Gaza's Children's Crusade: Dying One By One
This Armistice Day, Kurt Vonnegut - humanist, socialist, chronicler of the "terrible wastefulness of war" - would have turned 101; he deemed "sacred" the date when millions laid down their arms in a singular, merciful moment of grace. This Armistice Day, Gaza saw no mercy or grace - just hospitals gone dark, nurses shot, patients trapped, babies "dying by the minute." The devastation evokes Vonnegut's mournful fury at another awful war in 1969. "We have nothing to celebrate," he said. "Let the killing stop."
It was on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 that "millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another," Vonnegut wrote of the Armistice. "I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind." "War Is Over!" headlines blared of the end of a senseless conflagration that killed over 40 million people, its "Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red" long symbolized by poppies. In a radio speech, Woodrow Wilson praised "the lofty levels of vision (upon) which the great war for democracy was fought"; in 1938, in tribute to "the war to end all wars," Congress declared Nov. 11 a national holiday "dedicated to world peace." But just three years later, America joined a second world war still more devastating. Born "accidentally" in 1922 on the date the first war ended and swept unceremoniously into the second, Vonnegut later wrote, "My own feeling is that civilization ended in World War I, and we're still trying to recover from it." He himself spent 45 years seeking to reckon with persistent wars he deemed merely a grotesque, eternal "puberty ceremony."
Vonnegut's seminal book Slaughterhouse-Five was his anguished effort to make sense of the trauma of his own war, when as a 22-year-old U.S. Infantry Scout during World War ll he was captured by German troops. Soon after, he was brought with other POWs to a Dresden work camp and then to Schlachthof-Fünf, an underground slaughterhouse where he survived Dresden's infamous 1945 firebombing by Allies that may have killed over 100,000 civilians. "I saw the destruction of Dresden," he wrote of the once-stately "Florence of the Elbe." “I saw the city before, (and) when we came up, the city was gone." Admitting how hard it was to confront his painful memories, he evokes Lot's wife, turned into a pillar of salt by God for ignoring His command not to look back at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah: "But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.” Slaughterhouse-Five, he notes, "was written by a pillar of salt," determinedly looking back in search of hope or at least comprehension. When a friend insists he not glorify the atrocities endured and committed by so many then-innocents - "You were just babies then!" - he vows not to, and adds the subtitle, "The Children's Crusade. He begins, "All this happened, more or less."
A socialist who cared about humanity as deeply as its violence and irrationality pained him, Vonnegut rendered a surreal reality more so, crafting an absurdist, fragmented tale about green, toilet-plunger-shaped aliens called Tralfamadorians abducting his PTSD-afflicted anti-hero Billy Pilgrim, who often gets "rudely unstuck in time," in order to haltingly, implausibly confront "the monstrous crimes of the 20th century." These apocalyptic horrors he saw, he carried the rest of his life: The massive firestorm that tore people's breath from their lungs, the streets and basements filled with bodies reduced to "little, brown, charred bundles," the smell of the endless, oozing corpses the POWS had to haul to towering funeral pyres as survivors threw rocks at them until soldiers with flame throwers took to cremating bodies where they lay after they'd been stripped of valuables. Faced with the unfathomable, he offers up for dark comic relief the Tralfamadorians, fatalists who "had many wonderful things to teach Earthlings about time," who have knowledge of the calamitous future but for whom there is no free will: "There is no why." Says Pilgrim, "Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people...'So it goes.'"
Vonnegut died in 2007. This Armistice Day he would have turned 101; on Thursday, the Library of America is re-publishing four of his novels. Because, per Faulkner, "The past is never dead - it's not even past," Israeli leaders now intent on turning Gaza into Dresden cite the Allied defense of firebombing entire cities - as a rail hub, Dresden was "a military target" - to justify their slaughter of at least 11,255 Palestinian civilians, almost half children. "There are no innocent civilians," insisted Gen. Curtis 'Iron Ass' LeMay, who pioneered low-altitude incendiary bombings on Tokyo and other Japanese cities that burned to death hundreds of thousands. "It is their government and you are fighting a people...So it doesn’t bother me so much to be killing so-called innocent bystanders." (During the war in Vietnam, LeMay famously vowed to "bomb them back into the Stone Age," a pledge that even fog-of-war Robert McNamara said could see them all prosecuted for war crimes, as they should have been.) Today, Israel's military and political leaders have likewise, shamelessly made their genocidal intent plain: They are fighting "human animals," they will bomb Gaza "into rubble," they are "rolling out the Gaza Nakba." "There will only be destruction," said one general. "You wanted hell, you will get hell."
