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Have Mercy: The Smallest Coffins Are the Heaviest
Still, again, words fail. As Israeli bombs kill one Palestinian in Gaza every five minutes, a six-year-old Palestinian boy in Illinois was stabbed to death 26 times by his white landlord, who before the attack yelled, "You Muslims must die!" He also stabbed the boy's mother, who survived. She told police the man was like a grandfather to her son - he'd built him a treehouse - so when he arrived the boy ran to him for a hug.
Even as an American mainstream media historically aligned with Israel grapples with nominally fair-minded coverage of the complex carnage - MSNBC may or may not have silenced its three Muslim news anchors, their most knowledgeable journalists - Israeli's campaign of "extermination by air, land and sea" goes on in Gaza. At least 2,670 Palestinians have been killed to date, including over 455 in the last 24 hours, or roughly one every five minutes; observers say Israel has killed six Hamas leaders and over 800 children, many of whom may die of hunger or thirst if not bombing. While Israel hasn't yet launched a ground assault, its relentless, indiscriminate air strikes have wiped out entire families, refugee camps and neighborhoods, along with schools, hospitals, a UN school and several international relief sites; an Israeli survivor at a kibbutz also says civilians were "undoubtedly" killed in "very, very heavy crossfire" when their own forces stormed the settlement: "They eliminated everyone."
On Saturday, the violence oozed into the ostensible land of the free and the Chicago suburb of Plainfield, where Joseph Czuba, 71, stabbed to death Wadea Al-Fayoume, who just turned six, with a serrated military-style knife; he also stabbed Wadea's 32-year-mother, Hanaan Shahin, 12 times. Shahin left the West Bank 12 years ago to escape the region's violence and come to the U.S., where she was later joined by Wadea's father. She and her son - who "liked to play, to jump up and down" - had peaceably rented Czuba's ground-floor apartment for two years; during that time, Czuba befriended the boy, brought him toys, let him use a makeshift pool, and with another neighbor helped build a tree-house for him. But in the last week,Czuba's wife Mary said, her husband became obsessed with news from the Israel/Hamas war; a regular listener to right-wing talk radio, he grew paranoid and convinced that Shahin was going to call her Palestinian friends over to harm them.
Saturday morning, Czuba knocked on Shahin's door and told her he was angry about the war. She responded, “Let’s pray for peace." Seconds later, he began choking her and then attacked her with the knife, screaming, "You Muslims must die!" She fled to the bathroom to call 911, and emerged moments later to find her son stabbed in his bedroom. From the hospital, she told police that, given their earlier interactions, she "didn't have even 1% suspicion (Czuba) would hurt the child." In texts to the boy's father, she said Czuba also shouted, "You are killing our kids in Israel. You Palestinians don’t deserve to live." Police found Czuba sitting on the ground outside the home, and arrested him for first-degree murder and a hate crime; they said the mother and son “were targeted by the suspect due to them being Muslim." The DOJ has also launched a hate crime investigation. On Facebook, Shahin later wrote, "My son’s last words were, 'I’m fine.' May God have mercy on him and let him dwell in the highest paradise."
For Palestinians, "The attack was an attack on all of us," said Ahmed Rehab, head of CAIR-Chicago, who noted the spike of hate crimes in the U.S. even before the Hamas attack. "What we have is a Palestinian child murdered by someone radicalized by the environment in which we live right now that casts Palestinians as human animals." He described a boy who loved his family, soccer, basketball, who "paid the price for the atmosphere of hate." At a press conference, Dr. Omar Suleiman echoed him: "What type of hate has to be manufactured in the head of a man for him to stand over a 6-year-old boy and stab him 26 times." So did Wadea's uncle Yousef Hannon, a teacher who's lived here 25 years. "The gentleman heard it. It was in his mind, the only thing he saw," he said. "We are not animals, we are humans. We're not at war (or) bringing war here. We hope nothing like this happens to another child. No Palestinian, no Jewish child. No family should go through this kind of pain.”
Wadea's funeral was held Monday at a mosque in Bridgeview, a Chicago suburb home to so many Palestinians it's known as Little Palestine. Mourners filled the mosque, viewed the small white coffin draped in a Palestinian flag - Rehab: "The smallest coffins are the heaviest" - visited a memorial with stuffed animals and said they do not feel safe in America: "He was Muslim, and this is what they did." In the wake of "Israel's 9/11," just like our 9/11, notes Jon Schwarz, the revenge Israel exacts will be hideous: "There is nothing on earth like the fury of the powerful when they believe they have been defied by their inferiors." After a calamitous "war on terror" - born of grief, fear, hubris, forged by "grotesque leaders," triggering up to 5 million deaths - "Have we not learned anything?" asks Imam Omar Suleiman. And what has become of the world, that we are burning, bombing, burying, terrorizing, starving, stabbing small children, and still the blood-letting goes on. Have mercy, indeed.
