Tag: 2023-25 Israeli war on Gaza

Gaza and the West Bank: Dispatches from Catastrophe (II)

This is the second of two parts of a Jewish Currents dispatch. At the end of 2025, Jewish Currents reached out to about two dozen Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank — all of whom the magazine had previously interviewed after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 — to ask them how their lives had changed since they last shared their stories.“ The resulting testimonies are difficult to read,” says the introduction to these stories. “They show the effects of years of industrialized, live-broadcast massacres and colonization, particularly in Gaza, where more than 10% of the population is estimated to have been killed or injured in the last two years.“

Gaza and the West Bank: Dispatches from Catastrophe (I)

At the end of 2025, Jewish Currents reached out to about two dozen Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank — all of whom the magazine had previously interviewed after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 — to ask them how their lives had changed since they last shared their stories. “The resulting testimonies are difficult to read,” says the introduction to these stories. “They show the effects of years of industrialized, live-broadcast massacres and colonization, particularly in Gaza, where more than 10% of the population is estimated to have been killed or injured in the last two years.” This is the first of two parts.

‘All They Will Find Is Sand’: Israel’s Demolition of Gaza

“Ungrounding: The Architecture of Genocide,” an upcoming book by British-Israeli architect Eyal Weizman, catalogs, in unflinching and exacting detail, the Israeli campaigns of violence and displacement that have reshaped Gaza and its surroundings to make these areas unlivable for the Palestinian people. This article, which first appeared in the London Review of Books, is a powerful preview of “Ungrounding.”

The Trump Mandate: Who Needs Palestinians to Run Their Own Lives in Gaza?

On January 16, U.S. president Donald Trump announced with imperial arrogance a “Board of Peace,” naming himself as its chairman, to oversee the governance of Gaza. This board is composed primarily of top U.S. diplomats, including his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. “Trump’s announcement of the official creation of the Gaza Board of Peace is not merely a new diplomatic initiative,” Israeli Palestinian journalist Jack Khoury points out in the article published here. “It is a declaration with far deeper meaning: the restoration of an international — and above all American — protectorate over the Palestinian people.”

Trump Is Washing His Hands of Gaza

Behind Trump’s headline diplomacy is a void: core questions on Israeli withdrawal, Hamas disarmament and Gaza’s future governance are postponed or outsourced. This isn’t a peace effort but conflict management, preserving the status quo and leaving Palestinians without a political horizon. — Jack Khoury, Haaretz

Gaza in Turmoil: Hamas and Militias Clash

This article, first published by the Israeli daily Haaretz, describes efforts by Hamas to reassert control in Gaza in the aftermath of the ceasefire that went into effect there on October 10, 2025. As Karim, a 32-year-old Palestinian, said, “Even if all of Gaza becomes one big cemetery, Hamas will strive to run this cemetery. They won’t give up their rule easily.”

Gaza Ceasefire Won’t Bring Peace

The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that went into effect in Gaza on October 10 is unlikely to bring lasting peace in Palestine, Israel, or the broader Middle East. It resolves nothing about the underlying issue of Palestinian self-determination. The only positive outcome is the pause to the slaughter in Gaza.

How Gazans See Their Future With or Without Hamas

This article is authored by two Palestinian Israeli journalists working for the Israeli daily Haaretz. It is largely based on many interviews with Palestinians in Gaza. The authors provide a thoughtful, detailed, and convincing account of how Palestinians in the embattled territory see their future with or without Hamas. “Gazans describe an organization that still enjoys a chunk of support as it terrorizes the populace, provides services, and is not yet challenged by a Palestinian alternative,” they say.

The Trump-Netanyahu Gaza Plan

This article offers an accurate assessment of the plan for Gaza announced by U.S. president Donald Trump on September 29, 2025, at the White House during a visit by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who endorsed the cease-fire proposal. Hamas has yet to announce officially its stance on the proposed plan.

Israeli Ground Forces Attack Gaza City: ‘Here in Gaza, Even Silence Screams’

What Israel calls the “evacuation of civilians” from Gaza City is unfolding under constant airstrikes, leaving those fleeing and those staying at risk. Entire families are killed, like the 23 members of the Zaqout family. Others, like the Samounis, already survivors of previous wars, are displaced again. Eyewitness accounts describe the destruction in real time, but even those say words are no longer enough to convey what is happening. In Gaza today, every person is a survivor, and every moment could be the last.