And so Gaza has. Much of it is now rubble, "unrecognizable," a "graveyard for children." Over two-thirds of its 2.3 million people, lacking homes, food, water, have fled in terror. Vital, cancer, maternity, childrens' hospitals are bombed, closed, ravaged, evacuated amidst relentless Israeli airstrikes and loss of power. Previously bombed Al-Ahli Hospital serves as an outdoor field hospital, its three surgeons tending 500 wounded amidst IDF gunfire. Al-Shifa, Gaza's biggest hospital, isencircled by IDF tanks and snipers, without power, "caught in a circle of death." Israeli bombs razed its maternity ward and intensive care unit, killing at least three nurses. Over 600 bloody patients lie on floors away from windows and gunfire without food, water, oxygen, pain medication; sometimes a wailing parent finds a dead infant among them. Doctors do ventilation by hand and wrap the most seriously wounded - burns, blast injuries, amputations - for warmth, but they are "dying by the minute." At least 43 of 63 ICU patients have died; so have six of 39 premature babies. With no working incubators, doctors have laid them out on beds, swathed in blankets, getting weaker in "a very bad situation where you slowly kill them." One doctor on the newborns: "A scream from these children to the world."
Outside Al-Shifa, where up to 50,000 Gazans initially sought shelter until Israel began, over 100 dead bodies pile up. Despite Israel's claim to provide safe passage, hospital staff say they watched helplessly as many were shot trying to flee. Staff shrouded the dead in white body bags until they ran out; now they wrap them in blankets, some with burnt limbs protruding. As more die, and without refrigeration, wild dogs have set upon the bodies; doctors say they've begun digging mass graves inside the complex. After an ultimatum to evacuate, some doctors left, prodded by armed soldiers, to walk for hours on a road strewn with bodies to a UN shelter with a "staggering" number of refugees. But the UN, sheltering some 800,000 people, says its fuel depot has run dry, Israel bombed its wells, and it will soon have to shut down all aid. With over 5,000 Gazan women due to give birth this month, Al-Awda hospital in the north, without power, is delivering 20 babies a day; some mothers and infants arrive wounded, gored by shrapnel, with burns or broken limbs. "We are being killed here," says one doctor. Says another of performing surgery on children without anesthesia, “I’m trying to understand what the world is waiting for...At what point does the world believe (it) is no longer acceptable (for) this to be done to people."
"Children are children, (and) one cannot but be equally horrified by what has happened to them, both here and there," writes Gideon Levy of a "fascist reality sweeping Israel" in which "one must now take sides: You are either shocked by the atrocities committed by Hamas, or by the atrocities committed by the IDF. Decide. Choose sides. Which dead children shock you more?" Genocide, mutual terror, and the murder of children are "not a path to peace," he argues, but "a nightmare future built on a nightmare present." Many Jews concur, including relatives of Hamas victims. "Revenge is not going to bring my parents back to life," said one. "It is going to bring more death." Yet just 31 members, 5.8%, of Congress have demanded a ceasefire most Americans support, a complicit Biden has imposed "no red lines" on how many civilians his "great, great friend" Netanyahu can kill, faced with an illegal raid on Al-Shifa he only squeaked, "My hope and expectation is there will be less intrusive action," and when the UN, on its 5th try, passed its first resolution calling for "extended humanitarian pauses" in airstrikes, the U.S. - WTF - abstained. In response, Israel swiftly declared the call had "no meaning," was "disconnected from reality," and "will not happen."
In the same spirit of cooperation, Israeli forces also stormed al-Shifa Hospital. Ignoring protests from doctors and rights groups, they interrogated medical staff, blew up a medicine storehouse, assaulted men sheltering in the emergency room, arrested several technicians, ordered about 1,000 males over 16, hands in the air, into the courtyard to "surrender" and stripped some naked, all in the name of uncovering Hamas operations. An IDF spokesman reported they "found weapons and other terror infrastructure" and "unique technological means used by Hamas." Doctors and Gaza officials denied the claims as "a farce." Israel also announced it let in a first fuel delivery for the UN, but banned use of any fuel by hospitals, who most need it. In Paris, Israeli arms makers attended a leading global security fair sponsored by France's Ministry of Interior to exhibit their newest innovations, like Smartshooter's “one shot one hit” technology "giving soldiers the tactical edge they need," now being tested on Palestinians as part of what Netanyahu in a U.S. media blitz has called his "battle of civilization against barbarism." In his earliest speech against the Vietnam War, Kurt Vonnegut had some words for that sort of "manly jubilation," especially when referencing "murdered children." "There will be no cheering," he said. "I quote God Almighty, who said this: Thou shalt not kill."
“Whoever stays until the end will tell the story. We did what we could. Remember us." - Medical staff in Gaza were so inundated by patients they wiped clean the board that usually tracks upcoming surgeries and left this message.
Hungry Palestinian children line up for food in RafahPhoto by Hatem Ali
A Gazan child watches as people sort through rubble after an Israeli airstrike on Rafah. Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images
Amnesty Warns of UAE Surveillance During UN Climate Summit
With just two weeks until the next United Nations climate summit, Amnesty International on Wednesday expressed concerns about authorities in the United Arab Emirates using digital surveillance to target COP28 attendees and UAE residents alike.
