annoyed at being publicly outfoxed by Netanyahu.

This week, as Trump headed to the Middle East, his administration secured the release of Israeli soldier Edan Alexander, the last living US citizen in captivity in Gaza, by bypassing Israel and negotiating directly with Hamas.

In his comments on the release, Trump insisted it was time to “put an end to this very brutal war” – a remark he had very obviously not coordinated with Netanyahu.

Notably, Israel is not on Trump’s Middle East schedule.

Right now seems a relatively safe moment to adopt a more critical stance towards Israel, as presumably the FT and Guardian appreciate.

Then there is the fact that Israel’s genocide is reaching its endpoint. No food, water or medicines have entered Gaza for more than two months. Everyone is malnourished. It is unclear, given Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s health system, how many have already died from hunger.

But the pictures of skin-and-bones children emerging from Gaza are uncomfortably reminiscent of 80-year-old images of skeletal Jewish children imprisoned in Nazi camps.

It is a reminder that Gaza – strictly blockaded by Israel for 16 years before Hamas’ 7 October 2023 breakout – has been transformed over the past 19 months from a concentration camp into a death camp.

Parts of the media and political class know mass death in Gaza cannot be obscured for much longer, not even after Israel has barred foreign journalists from the enclave and murdered most of the Palestinian journalists trying to record the genocide.

Cynical political and media actors are trying to get in their excuses before it is too late to show remorse.

The ‘Gaza war’ myth

And finally there is the fact that Israel has declared its readiness to take hands-on responsibility for the extermination in Gaza by, in its words, “capturing” the tiny territory.

The long-anticipated “day after” looks like it is about to arrive.

For 20 years, Israel and western capitals have conspired in the lie that Gaza’s occupation ended in 2005, when Israel’s then prime minister, Ariel Sharon, pulled out a few thousand Jewish settlers and withdrew Israeli soldiers to a highly fortified perimeter encaging the enclave.

In a ruling last year, the World Court gave this claim short shrift, emphasising that Gaza, as well as the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, had never stopped being under Israeli occupation, and that the occupation must end immediately.

The truth is that, even before the 2023 Hamas attacks, Israel had been besieging Gaza by land, sea and air for many, many years. Nothing – people or trade – went in or out without the Israeli military’s say-so.

Israeli officials instituted a secret policy of putting the population there on a strict “diet” – a war crime then as now – one that ensured most of Gaza’s young became progressively more malnourished.

Drones whined constantly overhead, as they do now, watching the population from the skies 24 hours a day and occasionally raining down death. Fishermen were shot and their boats sunk for trying to fish their own waters. Farmers’ crops were destroyed by herbicides sprayed from Israeli planes.

And when the mood took it, Israel sent in fighter jets to bomb the enclave or sent soldiers in on military operations, killing hundreds of civilians at a time.

When Palestinians in Gaza went out week after week to stage protests close to the perimeter fence of their concentration camp, Israeli snipers shot them, killing some 200 and crippling many thousands more.

Yet, despite all this, Israel and western capitals insisted on the story that Hamas “ruled” Gaza, and that it alone was responsible for what went on there.

That fiction was very important to the western powers. It allowed Israel to evade accountability for the crimes against humanity committed in Gaza over the past two decades – and it allowed the West to avoid complicity charges for arming the criminals.

Instead, the political and media class perpetuated the myth that Israel was engaged in a “conflict” with Hamas – as well as intermittent “wars” in Gaza – even as Israel’s own military termed its operations to destroy whole neighbourhoods and kill their residents “mowing the lawn”.

Israel, of course, viewed Gaza as its lawn to mow. And that is precisely because it never stopped occupying the enclave.

Even today western media outlets collude in the fiction that Gaza is free from Israeli occupation by casting the slaughter there – and the starvation of the population – as a “war”.

Loss of cover story

But the “day after” – signalled by Israel’s promised “capture” and “reoccupation” of Gaza – brings a conundrum for Israel and its western sponsors.

Till now Israel’s every atrocity has been justified by Hamas’ violent breakout on 7 October 2023.

Israel and its supporters have insisted that Hamas must return the Israelis it took captive before there can be some undefined “peace”. At the same time, Israel has also maintained that Gaza must be destroyed at all costs to root out Hamas and eliminate it.

These two goals never looked consistent – not least because the more Palestinian civilians Israel killed “rooting out” Hamas, the more young men Hamas recruited seeking vengeance.

The constant stream of genocidal rhetoric from Israeli leaders made clear that they believed there were no civilians in Gaza – no “uninvolved” – and that the enclave should be levelled and the population treated like “human animals”, punished with “no food, water or fuel”.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich reiterated that approach last week, vowing that “Gaza will be entirely destroyed” and that its people would be ethnically cleansed – or, as he put it, forced to “leave in great numbers to third countries”.

