Propaganda by omission is a dominant feature of the ‘mainstream’ news media. Indeed, it is a requirement. Rather than serving the public interest by fully exposing the brutal machinations of power, state-corporate media shield Western governments and their allies from scrutiny and focus the public’s attention on the crimes of Official Enemies.

Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza is but the latest example. Consider the dearth of media coverage given to the compelling and shocking testimony provided by leading British surgeon, Professor Nick Maynard, who works as a consultant gastrointestinal surgeon at Oxford University Hospital.

Maynard left Gaza just before Israel took control of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt on 7 May. He had been operating on Palestinian patients for two weeks and he gave a very disturbing account of what he had observed.

The first topic he highlighted was ‘the direct targeting of healthcare workers’ by the Israeli military, describing how ‘hundreds have been killed’ and ‘hundreds have been abducted’. Maynard had personally worked with one young doctor and one young nurse who had been abducted and held in captivity for 45 days and 60 days, respectively. They both gave him ‘very graphic and stark descriptions of their daily torture at the hands of the Israeli defence force’. He described the experience of hearing their stories as ‘extremely harrowing’.

Maynard had also been to Gaza over Christmas and New Year where he worked at Al-Aqsa hospital. He “spent the whole two weeks operating all the time on major explosive injuries to the abdomen and to the chest. And it was really nonstop.”

His visit was unexpectedly cut short in early January when the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) ordered the medical staff, along with the hospital’s 600 patients, to evacuate the hospital. A few British newspaper reports that included accounts by Maynard and colleagues were published at the time on the “nightmare” of working in “one of ‘Gaza’s last functioning hospitals” (Daily Mirror, 18 January, 2024), “The single worst thing I’ve seen” (Daily Telegraph, 12 January, 2024), and “British surgeon haunted by Gaza horrors pledges to go back” (The Times, 4 February, 2024).

In March, the Guardian reported that a delegation of American and British doctors had arrived in Washington DC to tell the Biden administration that the Israeli military was systematically destroying Gaza’s health infrastructure in order to drive Palestinians out of their homes. Maynard was quoted, accusing the IDF of committing “appalling atrocities”, although the article did not address these in depth.

He said:

“The IDF are systematically targeting healthcare facilities, healthcare personnel and really dismantling the whole healthcare system.”

He continued:

“It’s not just about targeting the buildings, it’s about systematically destroying the infrastructure of the hospitals. Destroying the oxygen tanks at the al-Shifa hospital, deliberately destroying the CT scanners and making it much more difficult to rebuild that infrastructure. If it was just targeting Hamas militants, why are they deliberately destroying the infrastructure of these institutions?”

According to Maynard, Israel’s strategy of targeting hospitals and healthcare facilities is intended to drive the Palestinians from their homes:

“It persuades the local population to leave. If a hospital has been dismantled, if the locals see there is no medical care available and see the disrupted infrastructure, it’s yet another factor that drives them south.” [At that time, Israel had designated the south of Gaza a “safe zone” for Palestinians to seek refuge.]

In an interview with Nick Ferrari of London-based LBC radio on 2 April, Maynard made further shocking revelations. The timing of the interview was linked to the IDF having just destroyed another hospital, Al-Shifa, where Maynard had also previously worked. Around 400 Palestinians had reportedly been killed in a brutal two-week attack by Israeli forces.

Maynard told Ferrari:

“Every single part of the hospital has been destroyed. The whole infrastructure of the hospital has been destroyed. When I spoke to Marwan [a Palestinian colleague] yesterday, he told me there were 107 patients, 60 medical staff. God only knows what has happened to them. I think we’ve seen some of the pictures. Surgeons I know have been executed in the last 48 hours there. Bodies have been discovered in the last 12-24 hours who had been handcuffed, with their hands behind their back. [Our added emphasis].”

He added:

“And so, there is no doubt at all, that multiple healthcare workers have been executed there in the last few days.”

Ferrari then asked:

“You believe executed by whom, doctor?”

Maynard:

“By the Israeli Defence Force.

Ferrari:

“Why would they seek to execute surgeons and medical professionals?”

Maynard:

“Well, they’ve been doing it since October the 7th. Over 450 healthcare workers have been killed. Friends of mine that I’ve worked with over the years. Many have been abducted as well, and nothing has been heard of them since. So, there is no doubt in my mind that – I can bear witness to this from my time at Al-Aqsa hospital and from talking to people that there has been direct targeting of the healthcare system in Gaza, direct targeting of hospitals and multiple killings of healthcare workers.”

Maynard also made clear that neither he, nor any of his colleagues, ever saw evidence of Hamas using hospitals or healthcare facilities as bases for their operations, despite numerous Israeli claims to the contrary.

BBC Silence

“Mainstream” media showed minimal interest in this highly credible testimony from a British surgeon on Israel’s deliberate targeting of healthcare workers, including actual execution of surgeons. As far as we can see, there is nothing about Maynard’s testimony exposing these executions on the BBC News website.

An article on the Guardian website on 7 April did cover Maynard’s testimony about targeting of healthcare workers and infrastructure, but made no mention of his statement that Palestinian surgeons had been executed by Israeli soldiers. Nor was it mentioned anywhere else in the entirety of the British national press.