"It is no secret that targeted digital surveillance has long been weaponized in the United Arab Emirates to crush dissent and stifle freedom of expression," said Rebecca White, a campaigner with Amnesty's Disrupting Surveillance Team, in a statement.
"Prior to his arrest in 2017, human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor faced a string of cyberattacks facilitated by mercenary surveillance companies," she noted. "Known as 'the last human rights defender' in the UAE, Mansoor, who openly criticized the authorities, has been languishing in an Emirati prison for over six years."
In recent months, Amnesty and other groups have called on U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to pressure the UAE to "immediately and unconditionally release" Mansoor and other imprisoned human rights advocates before COP28. Amnesty has also joined other organizations in urging leaders of countries participating in the summit to address the host nation's human rights record and "destructive" climate policies amid a worsening global emergency.
"Amnesty International fears that human rights defenders and other members of civil society in the UAE may continue to be targeted with spyware, including those attending COP28," White said Wednesday. "As hosts of the conference, the UAE has pledged to offer a platform for activists' voices, yet this will not be possible unless human rights, including the rights to privacy and peaceful assembly, are respected."
The pledge she referenced was signed in August by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary Simon Stiell and the COP28 president-designate, Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jaber, who is also an oil executive.
Heba Morayef, Amnesty's regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said at the time, "The fact that the hosts of this crucial climate meeting felt the need to highlight that some form of free assembly and expression will be allowed during COP28 serves only to highlight the normally restrictive human rights environment in the United Arab Emirates and the severe limits it places on the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly."
White stressed Wednesday that "the UAE authorities must not engage in unlawful electronic surveillance of conference participants as well as all Emirati nationals and residents. They must also allow COP28 attendees to download privacy-respecting international communications applications like Signal in the UAE to ensure they can use safe, encrypted means of communication."
UAW Pledges All Necessary Resources to Help Unionize Key Tesla Factory
The United Auto Workers has reportedly offered to provide organizers with all the resources they need to unionize Tesla's electric car factory in Fremont, California, an effort that would pit an invigorated UAW against a company run by Elon Musk—the world's richest man and an aggressive union-buster.
Following news Monday that the UAW reached a tentative contract agreement with General Motors—the final Big Three holdout—after six weeks on strike, Bloombergreported that "Tesla's roughly 20,000-worker plant in Fremont, California currently has a UAW organizing committee whose members are talking to coworkers about the advantages of collective bargaining."
"The UAW has committed to providing whatever resources are necessary for the campaign," Bloomberg added, citing an unnamed person familiar with the nascent organizing push.
Tesla dominates the U.S. electric vehicle market and has been a target of union organizers for years.
In 2017, Tesla fired an employee who was helping lead a unionization effort at the Fremont factory, which was unionized before Tesla purchased it over a decade ago. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that the 2017 firing amounted to unlawful retaliation for protected union activity, a finding that was later upheld in federal court.
Earlier this year, Tesla terminated dozens of workers at its Buffalo, New York factory a day after a group of employees sent Musk a letter informing him of their intention to unionize. The fired workers have filed a complaint with the NLRB.
Bloomberg noted Monday that Musk has personally spoken out against unionization efforts, calling the 2017 push "morally outrageous" after a Tesla employee and organizer published an article decrying the company's low wages and dangerous working conditions.
In 2018, Musk tweeted that there is "nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union."
"But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing?" he asked. The NLRB found that the tweet, which is still up, violated U.S. labor law, a decision that Tesla has appealed.
UAW president Shawn Fain, who was elected by the rank-and-file earlier this year after an
insurgent campaign, signaled in a speech over the weekend that the union is eyeing fresh unionization drives at Tesla, Toyota, and other non-union car manufacturers after securing historic tentative contract agreements with the General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis.
"One of our biggest goals coming out of this historic contract victory is to organize like we've never organized before," Fain said. "When we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won't just be with the Big Three. It will be the Big Five or Big Six."
Fain has previously called out Musk by name for treating workers poorly while enriching himself. In a
CBS Newsinterview in September, the UAW president said that autoworkers at non-union car companies "are scraping to get by so that greedy CEOs and greedy people like Elon Musk can build more rocket ships and shoot theirself in outer space."
The New York Timesreported Monday that the UAW is also planning to target foreign automakers with non-union factories in the U.S. Southeast.
"Some of the biggest new plants are under construction in Georgia, a critical swing state for 2024, including a Hyundai electric vehicle plant that will be the state's biggest economic development project ever," the Times noted.
In an op-ed for The Guardian last month, labor writer Hamilton Nolan argued that "Tesla is now one of the most important union targets in America, given its structural role in undermining everything that the UAW is fighting for."
"We can have a profitable American auto industry that provides good quality union jobs to hundreds of thousands of workers and helps resurrect the beleaguered middle class; or, we can have a profitable American auto industry that provides billions of dollars to people like Musk and pushes wages as low as the most desperate worker in rural South Carolina will accept," Nolan wrote.
"Not even Musk can hide from the labor movement forever," Nolan added. "It's been around a lot longer than he has."