Israeli officials have echoed him, threatening to “flatten” Gaza if the hostages are not released. But in truth, the captives held by Hamas are just a convenient pretext.

Smotrich was more honest in observing that the hostages’ release was “not the most important thing”. His view is apparently shared by the Israeli military, which has reportedly put that aim last in a list of six “war” objectives.

More important to the military are “operational control” of Gaza, “demilitarization of the territory” and “concentration and movement of the population”.

With Israel about to be indisputably, visibly in direct charge of Gaza again – with the cover stories stripped away of a “war”, of the need to eliminate of Hamas, of civilian casualties as “collateral damage” – Israel’s responsibility for the genocide will be incontestable too, as will the West’s active collusion.

That was why more than 250 former officials with Mossad, Israel’s spy agency – including three of its former heads – signed a letter this week decrying Israel’s breaking of the ceasefire in early March and its return to “war”.

The letter called Israel’s official objectives “unattainable”.

Similarly, the Israeli media reports large numbers of Israel’s military reservists are no longer showing up when called for a return to duty in Gaza.

Ethnic cleansing

Israel’s western patrons must now grapple with Israel’s “plan” for the ruined territory. Its outline has been coming more sharply into focus in recent days.

In January Israel formally outlawed the United Nations refugee agency UNRWA that feeds and cares for the large proportion of the Palestinian population driven off their historic lands by Israel in earlier phases of its decades-long colonisation of historic Palestine.

Gaza is packed with such refugees – the outcome of Israel’s biggest ethnic cleansing programme in 1948, at its creation as a “Jewish state”.

Removing UNRWA had been a long-held ambition, a move by Israel designed to help rid it of the yoke of aid agencies that have been caring for Palestinians – and thereby helping them to resist Israel’s efforts at ethnic cleansing – as well as monitoring Israel’s adherence, or rather lack of it, to international law.

For the ethnic cleansing and genocide programmes in Gaza to be completed, Israel has needed to produce an alternative system to UNRWA’s.

Last week, it approved a scheme in which it intends to use private contractors, not the UN, to deliver small quantities of food and water to Palestinians. Israel will allow in 60 trucks a day – barely a tenth of the absolute minimum required, according to the UN.

There are several catches. To stand any hope of qualifying for this very limited aid, Palestinians will need to collect it from military distribution points located in a small area at the southern tip of the Gaza strip.

In other words, some two million Palestinians will have to crowd into a location that has no chance of accommodating them all, and even then will have only a tenth of the aid they need.

They will have to relocate too without any guarantee from Israel that it won’t continue bombing the “humanitarian zones” they have been herded into.

These military distribution zones just so happen to be right next to Gaza’s sole, short border with Egypt – exactly where Israel has been seeking to drive the Palestinians over the past 19 months in the hope of forcing Egypt to open the border so the people of Gaza can be ethnically cleansed into Sinai.

Under Israel’s scheme, Palestinians will be screened in these military hubs using biometric data before they stand any hope of receiving minimum calorie-controlled handouts of food.

Once inside the hubs, they can be arrested and shipped off to one of Israel’s torture camps.

Just last week Israel’s Haaretz newspaper published testimony from an Israeli soldier turned whistleblower – confirming accounts from doctors and other guards – that torture and abuse are rife against Palestinians, including civilians, at Sde Teiman, the most notorious of the camps.

War on aid

Last Friday, shortly after Israel announced its “aid” plan, it fired a missile into an UNRWA centre in Jabaliya camp, destroying its food distribution centre and warehouse.

Then on Saturday, Israel bombed tents used for preparing food in Khan Younis and Gaza City. It has been targeting charity kitchens and bakeries to close them down, in an echo of its campaign of destruction against Gaza’s hospitals and health system.

In recent days, a third of UN-supported community kitchens – the population’s last life line – have closed because their stores of food are depleted, as is their access to fuel.

According to the UN agency OCHA, that number is rising “by the day”, leading to “widespread” hunger.

The UN reported this week that nearly half a million people in Gaza – a fifth of the population – faced “catastrophic hunger”.

Predictably, Israel and its ghoulish apologists are making light of this sea of immense suffering. Jonathan Turner, chief executive of UK Lawyers for Israel, argued that critics were unfairly condemning Israel for starving Gaza’s population, and ignoring the health benefits of reducing “obesity” among Palestinians.

In a joint statement last week, 15 UN agencies and more than 200 charities and humanitarian groups denounced Israel’s “aid” plan. The UN children’s fund UNICEF warned that Israel was forcing Palestinians to choose between “displacement and death”.

But worse, Israel is setting up its stall once again to turn reality on its head.

Those Palestinians who refuse to cooperate with its “aid” plan will be blamed for their own starvation. And international agencies who refuse to go along with Israeli criminality will be smeared both as “antisemitic” and as responsible for the mounting toll of starvation on Gaza’s population.