The Telegraph carried an interview with Maynard on 12 January in which he said:

“here can be certainly no doubt in my mind from what I’ve recently witnessed that [Israel] are directly targeting healthcare structures with a view to completely disabling the healthcare system in Gaza.”

The Telegraph appears not to have reported Maynard’s subsequent claim that he personally knew surgeons who have since been executed by Israeli soldiers.

On 13 May, International Nurses Day, the Gaza Health Ministry announced that at least 500 medical personnel had been killed by Israel since 7 October. Dr Omar Abdel-Mannan, a paediatric neurologist and co-founder of Healthcare Workers for Palestine, said that the only way Israel could ‘justify’ these killings would be if they see these healthcare workers not as humans, but as “human animals”. As readers may recall, Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant infamously described his Palestinian enemies as “human animals”.

Of his most recent trip, Maynard said that:

“the very strong narrative of the patients I was treating over the last two weeks were those with terrible infective complications as a direct result of malnutrition, and this was very stark indeed.”

He gave a graphic insight into the hellish conditions:

“And I operated on many patients in the last two weeks who had awful complications from their abdominal surgery related to inadequate nutrition, and particularly those with [the] abdominal wall breaking down. So, literally their intestines end up hanging outside. And the intestinal repairs that have been carried out to deal with the damage to the bowels leaking, so their bowel contents leaking out from different parts of the abdomen, covering their bodies, covering their beds.”

He drew particular attention to:

“The lack of resources to deal with these inadequate numbers of colostomy bags, wound management devices and nutritional support.”

Maynard explained the consequences for patients:

“They get this vicious cycle of malnutrition, infection, wounds breaking down, more infection, more malnutrition. So, it’s devastating and we will see far more of that over the coming months.”

He gave examples of two young female patients he had treated: Tala who was 16 and Lama who was 18, both of whom had survivable injuries. Tragically, they both died “as a direct result of malnutrition”.

This was yet more shocking and credible testimony from an experienced British consultant surgeon. It should have been headline news across the British press and broadcasting outlets. But searches of the Lexis-Nexis database of newspapers, together with Google searches, reveal minimal “mainstream” coverage: one article in the Independent.

If this had been evidence against “Putin’s Russia” or “Assad’s Syria”, it would have generated huge headlines, in-depth reporting and anguished commentary across all major news media. Once again, we see the insidiously corrupt phenomenon of propaganda by omission.

It is noteworthy that, last November, the BBC News website did feature Maynard, “who’s been travelling to the Gaza Strip and West Bank for more than a decade.” Six months ago, he was once again on “standby to go and work in operating theatres with the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians”. With remarkable courage, he told the BBC:

“I think there is fear, apprehension, not knowing what one would find, but I think the other motives for doing so… are so powerful that they outweigh everything else. I consider it a huge privilege to be in a position to help these people who need help more than most of us can possibly understand.”

Now that Maynard has returned from Gaza with horrific accounts, not least of the murder of healthcare workers by the Israeli military, the BBC appears not in the least interested. When we pointed this out via X (formerly Twitter), directly challenging John Neal, editor of BBC News at One, Six and Ten, and Paul Royall, executive editor of the BBC News Channel, the public response was huge. Our social media outreach is routinely suppressed by the deliberately obscure algorithms of Facebook and X. But this particular tweet spread widely by our standards, being shared 740 times at the time of writing. Shamefully, there has been no response from the BBC.

When Genocide Is Merely “War”

In the meantime, BBC News persists in labelling the Gaza genocide as the ‘Israel-Gaza war’. The day after it was reported that almost half a million Palestinians had fled Rafah in the south of Gaza, despite having previously been designated a “safe zone” by Israel, as discussed above, the BBC failed to follow up on the story.

One was presumably supposed to imagine that this huge number of people was no longer in danger: at risk of being bombed or dying under Israeli-imposed hunger, malnutrition and disease.

That same week, the BBC News website had as many as four ‘Live’ feeds running simultaneously. Not one of them focused on the Israeli-inflicted horrors in Gaza. This is truly remarkable. Has there been a BBC directive from senior management not to give too much attention to Israel’s genocide of Palestinians? Where are the BBC whistleblowers who can let the public know what’s going on inside the corporation?

A vanishingly rare exception appeared on 24 October 2023, when BBC correspondent Rami Ruhayem – a former journalist for the Associated Press, who has worked as a journalist and producer for BBC Arabic and the BBC World Service since 2005 – sent a letter to the BBC’s Director-General, Tim Davie:

“Dear Tim,

I am writing to raise the gravest possible concerns about the coverage of the BBC, especially on English outlets, of the current fighting between Israel and Palestinian factions.

“It appears to me that information that is highly significant and relevant is either entirely missing or not being given due prominence in coverage.”

The emphasis now is emphatically on “missing”. It seems the global student and other protests have prompted the BBC to attempt to limit public dissent.

By contrast, BBC journalists can be quick to respond when they feel they have been subjected to unjust criticism. On 13 May, we retweeted a clip from Saul Staniforth, a media activist with a large following on X, about Israel banning Al Jazeera. Staniforth had included a quote from Sebastian Usher, a BBC News Middle East analyst:

“Al Jazeera – I think many people, if they DO watch it, WOULD see it as some kind of propaganda.”

We asked:

“And how do you think many people see BBC News?”