'Price of Defending Apartheid': AIPAC Set to Spend $100 Million Against Squad
The powerful lobby group American Israel Public Affairs Committee is expected to spend nine figures in a bid to unseat over half a dozen progressive U.S. lawmakers who have been critical of Israeli human rights crimes in Palestine, Slatereported Wednesday.
Slate politics writer Alex Sammon wrote that "close watchers now expect AIPAC to spend at least $100 million in 2024 Democratic primaries, largely trained on eliminating incumbent Squad members from their seats."
Sammon said that Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Cori Bush (D-Mo.), Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), and Summer Lee (D-Pa.)—"the most outspoken and unapologetically leftist contingent of the Democratic Party in national office"—are among AIPAC's top targets.
"The price of defending apartheid keeps going up," quipped Palestinian American writer and political analyst Yousef Munayyer in response to the report.
Ohio political activist Nina Turner wrote on social media: "This is anti-Blackness. Period."
Tlaib—the only Palestinian American member of Congress—has accused Israel of genocide for killing and maiming tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza and forcibly displacing nearly three-quarters of the besieged strip's people. Many experts concur with her characterization.
Tlaib, Omar, Bush, and a handful of other Democratic lawmakers have also called Israel an apartheid state, an assessment shared by a growing number of rights groups, international figures, and even former Israeli government officials.
However, the furthest most progressive Democrats have gone in criticizing Israeli policies and practices is endorsing a resolution introduced last month by Bush urging U.S. President Joe Biden to press Israel's far-right government to agree to a cease-fire in Gaza.
On Wednesday, two dozen House members led by Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), and Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) sent a letter to Biden calling for a cease-fire.
As Sammon noted, a recent Data for Progress poll found that two-thirds of U.S. voters, including 80% of Democrats, also back a cease-fire.
Connor Farrell, president of the progressive fundraising group Left Rising, told Sammon that AIPAC wants "to make the statement this cycle that no one is safe from their wrath, that if you speak out, you can be targeted no matter how popular or how many cycles of incumbent you are."
"It's extremely audacious," Farrell added.
Progressive Democrats are no strangers to AIPAC spending big in bids to defame, defeat, or unseat them. As Sammon noted:
In the 2022 midterms, the Israel lobby became the largest single-issue outside spender in Democratic primaries, pouring in nearly $30 million via the super PAC the United Democracy Project, and millions more via the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC. It was an astronomical amount of money, mostly directed at knocking progressives out of the primaries, largely in open and redrawn seats.
AIPAC's heavy spending was blamed for helping Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) defeat incumbent Andy Levin—a self-described Zionist Jew—last year in Michigan's 11th Congressional District Democratic primary.
Conversely, some of the staunchest supporters of Israel in Congress have benefited from AIPAC's largesse. The group was the number one donor to both House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) during the last election cycle.
AIPAC has also been a top contributor to lawmakers like Reps. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) and Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), who not only vocally support Israel, but also attack colleagues like Tlaib and Omar for their pro-Palestinian views. 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.
Some observers also believe it is no coincidence that Rep. Jack Bergman (R-Mich.)—whose third-biggest campaign contributor during the last election cycle was AIPAC—introduced a censure motion against Tlaib last month, baselessly calling her a terrorist sympathizer.
Progressive lawmakers haven't taken AIPAC's attacks laying down. Omar—who, like Tlaib has received death threats after being targeted by the group—has accused the organization of endangering her life. Pocan earlier this month called AIPAC "a cancerous presence on our democracy and politics in general."
"I don't give a fuck about AIPAC," he said after the group falsely accused him and other representatives of "trying to keep Hamas in power."
AIPAC has also come under fire from Democrats of all stripes for endorsing more than 100 Republican U.S. lawmakers who voted to subvert the 2020 presidential election in service of former President Donald Trump's "Big Lie" that Democrats rigged the contest.
Alluding to right-wing support for the group, Bush wrote on social media Wednesday that "AIPAC is attempting to buy blue seats with GOP donor money."
Sammon wrote that AIPAC's effort to oust popular Democrats is fraught with risks for the group:
Toppling an incumbent is not easy. Tlaib, Omar, Bush, Bowman, Pressley, and Ocasio-Cortez are all well-liked, especially in their districts. Some, like Tlaib, are masters of constituent services. Others have shown incredible fundraising chops, and boast massive grassroots networks. There have been previous attempts to take out Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez that failed spectacularly, and expensively. Omar, who looked vulnerable in her previous race, didn't really campaign that time around. AIPAC may find itself burning money to fight on inhospitable terrain. And if it fails, the group's fearsome reputation in D.C. will be greatly diminished.
"That AIPAC feels the need to spend this much money at all could well be taken as a sign of weakness, not strength," Sammon added. "Already, unlimited Israeli militarism is deeply unpopular; a full year of bombings of Palestinian hospitals and mass casualties of children in Gaza could make the AIPAC line even more unpopular still."