‘After Seeing Gaza’s Starving Children, My Work as an Israeli Pediatrician Will Never Be the Same’

This opinion column, authored by an Israeli pediatrician, is an important follow-up to “‘Starvation Is Everywhere’: Virtual Tours of Gaza Clinics Expose Scale of Horror,” which World-Outlook published on August 23. Through virtual tours of medical facilities in Gaza, the authors of that earlier story documented in harrowing detail the situation in which thousands of Palestinian children suffer from severe acute malnutrition as a result of deliberate Israeli government policy. In this follow-up, authored after the Israeli military bombed Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, where this photo was taken, Michal Feldon explains that “the disparity between the medicine I practice on a daily basis in this country [Israel], and what is happening in the Gaza Strip — just a few dozen kilometers from me — is totally insupportable and unacceptable.”

‘Starvation Is Everywhere’: Virtual Tours of Gaza Clinics Expose Scale of Horror

Through virtual tours of medical facilities in Gaza, the authors of this article document in horrifying detail the situation in which thousands of children suffer from severe acute malnutrition. “What we saw was of catastrophic proportions,” they say. They provide evidence showing that this catastrophe is the direct result of deliberate Israeli government policy and practice.

Soon, Anything That Moves in Gaza City Will Be Killed

In this opinion column, the Israeli daily Haaretz’s correspondent for the occupied territories, Amira Hass, describes frankly the coming slaughter the Israel Defense Forces are unleashing in Gaza City, as they start to force 1.5 million Palestinians crowded there to the Strip’s south — with the goal of eventually expelling from Gaza as many of its 2.3 million inhabitants as they can.

‘No to Forced Expulsion’: Palestinians in Gaza City Protest Israeli Displacement Plans

This article reports on protests by Palestinians in Gaza City on August 18, 2025, against the Israeli army’s plan to take over their city and transfer the population southward. Until this point in the war, the 700,000 residents of Gaza City have not faced displacement, and it is now home to an additional half a million Palestinians displaced from Gaza’s north. Similar protests are expected the rest of this week, although intensified Israeli air strikes make their organization uncertain.

‘Jews – Rebel. Now!!!’ Against the Israeli Regime

This article reports on a call by Avraham “Avrum” Burg “for one million Jews worldwide to join a collective legal complaint at the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of crimes against humanity in Gaza.” As it notes, “Burg, 70, served as Knesset speaker from 1999 to 2003 and previously headed the Jewish Agency and World Zionist Organization.” Burg’s own call is included in this post.

Extreme Right Has Seized Control of Israel

This was the lead article in the Israeli daily Haaretz on August 7, 2025. In an expansive interview reported in this essay, Assaf David provides a glimpse of the destructive impact on Israeli society from Israel’s ongoing slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. Through the accounts of many Gazans he is in direct contact with, David describes the Israeli-caused starvation epidemic in Gaza and calls for an immediate end to Israel’s onslaught. His account is more compelling given David’s biography. He grew up in a religious Zionist home in the urban settlement of Kiryat Arba, abutting Hebron, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, later served in the Israeli army for 11 years, was seriously wounded in one of Hamas’ first suicide attacks, and for years was an adviser for the Israeli prime minister’s office.

‘Gaza, Gaza, Food and Water! U.S. Israel Stop the Slaughter!’

As part of an International Day of Action, more than 1,000 people rallied in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York City on July 25 to demand “Stop Starving Gaza Now!” The rally, and subsequent march through midtown Manhattan, was organized by the local chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement, with the support of many partner organizations, such as Jewish Voice for Peace. This eyewitness photo montage provides a vivid representation of this protest, one among many, frequent pro-Palestinian actions in New York City over the last 20 months.

The Latest Child to Starve to Death in Gaza Weighed Less Than When She Was Born

This report by the Associated Press, which includes disturbing eyewitness photo coverage, documents how Israel is deliberately starving children and adults alike in Gaza. It is part of the mounting evidence of the magnitude of the humanitarian catastrophe that Israel — with the aid and complicity of the U.S. and other imperialist governments — has unleashed in Gaza.