Nearly Half of Flowering Plant Species Face Threat of Extinction
Global scientists warned Tuesday that 45% of known flowering plant species could be at risk of disappearing, underscoring the need for urgent international action to tackle the planet's sixth mass extinction—the first driven by human activity.
That figure is among the key findings from State of the World's Plants and Fungi, the fifth annual report from the U.K.'s Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG), Kew about such species amid the intertwined biodiversity crisis and climate emergency.
"The resources and services that nature provides—from food to fresh water—have arisen through eons of ecosystem-building by microbes (including fungi), plants, and animals, and their interactions with geochemical processes," says the report. "Because we are currently degrading ecosystems, releasing greenhouse gases into the air, and polluting water resources at such a rapid rate, we risk destabilizing the global equilibrium that these evolutionary processes have established."
"Effectively managing the plants and fungi that form the building blocks of our habitable planet is key to halting wider biodiversity loss and restoring Earth's ecosystems to full function," the publication stresses.
"Every species we lose is a species that we don't know what opportunities we're losing... It could be a cancer-fighting drug, it could be the solution to hunger."
The report "relies on two major advances," said Alexandre Antonelli, director of science at RBG Kew. "Firstly, the recent release of the first geographically complete World Checklist of Vascular Plants—a landmark achievement after more than 35 years of meticulous and highly collaborative work. Secondly, the wealth of information on fungal diversity newly harnessed from the analyses of environmental DNA in soil samples across the world, integrated with other morphological and molecular evidence from fungarium specimens."
"In 11 chapters, we present compelling stories of what we can learn from these and related sources of data, and how these learnings can help us foster future research and conservation. This report is based on groundbreaking original research papers and reviews from many international teams of scientists," he added. Specifically, it draws on the expertise of 200 researchers at 102 institutions across 30 countries.
The checklist features 350,386 species of known vascular plants—but as many as 100,000 more have not yet been formally identified, and experts estimate that 3 in 4 undescribed vascular plants are likely already at risk. Given that, Kew scientists are calling for all newly described species to be treated as threatened unless proven otherwise.
"Ideally, partnerships between taxonomists and experienced conservation assessors would aim to describe and assess species simultaneously, to maximize opportunities for effective conservation action," said Matilda Brown, a researcher in conservation assessment and analysis at RBG Kew. "In the meantime, if accepted, our recommendation could aid in the protection of many tens of thousands of undescribed threatened species, by treating them as threatened as soon as they become known to us."
The fungi section of the report points out that "only 155,000 species have been formally named, while estimates of the total diversity have ranged from 250,000 in the 1800s to as many as 19 million species in recent decades." Now, scientists estimate that there are 2.5 million fungal species on the planet—meaning that over 90% remain unnamed.
However, the effort to identify species continues. Since just 2020, scientists have named more than 8,600 plant species and over 10,200 fungal species.
"Naming and describing a species is the vital first step in documenting life on Earth," said former Kew scientist Tuula Niskanen, now at the University of Helsinki in Finland. "Without knowing what species there are and having names for them, we won't be able to share information on the key aspects of species' diversity, make any assessments of species' conservation status to know whether they are at risk from extinction, or explore their potential to benefit people and society."
"It is essential to know what species of fungi we have here on Earth and what we need to do for them," she added, "so that we don't lose them."
Brown issued a similar warning about plant losses, telling the BBC that "when we consider that 9 out of 10 of our medicines come from our plants, what we are potentially staring down the barrel at is losing half of all of our future medicines."
"Every species we lose is a species that we don't know what opportunities we're losing," she added. "It could be a cancer-fighting drug, it could be the solution to hunger... And so to lose that, before we get a chance to study it would be a tragedy."
The new publication joins a series of alarming reports this year, from February NatureServe research that found 34% of plants species and 40% of animal species in the United States are at risk of extinction while 41% of U.S. ecosystems could collapse, to a September study that revealed dozens of genera—the next thickest branch from species on tree of life—have been lost since A.D. 1500 due to human activity.