There is a way to stop these crimes degenerating further. But it will require western politicians and journalists to find far more courage than they have dared muster so far. It will need more than rhetorical flourishes. It will need more than public handwringing.

Are they capable of more? Don’t hold your breath.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

The Biden administration has approved the deployment of 1,000 CIA-trained private mercenaries as part of a joint U.S.-Israeli plan to turn Gaza’s apocalyptic rubblescape into a high-tech dystopia.

Starting with Al-Atatra, a village in the northwestern Gaza Strip, the plan calls to build what the Israeli daily Ynet calls “humanitarian bubbles” – turning the remains of villages and neighborhoods into tiny concentration camps cut off from their environs and surrounded and controlled by mercenaries.

These mercenaries will be hired by the CIA. “The plan, approved by White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, calls for the Israeli military to clear out pockets of Palestinian resistance. … 48 hours after stamping out resistance, they plan to erect separation walls around the neighborhood, forcing its residents, and no one else, to enter and exit using biometric identification under the CIA contractors’ control. Those who do not accept the biometric regime would be refused humanitarian aid.” In other words: they will starve to death. The Gazans who do accept “the biometric regime” won’t be starved to death. Biometrics includes fingerprinting but also other physical — and also behavioral — measurements of an individual who is being kept under surveillance.

The company at the forefront of this plan is called Global Development Company, described in its promotional materials as an “Uber for war zones.” Israeli-American businessman Moti Kahana owns it and employs several top Israeli and American military intelligence officials, including retired U.S. Navy Captain Michael Durnan, retired U.S. Special Forces captain Justin Sapp, former Israeli military intelligence division head Yossi Kuperwasser, and former Israeli military chief intelligence officer David Tzur.

[That is GDC’s promotional video, “GDC- Global Delivery Company.”]

Kahana has played a key role in the dirty war against Syria in the 2010s and worked with the CIA-backed Free Syrian Army [the “FSA,” which the U.S. Government under Obama hired to help overthrow and replace the Russia-and-Iran-supported President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad; and Dan Cohen’s FSA link is to an article in Britain’s Independent heroizing Kahana, headlining him as “Israeli man starts ‘Good Samaritan’ charity to get injured Syrian women and children to Israel for medical help.” That article opens with a video in which he speaks as a “philanthropist.”]

… GDC has also been involved in Ukraine, where it collaborated with the Zionist organization, the American Joint Distribution Committee, to operate a refugee camp in Romania near its border with Ukraine. …

Kahana’s Gaza plan has been in the works since at least February 2024. He presented the plan to establish these electronic cantons – what Jewish News referred to as “gated communities” – to the White House, State Department, and Defense Department, as well as Netanyahu. U.S. officials did not respond. While the Israeli military had agreed, the Israeli prime minister shot it down. “What’s the rush?” he quipped. …

However, as Hamas has maintained its civil control throughout Gaza and Israel has failed to defeat armed resistance groups, the Netanyahu government is relying on the U.S. to do its bidding. …

While the [original version of the] proposal called for the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, or Saudi Arabia to assume civilian control over the Gaza Strip, that has failed to materialize, prompting the United States to approve deployment of CIA contractors.

In other words: finally, Netanyahu, too, approved the plan.

The Jewish News article that Cohen refers to was dated 4 April 2024, and praises Kahana’s plan for Gaza, calls it “humanitarian,” and says:

The meticulous plan, seen by Jewish News, envisages the creation of “gated communities” in a safe space in the Strip and biometric recognition put in place for civilian recipients of aid. Those who did not pass the biometric tests would not have received aid. The gated communities are described as a Secure Humanitarian Logistics Corridor which, the plan states, “once established, can process and securely deliver humanitarian assistance from other sources across Gaza”.

In other words: the plan is as Cohen describes it, but employs euphemistic phrasings to deceive fools into believing that Kahana, his GDC, and his concentration camps for cooperative Gazan survivors, are “humanitarian,” and “gated communities,” such as that phrase is used in America to refer to protected oases of peace amidst a surrounding environment of war — like saying, “We’ll protect you Gazans.”

Cohen’s article didn’t mention the U.S. ‘Defense’ Department’s Defense Forensics & Biometrics Agency (DFBA), but this federal Agency (which he does link to without mentioning it) was, in fact, established by President Obama in 2012, and is crucially involved in what Kahana’s GDC is doing in Gaza. In 2016, DFBA’s “Overview” stated: “Biometrics and forensics are critical to identifying known and unknown individuals by matching them with automated records (such as for access control) or with anonymous samples (such as crime scene investigations).” In other words: the surviving Gazans will be tracked not by a number that is tattoed onto their arms like was done at Auschwitz to prisoners who weren’t immediately sent to their deaths, but instead tracked by the person’s “biometrics.” So: Israel’s Jews use Hitler’s — the original form of  — nazism, but against different people, and with modern technology.