Genocide in Gaza

This report “documents the Israeli assault for what it is: a deliberate, cumulative, and ongoing dismantling of Gaza’s healthcare system — and of the population’s ability to survive. Its meaning: genocide.” It was issued on July 28, 2025, by Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI): an Israel-based human rights organization working to advance the right to health for all under Israel’s control, including Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Those Attacking Pro-Palestinian Student Protests Endanger Jews

This article explains that, far from “protecting” Jewish students, those attacking pro-Palestinian student protests are the ones endangering Jews. Its author, Elijah Kahlenberg, is the president and founder of Atidna International, a university-based peace group uniting Jewish and Arab students. Kahlenberg, who is Jewish, graduated this spring from the University of Texas (UT) at Austin. Last year, he took part in UT student protests condemning Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and demanding the school divest from entities that do business with Israel.

Author Adam Shatz on ‘The World since October 7’ (II)

In this essay, author Adam Shatz raises important issues that deserve further discussion in light of the gruesome October 7, 2023, attack led by Hamas that targeted civilians in Israel, the genocidal war Israel unleashed in retaliation on the entire population of Gaza, and a new wave of violence by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Zionist settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank. Shatz also examines political developments in the Mideast and beyond after the recent U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. He spells out the implications of last year’s Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which decimated the Iranian-backed Hezbollah and caused a substantial death toll among the broader civilian Lebanese population, and of the overthrow of the Assad dictatorship in Syria. This is the second of two parts.

Author Adam Shatz on ‘The World since October 7’ (I)

In this essay, author Adam Shatz raises important issues that deserve further discussion in light of the gruesome October 7, 2023, attack led by Hamas that targeted civilians in Israel, the genocidal war Israel unleashed in retaliation on the entire population of Gaza, and a new wave of violence by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Zionist settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank. Shatz also examines political developments in the Mideast and beyond after the recent U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. He spells out the implications of last year’s Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which decimated the Iranian-backed Hezbollah and caused a substantial death toll among the broader civilian Lebanese population, and of the overthrow of the Assad dictatorship in Syria. This is the first of two parts.

New Grim Plan by Israel’s Madmen: A Concentration Camp in Gaza

This article documents the Israeli government’s recently unveiled plan to force 600,000 displaced Palestinians into a “humanitarian city” to be established on a strip of land where the city of Rafah, in southern Gaza, once stood. It aptly describes such a plan for what it really is: creating a concentration camp designed to crowd displaced Palestinians in a tiny area with the intention of eventually forcing them out of their destroyed homeland. “It’s forced displacement on pain of death or starvation, as a prelude to expulsion.”

‘I Know One When I See One’: Israel’s Genocide in Gaza

“My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people,” says Omer Bartov, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, in this essay. Among other essential points, Bartov answers the grotesque claim by many vociferous supporters of the state of Israel that recognizing the reality of the horror in Gaza is “antisemitic.”

‘Killing Field’: Israeli Commanders Order Troops to Deliberately Fire at Unarmed Gazans Seeking Aid

This article, based on interviews with Israeli troops, is a devastating report on the deliberate killing of at least hundreds, and the injuring of many thousands, of Palestinians waiting to receive humanitarian aid in Gaza. According to soldiers and officers who spoke to the Israeli daily Haaretz, commanders instructed them to open fire on people seeking food at aid distribution points despite knowing they posed no threat.

In Graduation Speech, NYU Student Condemns U.S.-backed Israeli War in Gaza

On May 14, Logan Rozos, a student at New York University (NYU), gave a brief but powerful speech during the graduation ceremony of Gallatin, a liberal arts school within NYU. In his remarks (transcribed by World-Outlook from the video of Rozos’ speech, and published in this post), the student condemned the U.S.-backed Israeli war on the Palestinian people in Gaza. NYU immediately announced it is withholding the student’s diploma as it pursues disciplinary actions against him, in the latest flashpoint between free speech principles and punishment for pro-Palestinian advocacy on U.S. college campuses.

Columbia University Cracks Down on Pro-Palestinian Advocacy

In this essay, Palestinian American scholar Rashid Khalidi describes how Columbia is gagging students and faculty who have opposed Israel’s mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, as university officials are moving further to the right under pressure from the Trump administration. The university became the epicenter of student encampments and other protests that swept the country last spring opposing the U.S.-backed Israeli war in Gaza and demanding that schools divest from businesses benefiting the Israeli regime.