The Kew report also comes after last December's Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework—a historic pact to safeguard and restore nature that followed years of negotiations but which some global advocates warned is nowhere near strong enough.
Largest Healthcare Strike in US History Begins as Kaiser Workers Revolt
Tens of thousands of healthcare workers across the United States began a three-day strike against Kaiser Permanente on Wednesday to protest the nonprofit hospital giant's alleged unfair labor practices, bad-faith bargaining, inadequate wages, and chronic staff shortages that employees say are harming them and patients.
The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, which represents the 75,000 Kaiser workers who are expected to walk off the job Wednesday, said picket lines will be set up at hundreds of Kaiser hospitals and facilities in California, Colorado, Washington, and other states, as well as in Washington, D.C.
The walkout is expected to be the largest healthcare worker strike in U.S. history.
"Jobs affected by the strike include licensed vocational nurses, emergency department technicians, radiology technicians, ultrasound sonographers, teleservice representatives, respiratory therapists, x-ray technicians, optometrists, certified nursing assistants, dietary services, behavioral health workers, surgical technicians, pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, transporters, home health aides, phlebotomists, medical assistants, dental assistants, call center representatives, and housekeepers, among hundreds of other positions," the coalition said in a statement.
Renée Saldaña, a spokesperson for SEIU United Healthcare Workers West—which is part of the Kaiser union coalition—told the Los Angeles Times that "healthcare workers want to be at the facilities with their patients."
"They're doing this for their patients because of the delays in care, because of the short-staffing crisis," said Saldaña.
The strike kicked off after contract talks between union negotiators and Kaiser—which
reported nearly $3.3 billion in net income in the first half of 2023—stalled Tuesday night without a tentative contract agreement. The previous four-year contract expired at the end of September, and negotiations over a new agreement began in April.
"We continue to have frontline healthcare workers who are burnt out and stretched to the max and leaving the industry," Caroline Lucas, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, toldCNBC. "We have folks getting injured on the job because they're trying to do too much and see too many people and work too quickly. It's not a sustainable situation."
Union negotiators have called on Kaiser to hire at least 10,000 new workers by the end of the year to help alleviate staff shortages that—according to a recent survey of healthcare workers in California—have resulted in care being delayed or denied.
Negotiators have also demanded a $25 minimum wage for all Kaiser employees and a
24.5% wage increase over the course of a new four-year contract.
The company has refused to meet many of the unions' core demands, offering wage proposals that
would not even keep up with inflation.
"Kaiser executives are refusing to listen to us and are bargaining in bad faith over the solutions we need to end the Kaiser short-staffing crisis," said Jessica Cruz, a licensed vocational nurse at Kaiser Los Angeles Medical Center. "I see my patients' frustrations when I have to rush them and hurry on to my next patient. That's not the care I want to give. We're burning ourselves out trying to do the jobs of two or three people, and our patients suffer when they can't get the care they need due to Kaiser's short-staffing."
'This Is an Attempt to Silence My Voice': Tlaib Condemns GOP Censure Motion
Facing attacks by fellow Democrats and a censure motion from a Republican congressman from her home state of Michigan, Rep. Rashida Tlaib on Wednesday accused her critics of intentionally misportraying her as a Hamas sympathizer due to her condemnation of Israeli war crimes in Palestine.
Rep. Jack Bergman (R-Mich.)—whose third-biggest campaign contributor during the 2022 election cycle was the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—on Wednesday introduced a motion to censure Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress, for what he called "her antisemitism and disgraceful response to the attacks on our ally, Israel."
On Saturday, Hamas and other militants infiltrated Israel from Gaza in a wave of attacks that have since killed more than 1,300 Israeli soldiers and civilians, including many women and children. Israel responded by bombarding Gaza, targeting civilian infrastructure and killing over 1,400 Palestinians—including at least 447 children—while cutting off power and water and trapping 2.3 million people in the besieged enclave.
"Much of what I'm hearing from Jack and a number of other colleagues is rooted in bigotry, that somehow because of my ethnicity and my faith that I support terrorism."
On Sunday, Tlaib issued a statement mourning the "Palestinian and Israeli lives lost," while asserting that the path to a peaceful future must include lifting Israel's blockade of Gaza, ending its illegal occupation of Palestine, "and dismantling the apartheid system that creates the suffocating, dehumanizing conditions that can lead to resistance."
Tlaib's statement also asserted that the "heartbreaking cycle of violence" would continue until the United States stopped giving "billions in unconditional funding" to support Israel's apartheid government.