Furthermore: their propaganda is far more sophisticated than Joseph Goebbels’s was.

The link that Cohen provides to DFBA is to its current promotional video, their latest “Overview.”

It makes clear that DFBA is being used by the federal Government not ONLY in order to control the surviving Gazans, but ALSO in order to control the American people, as well as to extend the American empire throughout the world.

In other words: Yesterday it was the Jews who were the target; today it is the surviving Gazans who are, and also an increasing percentage of Americans are (targeted by our own Government); and, in the future, this system is to become expanded to everyone.

Cohen’s article also (at the word “worked”) linked to (but unfortunately out of context) a self-promotional youtube by and for Kahana himself, that appears to have been intended by him to promote himself to both Russians and Syrians, as being a magnanimous israeli philanthropist who rescues victims of his hated Assad, because he cares so much about the Syrian people.

We are already well beyond George Orwell’s prophetic novel 1984. This is the reality of today’s U.S. empire.

On October 24 was posted to X an exposé by James Li, of the top people at the U.S. magazine the Atlantic, which opens, “Jeffrey Goldberg, Atlantic‘s Editor-in-Chief who compared Trump to Hitler, was an IDF prison guard at a facility known for torture and sex abuse. He also pushed the false Saddam-Al-Qaeda link that led to the Iraq War and keeps pushing for war in the Middle East.” And the magazine’s owner is Steve Jobs’s deeply neoconservative widow, and she pitches her propaganda to Democratic Party voters, to keep them backing her candidates.

On October 15, ZeroHedge headlined “US Threatens Israel With Arms Embargo As Evidence Of War Crimes Becomes Impossible to Deny.” This is how successful U.S. politicians win votes from their suckers. Biden publicly threatens Israel at the same time as he privately authorizes — and arms to the teeth — what it is doing that he publicly condemns. Both of America’s political Parties are fully complicit in this deceit — this genocide.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Zuesse.

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Do you sense that there is less and less news reaching us from the occupied Palestinian territories, expressly from Gaza? Do you feel what I fear: – that moral outrage by the world public has been spent? That those millions of creative, passionate calls for a ceasefire have been exhausted? Or, that there’s simply nothing new to report, nothing that could possibly supersede the last massacre, the last failed negotiation, the last thwarted aid delivery?

Or is it simply our urgent summer plans with the family, school graduations, respite from blistering cities, finding a job or keeping this one, repairing the patio? College students who challenged our morality with determined demands, who remained steadfast when our endurance waned, are absent. Police forces who brutalized and arrested protesters have shown their worth to their bosses. Colleagues fired for their audacity to support Palestinian rights are hardly mentioned. University presidents who survived political assaults and humiliation must feel relieved that nothing worse happened. Pro-Israel thugs who assaulted university encampments have slunk back to their dens. Alarmed Jewish citizens are assured of their safety, especially with a spate of new regulations speedily devised by companies and legislators to protect Israeli interests. While elsewhere lawsuits aim to smother activism by Palestinian and Muslim organizations in our democratic havens.

Some may be heartened by the resolve of nations outside the Israel-US-Europe axis. Scores of countries have stepped up to endorse the ICC’s decision to arrest Israeli leaders. South Africa and others press for compliance on ICJ’s ruling regarding Israel’s genocidal actions. In late May, BRICS+10 voted to sponsor a world conference on Palestine. A few governments newly recognize the nationhood of Palestine.

As for the besieged, bleeding, grieving and terrorized Palestinian camps and towns, far less news is seeping out from their shredded dwellings. Forget about mainstream media. If they are moved at all to report on Gaza, it will brief, and then only for another ghastly massacre —was it Nuseirat, Al-Shifa Hospital, the UN school, or a breadline waiting for precious food crumbs?

Increasing absence of information stems from Israel’s genocide agenda itself. Israeli forces have assassinated Palestinian journalists and threatened the staff of media companies, with many eventually withdrawing their correspondents from the field. Where Israel cannot censor foreign reporters, it bans them. For many months, live-feeds transmitted through Palestinians’ phones overcame barriers. Today, they are far fewer, probably because those citizen-journalists have vanished. Or Wi-Fi access from ‘Gaza’s killing fields’ is impossible.

While we desperately search for fragments of daily conditions of Palestinians, UN and other rights agencies offer synopses of their research:– hundreds of pages of data coldly summarizing deaths and deprivations, the breakdown of civil order, Israeli crimes of increasing magnitude and audacity, including how Israel tortures Palestinian prisoners. Among films documenting the past months’ torment is The Night Won’t End, a moving account produced by Al-Jazeera’s Laila Al-Arian. It captures what we already know but must re-know.

Official documentation of past crimes is surpassed by today’s revelations. Could conditions possibly worsen? Yes they could, and did.