Clearly piqued, Usher contacted us the following day to say that his quote had been taken out of context. He said it was a direct response during a live interview to a question on the likely reaction by Israelis to the closing of Al Jazeera. He considered Staniforth’s tweet and our follow-up seriously misleading and the exact opposite of the tenor of his reporting on the issue.

We asked him which words he had used to express solidarity with Al Jazeera, or to speak out for press freedom and free speech. He declined to provide such a statement, saying that as a BBC journalist he was unable to do so in a public forum. Usher added that in his reporting he stressed that Al Jazeera sees its mission as righting what it believes is imbalance on Gaza reporting in international media by giving more space to Palestinian voices and voices on the ground.

We were happy to include the points he had made, which we did via Facebook and X. Usher responded to our very reasonable response with a grudging “Ok”.

It is worth noting that Usher strongly objected to being “quoted out of context” while working for a media organisation clearly trying to suppress public outrage at an ongoing genocide by reducing coverage.

Moreover, the essential observation we made stands: many people at home and abroad regard BBC News as an outlet of western propaganda. Its abject performance during the Gaza genocide – “the Israel-Gaza war”, as the state-mandated broadcaster puts it – is ample proof.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Media Lens.

Al-Kahlout is one of more than two dozen Palestinian journalists arrested by Israel since it launched a widespread bombardment of Gaza following the Hamas October 7 raid on Israel. After his release, Al-Kahlout made the “unbearable” decision to leave Gaza for Egypt, from where he spoke to CPJ about his experience covering the war, his detention, and the journalism environment in Gaza. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you manage to report at the beginning of the war, before your arrest?

For the first time, I faced problems covering a war. I had prepared my home for emergencies and wars, like installing solar power, allowing me to work normally in such situations. I lived in a relatively safe area in Beit Lahya. By the third or fourth day of the war, I started losing my journalistic tools like electricity, my phone, and laptop and primarily relied on my mobile phone. We had to buy an Israeli SIM card at a very high price because everyone needed it. This was the first time this happened in any war, but despite this, I continued to work day and night for 61 days, despite the difficult conditions — and this was before being arrested.

At the start, there were many journalists in the north, but in the second month of the war, I became one of the important sources. I was shooting videos and sending them for publication without compensation; I was helping everyone, including major channels. People in Gaza were very cooperative because they knew I was a journalist, so they gave me priority to charge my phone so my coverage could continue.

You manage a team of journalists. How did the hardships you describe affect that?

My colleagues are also my friends, as we have a personal relationship from years of working and collaborating on coverage from Gaza. Within days, communication with them was almost completely cut off. Unfortunately, I couldn’t play my usual role in assigning tasks, editing stories, and verifying the materials [and had to leave this to colleagues in regional offices]. With great difficulty, we managed to continue our work, although there was no problem finding stories. As a journalist in Gaza now, you find stories everywhere you go, and a thousand stories can be told in a thousand ways.

After about two months of covering the war, Israel detained you for 33 days. What happened?

At about 7 or 8 a.m. on December 7, 2023, the Israeli army ordered all the men in our area to come down from their houses and gather in a nearby area. They stripped us of our clothes, leaving us only in our underwear in the cold, handcuffed us from behind, and blindfolded us. Even so, we were not afraid at all. We are civilians and were taken out of our homes.

We stayed at Zikim base [in Israel], where we were interrogated and I was asked about my journalistic work. I was interrogated twice, once by the Israeli army and once by the Shin Bet [Israeli security service]. In the latter, the interrogator asked me about a report published in Al-Araby Al-Jadeed in 2018 about a failed Israeli unit operation in Gaza. [Al-Araby Al-Jadeed published several reports about the botched Israeli operation.]

I was blindfolded and forced to sit in a squatting position on a sand hill, with the soldier behind me continuing to hit me. During the interrogation, they also asked why I was in contact with leaders in Hamas. I answered that I speak with various personalities due to my work and request statements for publication. Their response was, “You’re a terrorist, you son of a dog,” and they started mocking and bullying me, then put tape around my mouth because I was arguing with them.

After about 12 hours, we were moved by a bus to the Sde Teiman military base belonging to the Israeli army. I stayed in this detention center, moving between several barracks, for 33 days. They assigned me the number 059889. Of course, no one called us by our names, we all had numbers called out in Hebrew, which we do not speak.

Every day in detention, they would separate us and move us between barracks. The food consisted of moldy bread. I spent almost the entire time in a squatting position on my knees, which caused me inflammation and severe pain. When I was arrested, my weight was 130 kilograms [286 pounds], and I lost 45 kilograms [99 pounds] in detention.

During the detention period, I was interrogated three times in the same manner, focusing on [my work with] Al-Araby Al-Jadeed and on Al-Jazeera [where I did not work] with questions about why I was in contact with Palestinian leaders in Gaza, and about my sources that I relied on to publish my journalistic reports in the newspaper. I told them I was a known journalist, that leaders would send us reports for publication, and that we did not publish everything we received but only what we could verify.

I was subjected to torture called “ghosting” daily, which involves being handcuffed with the hands upward or behind the back while blindfolded, in addition to significant psychological torture alongside physical torture. Even going to the bathroom was on their schedule.