Hacker-for-Hire Who Targeted Climate Activists: 'You Don't Know Everything' Yet
An Israeli private investigator sentenced Thursday to more than six-and-a-half years behind bars for his role in orchestrating a massive computer-hacking campaign targeting U.S. climate activists said "there will come a day" when mysterious details of the case—possibly including who paid him—will be revealed.
Aviram Azari, a 52-year-old former police officer from Kiryat Yam in northern Israel, was sentenced to 80 months imprisonment, with 48 months served, after pleading guilty to "computer intrusion, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft in connection with his involvement in a massive computer-hacking campaign targeting companies and individuals in the U.S. and around the world," according to U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams.
"I ask for forgiveness," Azari told the federal court. "You don't know everything. There will come a day."
One of Azari's victims reportedly told him that "if you are truly sorry, you should be giving the names of the people who hired you."
Azari, a self-described "hacker-for-hire," ran a sweeping international spearphishing attack called "Dark Basin" that employed groups of hackers to steal emails and other digital documents from U.S. climate activists, government officials in African nations, members of a Mexican political party, and critics of a German company. Clients paid Azari approximately $4.8 million over five years for managing the campaign.
Citizen Lab, a Canadian digital watchdog group, first reported on Dark Basin in 2020. According to the group's research, numerous progressive organizations—including Public Citizen, Greenpeace, 350.org, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Oil Change International—were among those targeted.
Prosecutors said stolen emails were leaked to media outlets, some of which published reports "appeared designed to undermine the integrity" of the #ExxonKnew movement and investigations into ExxonMobil's climate cover-up.
NPRreported Thursday:
The U.S. government hasn't said who hired Azari to target the climate activists. But in an October sentencing memo, federal prosecutors in New York described how ExxonMobil tried to take advantage of the material that Azari's group stole.
Prosecutors noted a private email between climate activists that ExxonMobil had publicized on its website. The document was about a 2016 meeting to convince the public that ExxonMobil was a "corrupt institution" that pushed the world toward "climate chaos and grave harm" because of its decadeslong campaign to cast doubt on global warming.
"The 'Dark Basin' cyberattack offers an acute reminder of the vested interests at play in obscuring the role of fossil fuel companies in driving the climate crisis," Kathy Mulvey, the accountability campaign director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement. "While the conviction and sentencing of Mr. Azari has shed light on the hacking-for-hire enterprise, we're eager to see the bad actors behind the attack publicly named and held accountable."
"As the fossil fuel industry intensifies its efforts to thwart climate lawsuits that seek to hold them accountable for their deception and the devastating damage caused by their products, this sentencing serves as a stark reminder of the lengths powerful corporations and special interests will go to evade responsibility," Mulvey added. "Now more than ever, scientists, advocates, and our policymakers must fight back against scare tactics, delay maneuvers, or other abuses of power from this industry. A safer, healthier, and more just future is at stake."
Greenpeace USA executive director Ebony Twilley Martin said in a statement that "we are pleased to see federal prosecutors taking legal action against those who use underhanded tactics like hacking to target public interest advocates."
"That said, justice will not be completely served in this case until those who hired Azari are exposed and held to account," she continued. "Whoever that is though, they ultimately failed. They failed to stop elected leaders across the country from pursuing some level of accountability for actions that—over time—amount to one of the greatest corporate crimes against humanity ever committed."
"Overwhelmingly, the American people want climate action, and Big Oil will use every tool in their toolbox to stop it," Martin added. "Cyberattacks like this are one of the many tactics designed to silence and oppose climate activists. They have serious impacts on people's lives—and thus their ability to do the important work of protecting our planet."
UN Agency Warns 'Immediate Possibility of Starvation' for People of Gaza
The United Nations World Food Program warned Thursday that nearly every single person in Gaza is "facing the immediate possibility of starvation" as the Israeli government continues to restrict the amount and kind of aid allowed to enter the besieged Palestinian territory.
"With only 10% of necessary food supplies entering Gaza since the beginning of the conflict, the strip now faces a massive food gap and widespread hunger as nearly the entire population is in desperate need of food assistance," the organization said in a statement. "Earlier this week, WFP confirmed the closure of the final bakery operating in partnership with the agency due to lack of fuel. Fuel shortages have triggered a crippling halt in bread production across all 130 bakeries in Gaza. Bread, a staple food for people in Gaza, is scarce or non-existent."
The Israeli government, which has been accused of "using starvation as a weapon of war," reportedly approved a plan Thursday that would allow fuel shipments to enter southern Gaza via the Egyptian border on a daily basis, but it's unclear whether that will be anywhere close to sufficient to alleviate the spiraling humanitarian catastrophe.
As Axiosreported Friday, "Israel earlier this week allowed a limited supply of fuel to be used to refuel trucks the U.N. uses to deliver humanitarian aid. The U.N. said, however, it wasn't near enough to fulfill the needs in Gaza," which is home to more than 2 million people—around half of whom are children.