American and European governments, despite mouthing justice and peace efforts, continue their wholehearted support of Israel. Promises of aid are pulverized into Gaza’s blood-soaked desert. The latest outrage: the Rafah crossing, Gaza’s thin lifeline for aid via Egypt, closed by Israel in May, as of this week is rendered non-functional due to massive Israeli military actions there. Israeli civilians have blocked other access routes and ransacked aid trucks. The US-constructed pier meant to deliver aid to Gazans by sea is broken and useless; there’s no information if it will ever be functional; it could be dismantled. As for the successive UN resolutions, passed with great effort and compromise, to censure Israel and force a ceasefire, we are told they are unenforceable. Look how the Israeli ambassador to the UN tore up the UN Charter inside the exalted chamber itself! As the majority of the world condemns it, Israel seems to double down, emboldened by the impotence of public protests globally, confident of their international backers. Israel seems more empowered than ever to heighten its campaign against Palestinians – apparently unrestrained. Except perhaps by Hamas fighters within Gaza who somehow manage to inflict serious casualties on Israeli troops and destroy tanks and personnel carriers.

The post Gaza and Gazans Can’t Disappear     appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by B. Nimri Aziz.

Palestinians fleeing war-ravaged Gaza for safety in Australia were left stranded when the Labor government abruptly cancelled their visas.

The “subclass 600” temporary visas were approved between last November and February for Palestinians with close and immediate family connections.

Families of those fleeing Gaza, and organisations assisting Palestinians to leave Gaza, began to receive news of the visa cancellations on March 13.

• READ MORE: NZ government urged to help evacuate Palestinians from war on Gaza
• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘Everyone is susceptible to death’ — Palestinian New Zealander Muhammad Dahlen
• ‘This is one way we could help’ — World Vision spokesperson Rebekah Armstrong
• Hundreds stage Sydney ‘die-in’ to protest massacres in Gaza
• Israel’s war on Gaza live: More than 100 killed in al-Aqsa Hospital attack

The number of people affected by the sudden visa cancellations was unclear, however there were at least 12 individuals who had had visas cancelled while in transit.

The stories of those affected have been shared over social media. They included the 23-year-old nephew of a Palestinian-Australian, stranded in Istanbul airport for four nights after having his visa cancelled mid-transit, unable to return to Gaza and unable to legally stay in Istanbul.

A mother and her four young children were turned around in Egypt, when their visas were cancelled, meaning they were unable to board an onwards flight to Australia.

A family of six were separated, with three of the children allowed to board flights, while the mother and youngest child were left behind.

2200 temporary visas
The Department of Home Affairs said the government had issued around 2200 temporary subclass 600 visas for Palestinians fleeing Gaza since October 2023.

Subclass 600 visas are temporary and do not permit the person work or education rights, or access to Medicare-funded health services.

Israelis have been granted 2400 visitor visas during the same time period.

The visa cancellations for Palestinians have been condemned by the Palestinian community, Palestinian organisations and rights’ supporters.

The Palestine Australia Relief and Action (PARA) started an email campaign which generated more than 6000 letters to government ministers within 72 hours.

Nasser Mashni, president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN), called on Labor to “follow through on its moral obligation to offer safety and certainty” to those fleeing, pointing to Australia’s more humane treatment of Ukrainian refugees.

The Refugee Action Collective Victoria (RAC Vic) called a snap action on March 15, supported by Socialist Alliance and PARA.

‘Shame on Labor’
David Glanz, on behalf of RAC Vic, said the cancellations had effectively marooned Palestinians in transit countries to the “shame of the Labor government which has supported Israel in its genocide”.

Samah Sabawi, co-founder of PARA, is currently in Cairo assisting families trying to leave Gaza.

She told ABC Radio National on March 14 about the obstacles Palestinians face trying to leave via the Rafah crossing, including the lack of travel documents for those living under Israeli occupation, family separations and heavy-handed vetting by the Israeli and Egyptian authorities.

Sabawi said the extreme difficulties faced by Palestinians fleeing Rafah were compounded by Australia’s visa cancellations and its withdrawal of consular support.

She also said Opposition leader Peter Dutton had “demonised” Palestinians and pressured Labor into rescinding the visas on the basis of “security concerns”.

Labor said there were no security concerns with the individuals whose visas had been cancelled. It has since been suggested by those working closely with the affected Palestinians that their visas were cancelled due to the legitimacy of their crossing through Rafah.

PARA said the government had said it had “extremely limited” capacity to assist.

Some visas reinstated
It is believed that some 1.5 million Palestinians are increasingly desperate to escape the genocide and are waiting in Rafah. Many have no choice but to pay brokers to help them leave.

Some of those whose visas had been cancelled received news on March 18 that their visas had been reinstated.

A Palestinian journalist and his family were among those whose visas were reinstated and are currently on route to Australia.

Graham Thom, Amnesty International’s national refugee coordinator, told The Guardian that urgent circumstances needed to be taken into account.