Citing unverified claims that Hamas "beheaded infants," Bergman's resolution—which was joined by Rep. Morgan Luttrell (R-Texas), another beneficiary of AIPAC's largesse—called Tlaib's statement "disturbing and evil."
Responding to Bergman's motion, Tlaib told the Detroit Free Press on Wednesday that "I'm the only Palestinian voice right now in Congress. If anything, my voice is needed here more than ever."
"This is an attempt to silence my voice because I want the violence to stop, no matter whether it's toward Israelis or toward Palestinians," she asserted. "Much of what I'm hearing from Jack and a number of other colleagues is rooted in bigotry, that somehow because of my ethnicity and my faith that I support terrorism."
Tlaib and other "Squad" members including Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.)—who condemned the killing of civilians on both sides while urging an end to U.S. support for "Israeli military occupation and apartheid"—also faced harsh rebuke from fellow Democrats in the Biden administration and Congress.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called their comments "disgraceful" and "repugnant," while pro-Israel congressional Democrats piled onthe condemnation.
"It sickens me that while Israelis clean the blood of their family members shot in their homes, they believe Congress should strip U.S. funding to our democratic ally and allow innocent civilians to suffer," Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) said of Tlaib and her Squad colleagues in a Tuesday interview with Jewish Insider.
"U.S. aid to Israel is and should be unconditional, and never more so than in this moment of critical need," Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) told Jewish Insider. "Shame on anyone who glorifies as 'resistance' the largest single-day mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust. It is reprehensible and repulsive."
AIPAC was by far Gottheimer's largest contributor in the 2022 electoral cycle, donating more than $216,000 to his campaign. The same goes for Torres, who received over $141,000 from the group during the same period.
The Nation's John Nichols noted Thursday that Tlaib, Bush, and Omar are being condemned "for saying what prominent Israelis are saying."
Nichols cited Israeli human rights lawyer and rules-of-war expert Michael Sfard, who said: "Hamas committed abominable war crimes for which there can be no forgiveness. But the laws of war weren't meant only for situations in which our blood is cool, or when there is no justified anger or understandable desire for revenge."
He also quotes Israeli journalist Amira Hass, daughter of Holocaust survivors, who wrote in Haaretz that "in a few days Israelis went through what Palestinians have experienced as a matter of routine for decades, and are still experiencing."
"Therefore, this must be said once again—we told you so," Hass added. "Ongoing oppression and injustice explode at unexpected times and places. Bloodshed knows no borders."
Critics have noted that Israelis can freely express truths that, when voiced by Americans, result in condemnation, ostracism, and even loss of employment.
This isn't the first time Tlaib and other progressive Democrats have faced possible censure for defending Palestinians' human rights and criticizing U.S. support for Israeli apartheid, occupation, illegal settler colonization, and other crimes. In 2021, a trio of GOP lawmakers tried and failed to censure Tlaib and Omar—the first two Muslim women elected to Congress—and other Squad members for comments criticizing Israel.
In February, Republicans removed Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee in what Jewish Voice for Peace called a "racist attack by the far-right to silence progressives in Congress who speak up for a human rights-centered foreign policy, including Palestinian human rights."
Tlaib and Omar have also received death threats for expressing their views, and have been targeted by a vast international fake news operation exploiting far-right social media accounts to spread Islamophobia.
Undaunted, Tlaib told the Free Press Wednesday that she will continue to remind her congressional colleagues that "a Palestinian life is just as important as an Israeli life," and that, like Hamas, the Israeli government "has to be held accountable for some of its atrocities."
Markey, Jayapal Lead Call for Biden to Include 'AI Bill of Rights' in Executive Order
Amid the rapid development and deployment of artificial intelligence systems, a pair of Democratic U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday led more than a dozen of their colleagues in urging President Joe Biden to issue an executive order making the White House's "AI Bill of Rights" official federal policy.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) spearheaded a letter to Biden asserting that "the federal government's commitment to the AI Bill of Rights would show that fundamental rights will not take a back seat in the AI era."
"By turning the AI Bill of Rights from a nonbinding statement of principles into federal policy, your administration would send a clear message to both private actors and federal regulators: AI systems must be developed with guardrails," the letter states. "Doing so would also strengthen your administration's efforts to advance racial equity and support underserved communities, building on important work from previous executive orders."