Twenty days after my detention, a new person was detained and told me about the statements issued about me [by my outlet and rights groups] — and I learned that these statements were issued the same days I was tortured.

On the 32^nd day, the chief prison officer, prison officials, and Shin Bet came with prisoners from a prison in the Negev [in southern Israel]. They started calling out numbers, and the last name — or rather, number — on the list was mine. They gave us medicine to relax our bodies from the exhaustion of detention, and if they found anyone called out was injured or sick, they would not release them.

On the 33^rd day, we were transferred to a bus that roamed around before they removed the blindfolds and unshackled us, and I found myself in front of the Kerem Shalom crossing [into Gaza].

Detention left its mark on me, both psychologically and health-wise. The most significant issue I face is with my vision, as I cannot see well due to being blindfolded for 33 consecutive days and nights. My vision was excellent before my arrest. In detention, we were beaten and “ghosted” if any part of our eyes showed. I have severe chest inflammation and acute vertebral inflammation, resulting in leg pain, in addition to malnutrition, and lack of sleep. Before my travel, the cracks in my skin caused by detention conditions resulted in pus and severe pain. In addition to the bruises still on my body, I can’t sleep or rest normally since my release. I behave as if I were still in prison; even my sleep was affected by the prison experience and what I suffered. I would sleep in the same position we were forced into during detention.

After my release, I stayed in the journalists’ tent [a designated area for the press] in [the southern Gaza city of] Rafah for two months, where I tried to get back to work and to make sure my family is okay, but that was hindered by the blackouts and the lack of journalistic devices. I was hoping to get back to the north to my family, but day after day I lost hope that the war would end and I decided to leave for Egypt, which happened on March 10, and my family joined me on March 13. They arrived tired and sick, and we began the journey of treatment.

[Editor’s note: CPJ could not independently verify Al-Kahlout’s description of torture, but it is in line with human rights groups’ descriptions of the treatment of some Palestinians in Israeli custody. Reached by CPJ’s New York headquarters about Al-Kahlout’s allegations of mistreatment, the Israeli military’s North America spokesperson said: “The individuals detained are treated in accordance with international law. The IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target journalists. The IDF protocols are to treat detainees with dignity. Incidents in which the guidelines were not followed will be looked into.” CPJ in New York also emailed the Shin Bet about Al-Kahlout’s interrogation over a 2018 article, but did not immediately receive a reply.]

Have you returned to work? What are your plans?

Mentally, I am not capable of resuming work. I am still pursuing treatments and medications, and monitoring my health condition and that of my family. I don’t even have the basic work tools like a laptop.

We are currently waiting for visa procedures and to travel to [the Qatari capital of] Doha. But Doha will also be unknown to us. I hope my family and I can adapt to the new situation. My media institution supported me, but the situation in Gaza and the constant worry for the rest of my family in Beit Lahya kept me in perpetual terror. I feel anxious and tired.

I lost all my possessions; my house and my family’s house were destroyed, I lost my new car, and my small piece of land. Suddenly, we lost everything.

How do you compare covering this war to previous ones?

From the first day, it has been impossible to comprehensively cover the war. We lost our main sources of information [as blackouts hindered reporting and official sources became harder to reach] and no one can document all this destruction. Unfortunately, there is a significant lack of information and an inability to grasp the extent of the bombing and strikes happening in Gaza. This has prevented journalists from fully performing their jobs.

Dozens of very important stories of victims have been missed amid the killings and madness. The truth is, that the outside world sees only 10% of the actual reality in Gaza, and what we see is unimaginable. As journalists, we should simply apologize because we can’t cover everything. I used to be able to get all the news, and today, many significant stories haven’t been covered.

Given the scale of the genocide, the lack of empathy has been striking. I’ve been working in journalism since 2004 and have never seen this level of destruction in any war I covered, and I have covered all the wars on Gaza since then. In the past, we treated the killing of five people as a massacre, but today in Gaza, a massacre means 100 and more. People have become numbers and we don’t know the details of their stories, that is if we even know of their deaths.

Unfortunately, the absence of the internet and the lack of quick alternatives pose a real dilemma, and a journalist who loses his equipment cannot replace it. Almost all press offices were lost, and hospitals have become the main headquarters for journalists.

Journalists in Gaza have found no respect. Amid all these difficulties in covering and reporting events, there was another challenge: trying to survive, securing food and drink, and protecting the family. Moving even an inch in Gaza now is madness.

The Palestinian journalists couldn’t fully deliver the picture due to the massive bombings and communication blackouts that stopped stories from getting out. What was shared were just bits of breaking news, and the deeper stories were lost or silenced because journalists were targeted, there was no security, and essential supplies like electricity and the internet, and work tools like laptops were missing.

The people of Gaza and the journalists there suffered injustice in this coverage, which was made worse by the absence of foreign journalists who could have helped complete the story.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Doja Daoud.

RAFAH, GAZA — For more than two weeks, Israeli forces have laid siege to Al-Amal Hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, blocking all roads to the facility and deepening an already dire humanitarian crisis. 

The hospital is run by the Palestine Red Crescent Society, which has been raising alarm about the 18-day siege, during which at least one Red Crescent volunteer was killed. On Tuesday, Israeli forces ordered thousands of people to evacuate the hospital, most of whom were displaced from other parts of Gaza throughout the monthslong war. Hundreds of medical workers and wounded or disabled patients remain stranded inside.