“The issue is getting across the border . . .  The government needs to deal with people using their own initiative to get across any way they can.”

He said other Palestinians with Australian visas leaving Gaza needed more information about the process.

It is not known how many other Palestinians are waiting for their visas to be reinstated.

Republished from Green Left magazine with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Photograph Source: Al Jazeera English – CC BY-SA 2.0

In genocide, the end game is often resettlement. Take for example, the Namibian genocide of 1904-1908.  After defeating the Herero and later the Nama people in bloody battles, the Germans drove them into nearby deserts, where most of them died of dehydration and starvation. The more recent genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar in 2016-2017 involved a different type of resettlement: the mass escape to Bangladesh from military atrocities (the burning of villages, extrajudicial killings, and other human rights abuses).

In Gaza, the IDF has applied successive waves of forced resettlement to push the civilian population from north to south.  Beginning in October 2023, the IDF ordered the more than one million residents of North Gaza to move south, ostensibly to flee Israel’s relentless bombing of residences, businesses, hospitals, and schools in Gaza City and its suburbs. However, those fleeing southward discovered that even travel on the designated routes failed to offer safety.  Many travelers were shot or detained for interrogation as they walked or rode as directed. Further evacuation orders over the next months pushed Gazans from population centers in central and southern Gaza, including Deir al-Balah and Khan Yunis, toward the Rafah border with Egypt.

After four months of IDF bombardment, the uprooted Palestinians now inhabit makeshift tents near the Rafah border. At the same time, the Israeli military has begun to bomb Rafah refugee camps and hospitals, raising a death toll that has already reached more than 27,000 mostly women and children (not including the thousands lying dead under the rubble of bombed-out buildings).

Palestinians who relocated to Rafah from the north and mid-Gaza Strip at the direction of the IDF are now asking, “Where do we go from here?”

Israel’s continuing siege that began in mid-October has largely blocked access to food, clean water, fuel, and medical supplies. Even internet connections are spotty, often down for days at a time. The grossly inadequate commodities supplied by aid trucks are sometimes targets of Israeli missiles or raided by desperately hungry people. As winter rain and cold torment families huddling in water-soaked tents, starvation and disease threaten everyone, especially young children.

Israel stands accused of using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza. “It is not possible to create a famine by accident,” says Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University and author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine. After months of ignored international calls to open up aid channels, de Waal says famine in Gaza is now “inevitable.”

In the words of the Genocide Convention of 1948, acts of genocide against “a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” include “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” As principal enabler and arms supplier to Israel, the Biden administration has made American taxpayers complicit in Israel’s starvation policy and other acts of genocide.  Yet even now the U.S. President seeks to supply Israel with more billion’s worth of lethal arms.

So, what are the options for Gazans trying to survive bombs, starvation, illness, and injury in the midst of Israel’s new targeting of Rafah?  Three obvious choices are:

(1) Return to Gaza City or Khan Yunis;

(2) Accept resettlement offers from other countries; or

(3) Attempt mass escape into Egypt.

The first option is untenable because almost everything for life in the north has been destroyed. The Gazans would not likely accept resettlement in another country except the U.S. (which is not holding out a welcome mat. That leaves only one realistic possibility: a mass escape into Egypt. While there are major physical barriers at the border, they might not withstand the combined force of a million plus people.  Even if Israel should decide to accept a Hamas ceasefire proposal that would exchange hostages for the release of Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank, those steps could not save Gazans in Rafah; nor could they deter the upcoming famine.

What is most surprising is that both administration voices and the media, for all their talk of a two-state solution and PLO governance in the long term,  have not addressed the more urgent question of “What’s next for the Gazans?”  Meanwhile, thousands more of them will likely die of bombs, hunger, and disease.

The post What’s Next for Gazans? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by L. Michael Hager.

Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark, who led the UN Development Programme which oversees UNRWA, told RNZ Morning Report today it was the biggest platform for getting humanitarian aid into Gaza for a populations that is 85 percent displaced.

People are on the verge on starvation and going without medical supplies, she said.

“If you’re going to defund and destroy this platform, then the misery and suffering of the people under bombardment can only increase and you can only have more deaths.”

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: Helen Clark’s full interview on UNRWA
• Palestinians condemn suspension of UNRWA funding by Western nations
• Amnesty chief calls UNRWA funding cuts ‘heartless’, ‘sickening’ – Breakdown of funding
• UNRWA funding cuts condemned as ‘collective punishment’
• Other UNRWA reports from Al Jazeera

Clark said it was “most regrettable that countries have acted in this precipitous way to defund the organisation on the basis of allegations”.

Al Jazeera reports that top Palestinian officials and Hamas have criticised the decision by nearly a dozen Western countries led by the US to suspend funding UNRWA — the UN relief agency for Palestinians — and called for an immediate reversal of the move, which entails “great” risk.