The WFP said Thursday that fuel shortages are "crippling humanitarian distribution and operations, including the delivery of food assistance."
"Even as trucks arrived from Egypt and offloaded supplies in Gaza on Tuesday, they were unable to reach civilians in shelters because of insufficient fuel for distribution vehicles," the U.N. organization said. "Of the 1,129 trucks that have entered Gaza since the opening of the Rafah border crossing on 21 October, only 447 were carrying food supplies. While WFP welcomes the increase in the number of trucks crossing into Gaza, the volume remains woefully inadequate."
"The Israeli government should immediately end its total blockade of the Gaza Strip, an act of collective punishment and a war crime."
By WFP's estimate, food that has entered Gaza since October 7 has only been enough to meet 7% of Gazans' daily caloric needs. Across the devastated strip, food markets have shut down or completely run out of essentials.
"The small quantities of food that can be found are being sold at alarmingly inflated prices and are of little use without the ability to cook, forcing some to survive on one meal a day," WFP said. "For the lucky, that includes more than solely canned food, though some people have resorted to consuming raw onions and uncooked eggplants."
Samer Abdeljaber, the WFP's representative and country director in Palestine, said Thursday that "the collapse of food supply chains is a catastrophic turning point in an already dire situation, where people have been stripped of basic necessities."
"Without access to fuel, our ability to provide bread or transport food to those in need has been severely compromised, essentially bringing life in Gaza to a standstill," said Abdeljaber. "People are going hungry."
The increasingly severe shortage of food is one of many crises facing ordinary Gazans as they attempt to shelter from Israel's airstrikes and expanding ground attack.
A. Kayum Ahmed, special adviser on the right to health at Human Rights Watch, wrote Thursday that the lack of clean water across the strip is "resulting in 'grave concerns' by public health experts of an imminent infectious disease outbreak in Gaza, including waterborne illnesses like cholera and typhoid."
"Since the start of the blockade, water shortages and contamination have severely impeded healthcare access, made people sick, and have already led to the outbreak of diseases, creating a public health crisis," Ahmed added. "The Israeli government should immediately end its total blockade of the Gaza Strip, an act of collective punishment and a war crime, restore water and electricity access, and allow desperately needed food, medical aid, and fuel into Gaza, including via its crossing at Kerem Shalom."
'Nowhere Safe in Gaza' as Evidence of Israeli War Crimes Mounts
Amnesty International accused Israel of committing war crimes with two recent bombings of a church and a home in a refugee camp.
Palestinians in Gaza and human rights advocates on Monday pleaded with the international community to see the ongoing killing of thousands of people in the blockaded enclave for what it is—a massacre in which Israel has shown "a chilling indifference to the catastrophic toll on civilians," according to Amnesty International, and has committed numerous war crimes as it bombards civilian targets.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on October 19 and October 20, calling on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the bombings as possible war crimes.
Amnesty investigators visited the sites of the bombings, Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza City and a home in al-Nuseirat refugee camp near Deir al-Balah, and interviewed 14 people, including nine survivors of the attacks and two other witnesses. The group's Crisis Evidence Lab also analayzed satellite imagery and and audiovisual material.
The two bombings, which killed a total of 46 civilians, including 20 children, "were indiscriminate attacks or direct attacks on civilians or civilian objects, which must be investigated as war crimes," said Amnesty.
"These deadly, unlawful attacks are part of a documented pattern of disregard for Palestinian civilians and demonstrate the devastating impact of the Israeli military's unprecedented onslaught has left nowhere safe in Gaza, regardless of where civilians live or seek shelter," said Erika Guevara Rosas, director of global research, advocacy, and policy for the U.K.-based group. "We urge the International Criminal Court's prosecutor to take immediate concrete action to expedite the investigation into war crimes and other crimes under international law opened in 2021."
The group noted that on October 19, when the historic church was struck, the Israeli government released a statement saying that "IDF fighter jets struck the command and control center belonging to a Hamas terrorist involved in the launching of rockets and mortars toward Israel."
But the IDF later deleted a video it had posted of the strike on Saint Porphyrius, and has provided no information to substantiate the claim that the church was a "command and control center."
Before the strike, in the first days of Israel's relentless bombardment of Gaza, church officials had publicly said hundreds of civilians were taking shelter at Saint Porphyrius.
"Their presence would therefore have been known to the Israeli military," said Amnesty. "The Israeli military's decision to go ahead with a strike on a known church compound and site for displaced civilians was reckless and therefore amounts to a war crime, even if there was a belief that there was a military objective nearby."
One of the families sheltering in the church was that of Ramez al-Sury, whose three children—aged 14, 12, and 11—were killed in the attack.
"We left our homes and came to stay at the church because we thought we would be protected here. We have nowhere else to go. The church was full of peaceful people, only peaceful people," al-Sury told Amnesty. "There is nowhere safe in Gaza during this war. Bombardments everywhere, day and night. Every day, more and more civilians are killed. We pray for peace, but our hearts are broken."