Last month, the World Health Organization reported that more than 600 people had been killed inside health care facilities since Israel launched a retaliatory war on Gaza on October 7. The “ongoing reduction of humanitarian space plus the continuing attacks on healthcare are pushing the people of Gaza to breaking point,” a WHO spokesperson said.

After ordering residents of northern Gaza to evacuate to the south early on in the war, the Israel Defense Forces have been waging an intense assault on southern Gaza in recent weeks, including in Khan Yunis. The city’s largest hospital, Nasser Hospital, has also been besieged, with only five doctors left to treat the wounded. Just this week, hundreds more Palestinians have been killed by Israeli bombs, with the death toll since October nearing 28,000.

The Intercept spoke with Saleem Aburas, a relief coordinator with the Palestine Red Crescent’s Risk and Disaster Management Department, who has been trapped inside the Al-Amal Hospital complex since January 21.

“The siege we are enduring within the hospital feels like a never-ending nightmare,” Aburas said. “Even though there are wounded and deceased people right outside the hospital, we are paralyzed, unable to assist them, as the occupation’s snipers and Israeli aircraft target anyone venturing outside the hospital premises.”

The hospital’s ability to care for patients has deteriorated amid the blockade and a shortage of essential medical supplies, a situation made more dire by the lack of drinking water and food. “We face immense challenges in delivering adequate health care services to the injured, hampered by the occupation’s restrictions on the entry of medical supplies into the hospital,” Aburas said.

For those inside the hospital, communications with the outside world have been largely shut off. (To get online using an eSIM, Aburas must climb to the roof of the hospital and risk bombings or sniper fire.) “The communications blackout was another source of terror,” he said. “Everyone trapped in the hospital doesn’t know anything about his family and loved ones outside the hospital. All we know is that the Israeli bombing continues throughout the Gaza Strip.”

Aburas, who is 30 years old and joined the Red Crescent as a volunteer in 2011, said that the current war is unlike anything he has ever seen in Gaza. “Although I have lived through six Israeli aggressions and many escalations, the nature of the injuries that we saw during this Israeli annihilation of the Gaza Strip is unprecedented, to the point that medical teams are unable to deal with such critical cases due to the deterioration of the health situation.”

Israeli soldiers have at times made announcements over loudspeakers to tell people to stay inside the hospital. They have also targeted civilians in the hospital’s vicinity, Aburas said. On January 28, a sniper shot and killed a 40-year-old man named Omar Abu Hatab and then shot a 21-year-old man who tried to rescue him, Ahmed Muhareb. The two were buried on hospital grounds. “The occupation killed these two people, who were civilians, in cold blood,” Aburas said. 

January 30 was the most violent day of the siege, he said. “The Israeli air and artillery bombardment never stopped, causing damage to Al-Amal Hospital, with broken windows and fragments and debris flying into the hospital from the bombings.” That evening, Israeli soldiers stormed the hospital grounds, igniting fires in an area full of tents and ordering the displaced people gathered there to leave, he recalled. “The occupation ordered them to evacuate the garden,” Aburas said, “but there was nowhere to go, as every place in Gaza was targeted.”

Hedaya Hamad, a Red Crescent worker who was killed on Feb. 2, 2024.

On February 2, Israeli forces killed Hedaya Hamad, a 42-year-old Red Crescent employee, who was also buried on hospital grounds. Hamad is one of three Red Crescent workers who were killed at Al-Amal Hospital, Aburas said, and the eleventh who was killed since the start of the war in October, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. On Thursday, the Red Crescent reported that one more member of its team was killed, bringing its death toll to 12.

Aburas said that Hamad’s killing “shattered our collective hearts. She had an angelic presence, helping everyone and diligently working to ensure that the work crews got their share of the meager food supplies. To us, she was like a nurturing mother.”

As the siege entered its third week, Aburas said the hospital was at risk of running out of fuel, which powers its backup generators and oxygen supplies. “Just today, an elderly woman perished due to the oxygen shortage,” he said on Wednesday.

Other challenges include a risk of infection due to overcrowding and a shortage of supplies, and the scarcity of food and milk for children. Some medical staff evacuated alongside the thousands of displaced people who left the hospital earlier this week, leaving even fewer health care workers to tend to the wounded. 

An estimated 8,000 people evacuated the hospital earlier this week. They left for Rafah, another area in southern Gaza where more than a million Palestinians are now trapped as the Israeli military threatens a full-scale assault. “The displaced people embarked on a journey into uncertainty, a heart-wrenching scene,” Aburas said. “They were forced to travel from Khan Yunis to Rafah on foot, while those remaining in the hospital — hospital staff, Palestinian Red Crescent personnel, and the wounded — are stuck within its confines, deprived of even the most basic necessities of life.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Aseel Mousa.

A chilling new report by a German-based human rights watchdog has exposed indiscriminate attacks by Indonesian security forces on indigenous West Papuan villages, highlighting an urgent need for international action.

The 49-page report, “Destroy Them First . . . Discuss Human Rights Later”, is an investigation of the Indonesian forces in the remote Kiwirok area in Pegungan Bintang Regency in the Papuan highlands.