Ireland and Norway have confirmed continued support for UNRWA, saying the agency does crucial work to help Palestinians displaced and in desperate need of assistance in Gaza.

The Norwegian aid agency said the people of Gaza would “starve in the streets” without UNRWA humanitarian assistance.

Hamas’ media office said in a post on Telegram: “We ask the UN and the international organisations to not cave into the threats and blackmail” from Israel.

Defunding ‘not right decision’
Former PM Clark did not deny the allegations made were serious, but said defunding the agency without knowing the outcome of the investigation was not the right decision, RNZ reports.

“I led an organisation that had tens of thousands of people on contracts at any one time. Could I say, hand on heart, people never did anything wrong? No I couldn’t. But what I could say was that any allegations would be fully investigated and results made publicly known,” she said.

UNRWA funding cuts — why Israel is trying to destroy the UN Palestinian aid agency.  Video: Al Jazeera

“That’s exactly what the head of UNRWA has said, it’s what the Secretary-General’s saying, that process is underway, but this is not a time to be just cutting off the funding because a small minority of UNRWA staff face allegations.”

Luxon suggested Clark’s plea would not affect New Zealand’s response.

“I appreciate that, but we’re the government, and they’re serious allegations, they need to be understood and investigated and when the foreign minister [Winston Peters] says that he’s done that and he’s happy for us to contribute and continue to contribute, we’ll do that.”

Clark said people could starve to death or die because they did not receive the medication they needed in the meantime.

Halting aid to Gaza via UNRWA is “deeply twisted and harmful”.
…And Australia has joined in the halt. https://t.co/17gV0AyPaj pic.twitter.com/5b7DU6dOaB

— Peter Cronau (@PeterCronau) January 30, 2024

If major donor countries like the United States and Germany continued to withhold funding, UNRWA would go down and there was no alternative, she said.

Clark did not believe there was any coincidence in the allegations being made known at the same time as the International Court of Justice’s ruling on the situation in Gaza.

According to the BBC, the court ordered Israel to do everything in its power to refrain from killing and injuring Palestinians and do more to “prevent and punish” public incitement to genocide. Tel Aviv must report back to the court on its actions within a month.

Clark said the timing of the UNRWA allegations was an attempt to deflect the significant rulings made of the court and dismiss them.

“I think it’s fairly obvious what was happening.”

States must reverse cruel decision to withdraw UNRWA funding
https://t.co/JRMfHH9P04

— Amnesty International (@amnesty) January 29, 2024

Israel had provided the agency with information alleging a dozen staff were involved in the October 7 attack by Hamas fighters in southern Israel, which left about 1300 dead and about 250 taken as hostages.

More than 26,000 people — mostly women and children — have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched a major military operation in response, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

More United Nations workers have been killed in Israel’s ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip than in any other conflict in the organization’s history. As the death toll for U.N. workers ticks above 136, Israel has announced it will no longer grant automatic visas to U.N. workers, after accusing the organization of being “complicit partners” with Hamas after months of U.N. officials repeatedly calling for a ceasefire and the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza. Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, calls Israel’s accusations “baseless” and part of a long pattern of smearing and obstructing the U.N.’s operations in Israel and Palestine.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

More United Nations workers have been killed in Israel’s ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip than in any other conflict in the organization’s history. As the death toll for U.N. workers ticks above 136, Israel has announced it will no longer grant automatic visas to U.N. workers, after accusing the organization of being “complicit partners” with Hamas after months of U.N. officials repeatedly calling for a ceasefire and the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza. Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, calls Israel’s accusations “baseless” and part of a long pattern of smearing and obstructing the U.N.’s operations in Israel and Palestine.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The conflict in Gaza began after the October 7th attacks by Hamas on Israel which left at least 1200 people dead.

Khaled Mohamed of UN News asked Samer Abdel Jaber what he witnessed on his visit.

This content originally appeared on UN News - Global perspective Human stories and was authored by Khaled Mohamed.

We are joined in Cairo by Fadi Abu Shammalah, the head of Gaza’s General Union of Cultural Centers, who describes the inhumane conditions he was able to escape in Gaza. “Every city in the Gaza Strip is beyond our imagination,” says Abu Shammalah. He notes that in just the last 36 hours, at least 170 civilians were killed. “Witnesses say that the Israeli bulldozers buried the injured people in Kamal Adwan Hospital. They buried them while they are alive,” says Abu Shammalah. “They were still alive. They killed and they buried them.” He calls this a war on Palestinian civilians, meant to destroy as much of Gaza’s infrastructure as possible.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

That’s the latest from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which expects the number of new arrivals to increase, while the violence continues to escalate. 

With more, here’s UNWRA’s chief of communications Tamara Alrifai, whose been speaking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson from Amman. 

This content originally appeared on UN News - Global perspective Human stories and was authored by Daniel Johnson.