The day after al-Sury's children were killed, Hani al-Aydi was sitting at home with family members at al-Nuseirat refugee camp, which is within the area the Israeli military had ordered Palestinians to evacuate to from the north.
Despite telling people the area was safe, the IDF launched a strike that destroyed the al-Aydi family home, which the military had no reason to suspect was a Hamas target, according to Amnesty.
"All of those present in the al-Aydi house that was hit directly and in the two nearby homes were civilians," said Amnesty. "Two members of the al-Aydi family had permits to work in Israel, which requires rigorous security checks by Israeli authorities, for those obtaining the permit and their extended family.
Al-Aydi told the group that "everything collapsed on our head" suddenly when Israel bombed the house, killing 28 people including 12 children.
"All my brothers died, my nephews, my nieces," said al-Aydi. "My mother died, my sisters died, our home is gone… There is nothing here, and now we are left with nothing and are displaced. I don't know how much worse things will get. Could it get any worse?"
Amnesty noted that even if it had found in its investigation that there were plausible military targets in the vicinity of the two sites—which it did not—"these strikes failed to distinguish between military objectives and civilian objects. The evidence collected by Amnesty International also indicates that the Israeli military failed to take feasible precautions to minimize damage to civilians and civilian property, including by not providing any warning—at minimum to anyone living in the locations that were hit—before launching the attacks."
The Geneva Conventions require parties in a conflict to take measures to protect the lives of civilians and prohibit collective punishment of a population for acts committed by a particular group.
"The harrowing accounts from survivors and relatives of victims describing the devastating human toll of these bombardments offer a snapshot of the mass civilian suffering being inflicted daily across Gaza by the Israeli military's relentless attacks, underscoring the urgent need for an immediate cease-fire," said Guevara-Rosas.
Amnesty made the request of the ICC as the death toll in Gaza surpasses 13,300 people in just over six weeks. At least 5,500 children have been killed.
Al-Mezan, a Gaza-based human rights group, also addressed the ICC on Monday, calling on the body to issue warrants for Israeli officials responsible for crimes against Palestinian children.
Biden's Key Climate Law Gives Big Oil a 'Massive Escape Hatch': Analysis
"While the IRA was touted as the 'largest investment in climate and energy in American history,' it could turn out to be a failure if Biden doesn't also take bold action on fossil fuels," said Oil Change International.
The 2022 law heralded as U.S. President Biden's key climate achievement may support an expansion of clean energy, but a new analysis out Monday demonstrates how the Inflation Reduction Act leaves the fossil fuel industry with vast opportunities to extract more oil and gas and continue boosting its record-breaking profits at the expense of frontline communities.
The report, said Oil Change International (OCI) as it released the new findings, proves that the Biden administration can't rely on the IRA to demonstrate its commitment to the emissions reduction that scientists agree is needed to mitigate the climate crisis.
Titled Biden's Fossil Fuel Fail: How U.S. Oil and Gas Supply Rises Under the Inflation Reduction Act, Exacerbating Environmental Injustice and released 10 days before the 28th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), the analysis uses previously unpublished data from climate modeling by the Rhodium Group, an environmental think tank.
"The model projects that despite the IRA's investment in renewable energy, electric vehicles, and batteries, the United States could still miss its Paris Agreement goal of reducing U.S. emissions by 50 to 52% below 2005 levels by 2030," reads the report, noting that as the world's largest historical emitter of fossil fuel emissions, the U.S. has a responsibility to "cut its emissions faster than the global average."
The group's model projects that domestic fossil gas demand in the U.S. will decline by 16% by 2035, yet production is expected to rise by 7%. Petroleum demand is expected to decline by 20%, yet production will rise by 13%.
"The gap between production and demand is filled by surging exports," explained OCI. "Gas exports are projected to double by 2035, while oil and petroleum product exports rise 23%."
Wind and solar power are expected to replace gas domestically, added the organization, but the positive effects of the decline in gas demand in the U.S. are "tempered by an increase in gas consumption within the oil and gas industry itself."
The "energy-hungry" liquefied natural gas (LNG) export sector will essentially cancel out progress made by surging wind and solar power in the U.S., said OCI, with gas consumption by LNG export plants growing 140% by 2035.
"The Biden administration touts the Inflation Reduction Act as a centerpiece of its achievements on climate," said Collin Rees, U.S. campaign manager for OCI. "In reality, the bill leaves a massive escape hatch for the fossil fuel industry to continue business as usual."
Rhodium's modeling projects that the U.S. will miss its targeted emissions reduction for 2030 by 16-18 percentage points if the Biden administration relies on the IRA and its investments in technological fixes like carbon capture and storage and fossil hydrogen production while allowing continued investments in oil and gas exports.
"While the IRA was touted as the 'largest investment in climate and energy in American history,' it could turn out to be a failure if Biden doesn't also take bold action on fossil fuels," said OCI in a statement. "As the world gathers for COP28, Biden still has a chance to be the climate leader he claims he is by making a commitment to phasing out fossil fuels."