The lawmakers asserted that implementing the AI Bill of Rights is "a crucial step in developing an ethical framework for the federal government's role" in artificial intelligence. They stressed that five principles—"safe and effective systems; algorithmic discrimination protections; data privacy; notice and explanation; and human alternatives, consideration, and fallback"—must be the core of the policy.
The letter further argues that "implementing these principles will not only protect communities harmed by these technologies, it will also help inform ongoing policy conversations in Congress and show clear leadership on the global stage."
In July, the White House secured voluntary risk management commitments from seven leading AI companies, a move praised by campaigners and experts—even as they stressed the need for further action from Congress and federal regulators.
Earlier this year, Markey and Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) reintroduced the Algorithmic Justice and Online Platform Transparency Act, which would prohibit Big Tech from using black-box algorithms that drive discrimination and inequality.
Jayapal, Markey, and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) in March led the reintroduction of the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act, which would stop the government from using facial recognition and other biometric technologies, which they said "pose significant privacy and civil liberties issues and disproportionately harm marginalized communities."
Wednesday's letter came as the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen urged the Federal Election Commission to officially affirm that so-called "deepfakes" in U.S. political campaign communications are illegal under existing legislation proscribing fraudulent representation.
The lawmakers' call also comes just weeks after Public Citizen warned that Big Tech is creating and deploying AI systems "that deceptively mimic human behavior to aggressively sell their products and services, dispense dubious medical and mental health advice, and trap people in psychologically dependent, potentially toxic relationships with machines."
"The 'Never Again' of Our Lifetimes Is Underway in Gaza": Another Jewish-Led Protest Set for DC
As Israel continues to perpetrate what one of the country's leading Holocaust scholars called a "textbook case of genocide" in Gaza, Jewish Americans and allies on Tuesday prepared to hold their third major demonstration in Washington, D.C., this time to urge Congress to demand an immediate cease-fire in Palestine.
Members of Jewish Voice for Peace and other demonstrators are set to rally Wednesday outside Congress at noon local time. Organizers say activists will speak in support of a resolution introduced Monday by Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and other House progressives urging the Biden administration to advocate an immediate cease-fire to "save Israeli and Palestinian lives."
The protesters will also demand that humanitarian assistance be allowed into Gaza, where electricity, food, and fuel have been cut off amid intensifying Israeli bombardment that has killed more than 3,000 people—including more than 1,000 children—in one of the world's most densely populated areas.
"Since we were children, so many of us have told ourselves that we would not stand by if we were ever witnesses to genocidal violence," author and activist Naomi Klein said in a statement. "We told ourselves that we would raise our voices. We told ourselves we would put our bodies on the line. We pledged that such horrors would never again happen on our watch."
"The 'never again' of our lifetimes is underway in Gaza right now," Klein added. "And we refuse to stand by and watch."
Jay Saper of Jewish Voice for Peace said that "it has never been more important for Jews and all people in the U.S. to rise up with literally everything we have, the way that we would have wanted others to rise up for our ancestors."
In addition to the relentless bombardment, Israeli authorities have also ordered 1.1 million Palestinians to flee their homes in what some observers have called an act of ethnic cleansing comparable to the Nakba, when more than 750,000 Arabs were forced from Palestine during the establishment of the modern state of Israel.
As Gazans fled or braced for what's expected to be a major ground invasion, news of a possible Israeli airstrike on a Gaza City hospital packed with thousands of civilians seeking treatment for their wounds and shelter from constant bombing underscored the imperative for a cease-fire.
"What we know from past Israeli state atrocities against Palestinians is that the bombs only stop once there is a sufficient mass outcry from the international community," said Eliza Klein of Jewish Voice for Peace. "It's on us to build that outcry as fast as we possibly can."
House Progressives Grill Blinken Over Failure to Provide Info on Status of Gaza Civilians
"We still don't have clear information on what our government is doing to protect civilians in Gaza."
A trio of House progressives on Wednesday criticized the U.S. State Department for failing to provide members of Congress with a substantive update on its efforts to protect civilians in Gaza, including the hundreds of Palestinian Americans who are trapped in the enclave as it faces a massive assault from Israeli forces.
In a letter, Democratic Reps. Delia Ramirez (Ill.), Summer Lee (Pa.), and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) called on U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to brief members of Congress on the status of civilians in Gaza and provide specific information about efforts to evacuate Palestinian Americans, attempts to free hostages, and negotiations to allow humanitarian aid to enter the occupied territory.
The lawmakers wrote that while they attended a classified briefing provided last week, they remain "concerned about the lack of meaningful information provided by the department on the status of civilians, particularly those in Gaza and the West Bank, and the status of American citizens in Palestine."