Satellite imagery and on the ground analysis by researchers shows the destruction of eight villages in 2021 and 2022 — Mangoldogi, Pelebib, Kiwi, Oknanggul, Delmatahu, Spamikma, Delpem and Lolim.

• READ MORE: New documentary, human rights report allege Indonesian atrocities in West Papua
• Other West Papua reports

A total of 206 buildings, including residential homes, churches and public building buildings  have been destroyed in the raids, forcing more than 2000 Ngalum villagers to seek refuge as internally displaced people (IDPs) in the surrounding forest in destitute circumstances.

In a statement, the Human Rights Monitor said the report — released today — provided a “meticulous and scientific analysis” of the Indonesian forces’ attacks on the villages.

“This report sheds light on the gravity and extent of violations in the Kiwirok region and measures them against international law,” the statement added.

Eliot Higgins, director at Bellingcat, a Netherlands-based investigative journalism group specialising in fact-checking and open-source intelligence, said: “This in-depth report provides evidence of security force raids carried out in the Kiwirok District, impacting on both indigenous villages and public properties.

‘Harrowing picture’
“It paints a harrowing picture of more than 2000 villagers displaced and forced to live in subhuman conditions, without access to food, healthcare services, or education.

“The main findings of this report include instances of violence deliberately perpetrated
against indigenous Papuan civilians by security forces, leading to loss of life and forced
displacement which meet the Rome Statute definition of crimes against humanity.”

The report says that the armed conflict in West Papua has become “significantly aggravated since December 2018, as TPNPB [West Papua National Liberation Army] members killed at least 19 road workers in the Nduga Regency.

“That incident marks the re-escalation of the armed conflict in West Papua. The conflict statistics show a continuous increase in violence over the past three years, reaching a new peak in 2022. The number of civilian fatalities related to the conflict rose from 28 in 2021 to 43 in 2022,” added the report.

Usman Hamid, Amnesty International’s Indonesia director said: “Impunity for violence by the security forces is a major concern from both a human rights and a conflict perspective.

“This report provides the necessary information for the National Human Rights Commission, Komnas HAM, to take up the case.

“Without accountability for the perpetrators, the chances of a lasting solution to the conflict in Papua are slim,” he added.

‘Hidden crisis’
Peter Prove, director for international affairs at the World Council of Churches, said:
“The World Council of Churches has been monitoring the conflict in West Papua — and its
humanitarian, human rights and environmental impacts — for many years.

“But it remains a hidden crisis, largely forgotten by the international community — a situation that suits the Indonesian government very well. This report helps shine a small but telling beam of light on one specific part of the conflict, but from which a larger picture can be extrapolated.

“Indonesia — which is currently campaigning for election to the UN Human Rights Council — must provide more access and transparency on the situation in the region, and the
international community must respond appropriately to the increasing gravity of the crisis.”

Disturbing revelations in this new Human Rights Monitor report on the bombing of indigenous villages in Kiwirok, West Papua. The world must stand united against such atrocities. Read the full report here: https://t.co/5ySOZt7T2R #HumanRights #CrimesAgainstHumanity pic.twitter.com/QxIWmPK4C8

— Human Rights Monitor (@hurimonitor) August 16, 2023

In light of the findings, Human Rights Monitor has called on the international community,
governments, and relevant stakeholders to:

• Immediately ensure humanitarian access for national and international humanitarian
  organisations and government agencies to the Kiwirok District. Humanitarian aid
  should be provided without involving security force members to ensure that IDPs can
  access aid without fearing reprisals;
• Instruct the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas Ham) to investigate
  allegations of serious human rights violations in the Kiwirok District between 13
  September and late October 2021;
• Immediately withdraw non-organic security force members from the Kiwirok District,
  allowing the IDPs to return and re-build their villages without having to fear reprisals
  and further raids;
• Ratify the Rome Statute;
• Be open to a meaningful engagement in a constructive peace dialogue with the
  United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP); and
• Allow international observers and foreign journalists to access and work in West
  Papua

Human Rights Monitor is an independent, international non-profit project promoting
human rights through documentation and advocacy. HRM is based in the European Union
and active since 2022.

Focused on West Papua, HRM states: “We document violations; research institutional, social and political contexts that affect rights protection and peace; and share the conclusions of evidence-based monitoring work.”

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

Amanda Zurawski stepped up to a podium outside the Texas Capitol. Close your eyes, she began, and picture someone you hold incredibly dear. “Now imagine someone telling you you’re going to lose that person in the very near future, but they can’t tell you exactly when or how,” she said. “On top of that, there’s a very high likelihood that you’ll get extremely sick, maybe even near death, as you wait for that person you love to die.”

“It sounds like a pretty sick and twisted plot to a dystopian novel,” she continued. “But it’s not. It’s exactly what happened to me while pregnant in Texas.”

Zurawski and her husband had known each other since preschool. They married in 2019 and were excited to start a family. After months of fertility treatments, Zurawski learned she was pregnant. The couple was beyond thrilled; they decided to name their daughter Willow. Zurawski was “cruising though” her second trimester, she said, and had just finished the invite list for her upcoming baby shower when everything changed. She developed “unexpected and curious” symptoms. Her obstetrician told her to come in right away. After an examination, the couple received the “harrowing news” that Zurawski’s cervix had dilated prematurely. Later her water broke; because Zurawski’s pregnancy was still weeks from viability, there was no chance Willow would survive.