The phase-out of all oil and gas production in the U.S. is widely recognized as necessary by energy and climate experts, and has long been demanded by advocates for frontline communities, which bear a disproportionate public health burden due to the strong links between fossil fuel extraction, storage, and transport and harms including respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular disease, and poor outcomes for pregnant people and infants.
Boosting fossil fuel production and exports "while exacerbating pollution in environmental justice communities," said OCI, is a "deadly combination."
Roishetta Sibley Ozane, founder of the Vessel Project of Louisiana, said Biden's approval of projects like the Willow oil drilling initiative in Alaska, nearly $2 billion for publicly financed fossil fuel projects abroad, and his support for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, among other pollution-causing infrastructure, has shown frontline communities that the president's campaign promises regarding environmental justice were "nothing but a smokescreen."
"We supported [President Joe] Biden for change, not to deal with deadly decisions made without us at the table," said Ozane. "The fight against climate disaster is collective, and the United States cannot preach about caring for communities while exporting pollution globally."
The pollution impacts of continued fossil fuel production and exports will be "disproportionately borne by Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor communities—specifically in Appalachia, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico," said OCI.
To align with Biden's stated climate goals, the group said, the president's efforts must go far beyond the IRA and include a phase-out of oil and gas exports, an end to fossil fuel leasing on federal lands, and a halt to all approvals for new fossil fuel infrastructure.
"At COP28 the spotlight will be on our collective effort to end the fossil fuel era," said Rees. "Will the United States deliver, or will Biden's climate legacy be one of disastrous oil and gas expansion and failure to adequately tackle the climate crisis?"
‘Five-Alarm Fire’ as Global Temps Breach 2°C Threshold
While scientists were quick to point out that this was just a daily anomaly, not a permanent shift, it is a "canary in the coalmine" that "underscores the urgency of tackling greenhouse gas emissions."
Global temperatures surpassed 2°C above preindustrial levels for the first time Friday, according to preliminary data from the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service.
The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts' ERA5 data set showed global service air temperatures rising 2.07°C above the 1850-1900 average on Friday and 2.06°C above that average on Saturday, the service said.
"This is a five-alarm fire for humanity," the group Climate Defiance tweeted in response to the figures.
In the 2015 Paris agreement, world leaders set out to keep warming to "well-below" 2°C above preindustrial levels. Allowing warming to breach that point increases several climate risks, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): 2°C of warming compared with 1.5°C would raise sea levels by an additional 0.1 meters by 2100, destroy 99% of coral reefs instead of 70% to 90%, and expose several hundred million more people to poverty and climate-related hazards by 2050.
Friday's 2°C breach was first noted by Copernicus Climate Change Service deputy director Samantha Burgess on social media Sunday. She said the day was also 1.17°C above the 1991-2020 average, making it the warmest November 17 on record.
Scientists were quick to point out that this doesn't mean global heating has breached the 2°C threshold long-term.
"The 1.5°C and 2°C warming thresholds have been defined in terms of the trend line," University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann tweeted. "Not individual years, let alone months, weeks, or days (the shorter the time period, the larger the random fluctuations). Those who imply otherwise are misleading you."
Richard Allan, professor of climate science at the University of Reading in the U.K., toldCNN that it was "entirely expected that single days will surpass 2°C above preindustrial well before the actual 2°C target is breached over many years."
"We are blowing past warning signs with wild abandon. We are approaching the precipice and flooring the gas."
That said, the reading was a "canary in the coalmine" that "underscores the urgency of tackling greenhouse gas emissions," Allan said.
It also comes in a year of dropping canaries: The 12 months from November 2022 to October 2023 were the 12 hottest on record, according to a Climate Central analysis. 2023 saw the hottest Northern Hemisphere summer on record, the hottest month in July, and is likely to be the hottest year not just since record-keeping began, but in the last 125,000 years. And it's not just numbers. The record-breaking temperatures fueled deadly heatwaves, wildfires, and floods around the world.
"The indicators are flashing red," Climate Defiance wrote. "The planet's vital signs are clear. Humanity is on life support. With the El Niño cycle just beginning, this 2°C breach sadly represents not a climax but a small taste of what is to come."
"This is happening faster than expected," the group continued. "We are blowing past warning signs with wild abandon. We are approaching the precipice and flooring the gas. This is madness. Utter madness."
The 2°C breach comes a little less than two weeks from the start of the next United Nations Climate Change Conference in the United Arab Emirates. A recent report from U.N. Climate Change found that national plans were still incompatible with limiting warming to 1.5°C and that world leaders must take "bold strides forward" at the conference "to get on track." More than 650 scientists have signed a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to back a fossil-fuel phaseout at the talks.
"It's just one day (so far) above 2°C, but it highlights again that the world is approaching the limits set out by the Paris Agreement," IPCC scientist Ed Hawkins tweeted. "We already have many of the solutions to rapidly reduce emissions and halt the rise in global temperatures. We just need to choose to use them."