Ramirez said in a statement Wednesday that she is "disappointed we still don't have clear information on what our government is doing to protect civilians in Gaza."
"That is why I've formally requested the Department of State to provide a clear response on the situation in Gaza and the status of Palestinian-Americans in Gaza," said the Illinois Democrat.
Both Blinken and U.S. President Joe Biden have publicly stressed the need for Israel to avoid harming civilians as it attacks the Gaza Strip, but their words appear to have done little to deter the Israeli military from heavily bombarding civilian areas, damaging schools and medical facilities, and wiping out entire neighborhoods.
In just 11 days, more than 3,000 people in Gaza have been killed by Israel airstrikes and more than a million have been displaced.
"After President Biden urged the Israeli government to respect the 'rules of war,' Secretary Antony Blinken urged Israel to 'take every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians.' We have seen neither in the Israeli government's response to Hamas' brutal attacks," Lee said in a statement Wednesday.
"Palestinian civilians in Gaza—half of whom are children—are not collectively guilty, and should not be collectively punished. We have seen hospitals, densely-populated areas, and even Gaza's only border-crossing bombed," Lee added. "We must not equate innocent Palestinian lives with Hamas, and we must address the humanitarian crisis affecting Gaza's 2.2 million people."
Axiosreported Tuesday that Blinken has urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to "allow humanitarian aid into Gaza in order to maintain international support for the Israeli operation to dismantle Hamas." Netanyahu's office said Wednesday that "Israel will not thwart humanitarian supplies from Egypt as long as it is only food, water, and medicine for the civilian population in the southern Gaza Strip."
"Israel will not allow any humanitarian aid from its territory to the Gaza Strip as long as our hostages are not returned," the prime minister's office added.
"We don't have electricity, we're without water, there's nothing. I think we are going to die before we leave."
In a statement on Wednesday, Tlaib—the first Palestinian-American woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress—invoked the names of two of her constituents who are currently stuck in Gaza as Israel continues bombing and prepares for a major ground invasion—with the help of U.S. weaponry.
"Americans like Zakaria and Laila Alarayshi are trapped in Gaza as the bombings intensify," Tlaib said Wednesday. "They feel abandoned by their own government and in the first few days of the war, the State Department was silent and had no plan for Americans in Gaza. Now the safety of Americans is in jeopardy. We must bring all Americans home."
Zakaria and his wife Laila are Michigan residents who were visiting family in Gaza when Hamas launched its attack on Israel, which was met with relentless airstrikes and a total blockade that has deprived Gazans of food, fuel, electricity, and other necessities.
The Palestinian-American couple is currently suing the Pentagon and State Department, alleging "disparate treatment." As the Detroit Free Pressreported over the weekend, the Alarayshis say "the U.S. government has failed to evacuate them and other Palestinian Americans from Gaza while it works to rescue Americans trapped in Israel, accusing U.S. officials of discriminating against them."
The U.S. State Department has instructed American citizens in Gaza to move closer to the Rafah border crossing with Egypt in case it is reopened. The area was
hit earlier this week by what was believed to be an Israeli airstrike.
"We are scared. We can't go to the bathroom. We can't go anywhere," Zakaria told the head of the Arab American Civil Rights League in a recent voicemail. "We don't have electricity, we're without water, there's nothing. I think we are going to die before we leave."
1,100+ People Sign 'Israelis Against Apartheid' Petition for Immediate Gaza Cease-Fire
"The Israeli government is using the tremendous loss of Israeli civilian lives to implement a genocidal campaign on the men, women, and children of Gaza," the group said.
More than 1,100 people have signed an open letter by Israelis Against Apartheid urging the international community "to intervene immediately to stop the indiscriminate bombing of 2.3 million people living in the Gaza strip," the U.S-based group Jewish Voice for Peace said Tuesday.
"We, Israeli citizens, are watching with grave concern the ongoing massive Israeli military assault on the people of Gaza," states the letter, which is hosted by Jewish Voice for Peace. The signers noted that the besieged coastal enclave "has been bombed day and night by land, air, and sea since October 7."
That was the day Hamas-led militants launched a surprise infiltration attack on Israel, killing more than 1,400 Israeli civilians and soldiers. Since then, Israel's relentless bombardment of Gaza has killed over 3,500 Palestinians, including more than 1,000 children, while Israel has cut off food, fuel, and electricity to the densely populated strip—an apparent war crime.