“I asked what could be done to ensure the respectful passing of our baby and … protect me from a deadly infection,” she recalled. Nothing could be done, she was told, because of Texas’s abortion bans.

Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, speaks at the Texas Capitol on March 7, 2023, in Austin.

Photo: Rick Kern/Getty Images for the Center for Reproductive Rights

Plaintiffs Anna Zargarian, Lauren Miller, Lauren Hall, and Amanda Zurawski at the Texas Capitol in Austin on March 7, 2023.

Photo: Rick Kern/Getty Images

“Where else in medicine do we do nothing and just wait to see how sick a patient becomes before acting?”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Jordan Smith.

The rescue of hundreds of Rohingya refugees by fishers and local authorities in Indonesia's Aceh province was praised Tuesday as "an act of humanity" by United Nations officials, while relatives of around 180 Rohingya on another vessel that's been missing for weeks feared that all aboard had perished.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that "Indonesia has helped to save 472 people in the past six weeks from four boats, showing its commitment and respect of basic humanitarian principles for people who face persecution and conflict."

"We feel like we got a new world today... We could see their faces again. It's really a moment of joy for all of us."

"UNHCR urges other states to follow this example. Many others did not act despite numerous pleas and appeals for help," the Geneva-based agency added. "States in the region must fulfill their legal obligations by saving people on boats in distress to avoid further misery and deaths."

Ann Maymann, the UNHCR representative in Indonesia, said in a statement that "we welcome this act of humanity by local communities and authorities in Indonesia."

"These actions help to save human lives from certain death, ending torturous ordeals for many desperate people," she added.

The Syndey Morning Heraldreports residents of Ladong, a fishing village in Aceh, rushed to help 58 Malaysia-bound Rohingya men who arrived Sunday in a rickety wooden boat, many of them severely dehydrated and starving.

The following day, 174 more starving Rohingya men, women, and children, were helped ashore by local authorities and fishers after more than a month at sea.

Mohammed Rezuwan Khan, whose 27-year-old sister Hatamonesa was aboard the boat with her 5-year-old daughter, told Pakistan's Arab News that "we feel like we got a new world today."

“We could see their faces again. It's really a moment of joy for all of us," he said of his family. Speaking of his sister, he added that "she thought that she would die in the voyage at sea."

Babar Baloch, the UNHCR regional spokesperson in Bangkok, stated that 26 people had died aboard the rescued vessel, which left Bangladesh a month ago.

"We were raising alarm about this boat in early December because we had information that it was in the regional waters at least at the end of November," he said. "So when we first got reports that it was somewhere near the coast of Thailand, we approached authorities asking them to help, then when it was moving towards Indonesia and Malaysia we did the same."

"After its engine failure and it was drifting in the sea, there were reports of this boat being spotted close to Indian waters and we approached and asked them as well and we were also in touch with authorities in Sri Lanka," Baloch continued.

"Currently as we speak, the only countries in the region that have acted are Indonesia, in big numbers, and Sri Lanka as well."

According to the BBC, the Indian navy appears to have towed the boat into Indonesian waters after giving its desperate passengers some food and water. The boat drifted for another six days before it was allowed to land.

"Currently as we speak, the only countries in the region that have acted are Indonesia, in big numbers, and Sri Lanka as well," Baloch said. "It is an act in support of humanity, there's no other way to describe it."

Relatives of around 180 other Rohingya who left Bangladesh on December 2 said Tuesday that they fear the overcrowded vessel has sunk in the Andaman Sea. Mohammad Noman, a resident of a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, toldThe Guardian that his sister was aboard the boat with her two daughters, who are 5 and 3 years old.

"Every day we called up the boat two or three times on the boatman's satellite phone to find out if my sister and her two daughters were all right. Since December 8, I have failed to get access to that phone," he said. "I know some other people in Cox's Bazar who made phone calls to the boat every day and stayed in contact with their relatives there. None of them has succeeded to reach the phone after December 8."

The captain of another vessel transporting Rohingya refugees said he saw the distressed boat swept up in stormy seas sometime during the second week of December.

"It was around 2:00 am when a strong wind began blowing and big waves surfaced on the sea. [Their] boat began swaying wildly, we could gauge from a flashlight they were pointing at us," he told The Guardian. "After some time, we could not see the flashlight anymore. We believe the boat drowned then."

More than a million Rohingya Muslims are crowded into squalid refugee camps in southern Bangladesh after having fled ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and other violence and repression in Rakhine state, Myanmar, which is ruled by a military dictatorship. Since 2020, thousands of Rohingya have fled the camps by sea.

Hundreds have died during the perilous journey. If the sinking of the boat with 180 aboard is confirmed, it would make 2022 the deadliest year for Rohingya at sea, according to UNHCR.

UNHCR's Baloch stressed that "countries and states in the region have international obligations to help desperate people."

"We have been calling on states to go after people smugglers and human traffickers as they are responsible for putting people on those death-trap boats, but victims have to be saved and saving human life is the most important act," he told the Morning Herald.

"The refugee issue and saving lives cannot just be left to one country, it has to be done collectively, together in the region," he added.