That’s the latest from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which expects the number of new arrivals to increase, while the violence continues to escalate. 

With more, here’s UNWRA’s chief of communications Tamara Alrifai, whose been speaking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson from Amman. 

This content originally appeared on UN News - Global perspective Human stories and was authored by Daniel Johnson.

This month, as the devastating blockade on the Gaza Strip officially entered its 15th year, I re-read David Rose's explosive report, The Gaza Bombshell, to remind myself (as if it is possible to forget) how the United States and Israel worked together to transform my homeland into what even the most mainstream NGOs describe as "the world's largest open-air prison."

The blockade on Gaza is a stain on human history.

The story, as shocking as it may be, is quite simple. In early 2006, the Bush administration in the U.S. kindly "invited" the people of Gaza to head to the polls to elect their representatives in a legislative council election. While Gazan Palestinians thought, as is customary in democratic elections, they should vote for the candidates they believed would best represent their interests, this was not the case – Washington wanted us to vote according to its, and Israel's, interests instead.

So, Palestinians ended up making the "wrong" choice, at least in the eyes of our colonial oppressors. And we have been severely punished for this "mistake" for the past 15 years.

The deadly blockade imposed on us for electing Hamas turned Gaza not only into an open-air prison, but into a concentration camp: in this once beautiful enclave, two million people, almost half of them children under the age of 15, are now desperately trying to survive without a secure supply of water, food, electricity, and medicines, in a clear violation of international humanitarian law embodied in the Geneva Conventions.

In the last 15 years, while under this medieval siege that turned us into prisoners in our own homeland, we also endured four genocidal wars. More than 4,000 civilians, including many children, perished under Israeli bombardment, for the sole crime of being born in Gaza.

As we were being systemically brutalized, maimed, imprisoned, and killed, the international community did nothing but watch idly by – perhaps because the majority of us do not have what is needed (blue eyes and blonde hair) for them to conclude we are somewhat "civilized" and worthy of human dignity.

Of course, life in Gaza was not much better before this blockade.

In the year 2000, before the beginning of the Second Intifada, when many believed there was relative "peace" in Palestine, for example, my dream of starting an academic career at An-Najah University in Nablus in the West Bank was crushed simply because I was a resident of Gaza.

Back then, Israel allowed at least some Palestinians safe passage between Gaza and the West Bank. I applied for a permit, providing the necessary documents from An-Najah. One week later, I was told that my application had been turned down – no reason was given.

I wanted to find out, so I went to the Beit Hanoon (Erez) checkpoint one morning at 6:00 am to try and obtain access to the files Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, has on me. I was told to join a queue and wait to be interviewed by a Shin Bet officer who may or may not tell me why I was not allowed to pass into the West Bank. I waited all day. At 5:00 pm, someone just asked me to leave without offering any information. To this day, I have no idea why my application was denied. And I have not been able to visit the West Bank since.

So the siege of Gaza did not start 15 years ago. It did not even start 22 years ago, in 2000, when I tried to get that job in the West Bank. It started almost 30 years ago, with the signing of the Oslo Accords and perhaps even before that. Israel, and its powerful allies like the U.S., always saw us Gazans as an inconvenience, a surplus population they need to get rid of one way or another. The siege we have been under for the past 15 years is just the latest chapter in our oppressors' efforts to be rid of us.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter was not exaggerating when he said: "[Palestinians in the Gaza Strip] are being treated more like animals than human beings … [n]ever before in history has a large community like this been savaged by bombs and missiles and then been deprived of the means to repair itself."

The international community is obligated to take action and start doing what is necessary to finally open the doors of our prison.

That rare recognition of our situation by an American leader was of course more than 10 years ago, in 2009. Since then, our situation has become demonstrably worse. And it will continue to worsen.

I know things are going to get worse because Israel is publicly and unashamedly tightening our chains. At the end of last year, it announced the completion of a 65km-long (40 miles) underground barrier around Gaza equipped with hundreds of cameras, radars, and other sensors. The project reportedly includes a more than six-meter (20ft) high "smart fence" and its maritime barrier has electronic devices to detect infiltration by sea and a remote-controlled weapons system. Constructed using 140,000 tonnes of iron and steel, it apparently took Israel three and a half years to complete this high-tech addition to our prison.

Today, as it has always been, Israel is intent on erasing, destroying, and disappearing Gaza and Gazans. Israelis did not see us as humans with agency who deserve dignity and freedom 15 years ago, and they still do not acknowledge our humanity today. We are nothing but an inconvenience to them. As the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin once openly admitted, we could "sink into the sea" for all they care.

They will keep us imprisoned on this strip, and continue to slowly suffocate us for another 15 or even 150 years if the world does not wake up and say "enough." The blockade on Gaza is a stain on human history. On this shameful anniversary, the international community is obligated to take action and start doing what is necessary to finally open the doors of our prison.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Haidar Eid.