"The horrors and atrocities starting October 7 are indescribable. Thousands of civilians—Israelis and Palestinians—are paying the price of apartheid."
"We fear that in the coming hours, Gaza's hospitals will turn into graveyards," continues the letter, which was written before an attack on the al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City killed hundreds of civilians on Tuesday. "With fuel reserves for electricity generators all used up, there will be no more power for operation rooms, vital monitors, ventilators, ICU drips, newborn incubators, or even lights. Communication networks are failing and people can no longer call for ambulances."
The letter also urges the international community to "prevent the imminent and disastrous ground military invasion into Gaza."
"In the face of an unprecedented huge-scale humanitarian disaster, the Israeli government should be pressured to desist immediately, before more lives are wasted on top of the thousands already lost," the signers asserted. "We call on the Israeli government to agree to a prisoner and hostage exchange immediately, and for a safe humanitarian corridor to be created for civilians and supplies, electricity, and fuel to the medical facilities."
"The horrors and atrocities starting October 7 are indescribable. Thousands of civilians—Israelis and Palestinians—are paying the price of apartheid," the letter concludes. "We are calling you to intervene immediately to stop the war crimes that are still happening."
Israelis Against Apartheid was formed in 2021 during Israel's last major assault on Gaza.
"As we watch now hundreds killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Gaza hospital, we implore the international community to stop its cooperation and support for any further killing and displacement of civilians," the group said in a statement.
"The Israeli government is using the tremendous loss of Israeli civilian lives to implement a genocidal campaign on the men, women, and children of Gaza, ignoring calls of Israelis, including those who just lost their loved ones, to stop," the organization added.
The open letter follows Jewish-led protests across the U.S., with scores of demonstrators arrested in cities including New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. Another major Jewish-led protest is planned for Wednesday in Washington, D.C.
While many Israelis bristle at the assertion that their country is perpetrating apartheid, a growing number of prominent Israelis including former Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair, former Deputy Attorney General Yehudit Karp, and former ambassadors to South Africa Alon Liel and Ilan Baruch, endorse the description. So do more and more Israeli journalists, artists, veterans, and human rights groups, including Yesh Din and B'Tselem.
A growing number of Israelis are also accusing their country of genocide, pointing to Israel's indiscriminate killing of thousands of Palestinians, the order for 1.1 million Gazans to flee for their lives ahead of an expected ground invasion, and incendiary statements made by Israeli leaders.
For example, far-right Israeli parliamentarian Ariel Kallner last week called for a new Nakba—the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine by militant Zionists establishing the modern state of Israel—while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week described Gazan civilians as "children of darkness" and Israeli President Isaac Herzog said there were no innocent civilians in Gaza.
"When we look at the actions taken, the dropping of thousands and thousands of bombs in a couple of days, including phosphorus bombs, as we heard, on one of the most densely populated areas around the world, together with these proclamations of intent, this indeed constitutes genocidal killing, which is the first act, according to the convention, of genocide," Israeli Holocaust scholar Raz Segal toldDemocracy Now! on Monday, referring to provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
"And Israel, I must say, is also perpetrating act number two and three—that is, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and creating conditions designed to bring about the destruction of the group by cutting off water, food, supply of energy, bombing hospitals, ordering the fast evictions of hospitals, which the World Health Organization has declared to be, quote, 'a death sentence,'" he continued.
"So, we're seeing the combination of genocidal acts with special intent," Segal added. "This is indeed a textbook case of genocide."
Protests Erupt as Israel, Palestinians Trade Blame After Gaza Hospital Strike Kills Hundreds
"The death toll right now is more than 500, but we believe that number will reach more than 1,000," said one Gaza medical doctor.
Authorities in Gaza said Tuesday night that an Israel Defense Forces airstrike on a hospital holding thousands of patients, staff, and people seeking shelter from Israel's relentless bombardment killed at least 500 civilians, while IDF officials blamed the deaths on a botched Islamic Jihad rocket attack.
Photos and videos from al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City posted on social media showed bodies and body parts scattered about in the fiery aftermath of the blast. One video shared by senior Al Jazeera journalist Ali Hashem reportedly shows the moment when a rocket or missile strikes the Anglican-run hospital, causing a massive, earth-shaking explosion.
"The death toll right now is more than 500, but we believe that number will reach more than 1000," Ziad Shehadah, a medical doctor and resident of Gaza, told Al Jazeera. "It is a massacre."