Tun Khin, a Rohingya activist and refugee who now heads the Burmese Rohingya Organization U.K., took aim at regional power Australia, which has been criticized for decades over its abuse of desperate seaborne asylum-seekers, nearly all of whom are sent to dirty, crowded offshore processing centers on Manus Island and Nauru to await their fate.

"Australia has too often set a shameful example for the region through its treatment of refugees," he told the Morning Herald.

"These people are facing genocide in Burma," Khin added, using the former official name of Myanmar. "It is a hopeless situation for them in Bangladesh, there is no dignity of life there."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

On June 7, 2021, a slaughterhouse inspector with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported a violation at a Tyson Foods-owned poultry plant in Nashville, Arkansas. The inspector saw a bird on the slaughter line "vigorously flapping" as it headed towards the "scald vat." That wasn't supposed to happen. 

Slaughterhouses are sites of round-the-clock pain, as employees endure punishing working conditions, and as animals go to their deaths en masse: 33 million cows, 128 million pigs, and more than 9 billion chickens were slaughtered for food in 2021 alone.

Poultry slaughter is meant to be a well-choreographed process. The scald vat is a boiling vat of hot water situated at the end of the kill line, designed to defeather chickens after they've already been slaughtered. Strung up by their ankles in metal shackles and moving fast down the conveyor belt, birds are supposed to die by "exsanguination" after passing through the kill machine, which runs automated rotary blades across the animals' throats. Birds are supposed to bleed to death before they enter the scalder for defeathering; and before they bleed to death, they're supposed to be stunned immobile by an electrified water bath even earlier on the line. Electrocution, slaughter, defeathering. In that order. 

But the inspector in Arkansas watched one bird, and then a second, and then "a third and fourth flapping bird" enter the scalder after having missed the knife, and the employee meant to serve as "Back Up Killer" had evidently missed the still-conscious birds, so, against both slaughterhouse protocol and federal law, these birds were boiled alive. 

This inspection report from Arkansas is just one of dozens of firsthand accounts detailing what USDA representatives witnessed last summer at 300 poultry slaughterhouses currently under federal inspection. Available on a USDA-run website, these testimonies chronicle the many legal and illegal abuses chickens endure at slaughter, among them broken bones, suffocation, and the acute distress of being kicked, thrown, or stepped on. The details are, often, grisly: birds whose heads were "engorged with blood," birds whose "skin had been torn off," birds—still living—strewn amongst carcasses and "decapitated heads" on the blood-soaked floor.

Slaughterhouses are sites of round-the-clock pain, as employees endure punishing working conditions, and as animals go to their deaths en masse: 33 million cows, 128 million pigs, and more than 9 billion chickens were slaughtered for food in 2021 alone. What the USDA's slaughter inspections reveal is just how much can go horribly wrong during animal slaughter—and just how little of it is public knowledge. 

When the USDA publicly released its own records of slaughterhouse violations in January of this year, it didn't do so to relieve the suffering of animals. In 2019, the USDA and one of its eight branches—the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS)—came under fire in a lawsuit alleging these agencies had violated the Freedom of Information Act, which enshrines "the right of the public to information." According to the plaintiffs—animal advocacy nonprofits Animal Welfare Institute and Farm Sanctuary—the USDA and FSIS had systematically refused to disclose "key records" demonstrating their oversight of the federal laws that protect food safety and animal welfare. The records—reports of violations documented during FSIS inspections at US slaughterhouses—reveal a great deal about the scope of the laws governing the treatment of animals raised for food, and about the grim realities of producing meat at an industrial scale, as seen through the eyes of federal agents whose aim is to uphold a regime dedicated to the safety and quality of food. 

After an attempt to have the lawsuit dismissed, which the court denied, the USDA and FSIS settled in 2021, agreeing to proactively publish FSIS inspection reports for three years. The release of these slaughterhouse violations is a breakthrough, because it's almost impossible to see what happens inside slaughterhouses in the first place.

Ag-gag laws—also known as "farm security" laws—protect operations like farms, feedlots, and processing plants from potential whistleblowers and exposes by making it a criminal offense to take photos or videos at agricultural facilities without the consent of the owner. Industrial farms tend to support ag-gag legislation in order to tamp down on undercover investigations for fear of bad press and further regulation. 

With such strict laws in place, the USDA's disclosure of inspection records is a rare breakthrough. The USDA's records of poultry slaughterhouses are particularly inured to bias because these inspections don't monitor the welfare of birds at slaughter—just the safety and quality of their meat.

What these inspectors observe is dependable. When they describe the chickens "aggressively chucked" onto the conveyer belts, or the chickens "mutilated by the machinery of the automatic cage dumper," or the chickens with "patches of dry, dark yellow skin with missing feathers," they do so for no reason other than to ensure the smooth management of the slaughterhouse's operations. 

Although the inspection records leave much to be desired, something is better than nothing. The USDA has agreed to proactively post its slaughterhouse inspection records for the next three years. Meatpacking plants don't have glass walls—but until 2024, at least, their walls will be a little less opaque.

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

To date, the deaths of more than 3,300 civilians have been painstakingly confirmed by the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, which readily admits that the actual number will likely be many thousands more.

In an interview with UN News, the Head of the mission, Matilda Bogner, gives an overview of the investigation’s progress since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February. 

This content originally appeared on UN News and was authored by Daniel Johnson, UN News - Geneva.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Nadezhda Sukhorukova.