Ghassan Abu Sittah, a physician with the international charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), said on social media: "We were operating in the hospital, there was a strong explosion, and the ceiling fell on the operating room. This is a massacre."
MSF said that "nothing justifies this shocking attack on a hospital and its many patients and health workers, as well as the people who sought shelter there."
"Hospitals are not a target. This bloodshed must stop. Enough is enough," the group added.
Many Gazans had fled to the hospital after Israeli authorities ordered 1.1 million Palestinians to flee for their lives—an alleged war crime compared to the Nakba ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Palestine during the establishment of the modern state of Israel—amid a bombing campaign that has killed more than 3,500 people, including over 1,000 children, since October 7.
"What's s happened is terrible because those people, all of them are civilians. They fled their homes and reached a place that they believed was safe—a hospital, which according to international law, is a safe place," Shehadah said. "People left their homes thinking they were more dangerous and they move to our schools and hospitals to be safe. And in one minute, all of them have been killed at a hospital."
Referring to the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mustafa Barghouti, head of the Palestinian National Initiative party, told Al Jazeera that "what happened is nothing but a deliberate war crime by the war criminal Netanyahu and his war cabinet."
"These people have committed another massacre against the Palestinian people," he continued. "They attacked a hospital. This is not only unacceptable, it's so savage.. attacking a hospital where people are taking refuge from the places that were bombarded by Israelis and forced to leave, trying to find some safe passage in the hospital or near the hospital. This means there are no safe places for Palestinians."
"This was a genocide committed in front of the whole world in a place that should be safe," he added.
On Monday, Netanyahu called Palestinian civilians "the children of darkness," while calling Israel's war on Gaza "a struggle between humanity and the law of the jungle."
IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari declared last week that in this war, "the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy."
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tweeted that the WHO "strongly condemns the attack on al-Alhi Arab Hospital in north Gaza."
"Early reports indicate hundreds of deaths and injuries," he added. "We call for the immediate protection of civilians and health care, and for the evacuation orders to be reversed."
Hamas—which governs Gaza and whose fighters led the surprise attack on Israel that killed more than 1,400 civilians and soldiers—called the hospital attack "a crime of genocide."
"The hospital massacre confirms the enemy's brutality and the extent of his feeling of defeat," said Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who called the attack "a new turning point."
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) blamed "a failed Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket" for the blast.
"From an analysis of the IDF's operational systems, an enemy rocket barrage was carried out towards Israel, which passed in the vicinity of the hospital, when it was hit," the IDF claimed.
However, critics noted that the IDF is known to deny and deflect responsibility for its deadly attacks on Palestinian civilians, including Palestinian American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.
Others pointed out that Israeli forces have already bombed al-Ahli Hospital during the current war on Gaza.
On Sunday, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said that four al-Ahli staff members were injured "by Israeli rocket fire" during a Saturday night attack.
"The evil and barbaric terror attacks on Israelis by Hamas were a blasphemous outrage," Welby said. "But the civilians of Gaza are not responsible for the crimes of Hamas."
The hospital attack sparked large protests in the illegally occupied West Bank, as well as in cities throughout the Middle East and around the world. Demonstrations took place in Tuesday night in Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, Turkey, Syria, Tunisia, and elsewhere.
Meanwhile, Philippe Lazzarini, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said at least six civilians were killed Monday afternoon when one of the agency's schools being used as a shelter in the al-Maghazi refugee camp was bombed.
"Dozens were injured, including UNRWA staff, and severe structural damage was caused to the school," Lazzarini said. "The numbers are likely to be higher. This is outrageous, and it again shows a flagrant disregard for the lives of civilians."
"At least 4,000 people have taken refuge in this UNRWA school-turned-shelter," he added. "They had and still have nowhere else to go. No place is safe in Gaza anymore, not even UNRWA facilities."
Israeli has attacked U.N. schools in previous assaults on Gaza and blamed it on Palestinian militants.
The hospital and school attacks occurred on the eve of a trip to Israel by U.S. President Joe Biden. The president has declared his "rock-solid and unwavering support" for Israel, which receives nearly $4 billion in annual U.S. military aid.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called for three days of mourning for victims of the hospital attack and canceled a meeting with Biden planned for Wednesday, according toNPR.
In the wake of the hospital attack, Russia and the United Arab Emirates called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Wednesday morning.
On Tuesday, the Security Council rejected a Russian draft resolution calling for a humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza. The U.S., United Kingdom, France, and Japan voted against the resolution.