Where Is The Outrage About Israel’s Profoundly Illegal ‘War on Hospitals’ in Gaza?
18.11.23
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Where is the outrage from western leaders, and the western mainstream media, about Israel’s ‘war on hospitals’ in Gaza?
Today, we hear that staff and patients at Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest hospital, which was invaded by Israeli soldiers three days ago, have been ordered to evacuate, on foot, to the south of Gaza, even though that is impossible for the seriously ill and for the 35 premature babies who are still alive, after their incubators stopped working days ago because the hospital ran out of fuel.
Four of these babies have died in the last few days, but the rest are tenaciously clinging on to life, although Al-Jazeera noted that another five are now “severely ill.” Yesterday, doctors at the hospital reported that everyone in the intensive care unit had died as a result of the fuel ban.
Most of those in the hospital — nearly all of the many hundreds of patients and their families, most of the medical staff, and thousands of internally displaced people whose homes were destroyed in Israel bombing raids, and who have been sheltering in the hospital’s grounds — were made to leave the hospital this morning, with numerous witnesses, including Dr. Adnan Al Barsh, Al-Shifa’s Head of Orthopedics, explaining that they were “forced to leave at gunpoint.”
150 patients who cannot be moved — the premature babies, and seriously ill patients including, according to Dr. Al Barsh, “many amputees unable to walk” — are still in the hospital, with just five doctors left to to try and look after them. One of them, Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the hospital’s director, gave Al Jazeera the following account of the dire situation in the hospital.
“The hospital is completely deserted”, he said, adding, “The centre of the hospital is surrounded by Israeli soldiers. They are in total control. Even we, the very few medical staff that remain, cannot move freely.” As he also explained, “Many of those in critical condition, including newborns and kidney patients, will die imminently if they are not evacuated” — by which, of course, he meant being evacuated with the medical equipment and supplies needed to keep them alive, which is impossible because, as noted above, there is no fuel to power any of the necessary equipment, but also because no ambulances are allowed by the Israelis (and, in any case, they too have run out of fuel), and because there is no other functioning hospital for any of them to go to.
Hospitals are supposed to be protected facilities in wartime, but apparently no one cares
All of the above are clearly war crimes, and yet the silence from most western media and politicians is almost all-consuming. To provide some necessary context, as the BBC helpfully explained two days ago, “According to international humanitarian law, hospitals are specially protected facilities. This means that parties to conflicts cannot attack hospitals, or prevent them performing their medical functions.”
Israel, however, has done both. All of northern Gaza’s hospitals have had to shut down because of the “complete siege” imposed by Israel on October 8, which has prevented water, food, medical supplies and fuel (for electricity, as well as for cooking, transportation and communications) from entering Gaza, and as Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director General of the WHO (World Health Organization) explained at an Informal Plenary Meeting of the United Nations General Assembly just yesterday, “Only 10 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are still functioning, with just 1,400 hospital beds.”
As he proceeded to explain, what this means is “[p]remature babies dying as life-support systems shut down; [m]ore than 2,000 patients with cancer, 1,000 with kidney disease, 50,000 with cardiovascular disease and 60,000 with diabetes, all at risk as their treatment is interrupted; and [u]p to 200 women giving birth every day in the worst imaginable conditions.”
Many of the hospitals in northern Gaza, like Al-Shifa, were also attacked by the Israeli military, through bombing raids, and/or through being besieged, prior to having to shut down all services because of a lack of electricity, water and medical supplies. As at Al-Shifa, patients were forced to evacuate, and head south on foot (or in their hospital beds, or being carried by family members), and yet the remaining hospitals in the south cannot possibly accommodate all the sick and wounded.
The only exception to hospitals’ protected status is if a hospital is being used for military purposes — a claim that Israel has failed to demonstrate in the case of Al-Shifa, despite invading the hospital with ground troops three days ago.
To their credit, a few media outlets, including the BBC, have exposed Israel’s lies, as they have assessed, quite correctly, that the Israelis have manufactured patently false ‘evidence’ to justify their unfounded claims.
However, few media outlets have bothered to look at the bigger picture of the violence unjustly inflicted on Gaza’s hospitals, and to reflect on how, in the cases of most of the other hospitals, no credible attempts were even made to suggest that they were fronts for any kind of military activity before they were starved of fuel and supplies, and forced to shut down, with patients and staff, as at Al-Shifa, required to evacuate, however difficult or unfeasible that was.
As a result, it ought to be abundantly clear that Israel’s ‘war on hospitals’ in Gaza is a monstrous war crime, and yet, while the western media were obsessed with the story of the purported Hamas base inside the hospital (and most didn’t even bother to refute it when it turned out to be untrue), they seem blithely unconcerned about the complete decommissioning of Gaza’s hospitals, and today’s enforced evacuation of Al-Shifa, even though both are blatantly illegal.
Few reporters seem even mildly interested to do some basic research into the legal standing of hospitals in wartime, and to recognize that there are no circumstances whatsoever whereby an occupying power is allowed to prevent hospitals from operating, either through deliberately depriving them of the fuel, water and medical supplies that they need to operate, or through the forced evacuation of patients and staff, when no alternative functioning medical facility is provided.
Gaza as an open air concentration camp, and Israel’s plan for total ethnic cleansing
With all of northern Gaza’s hospitals now shut down, and with just a handful of hideously overcrowded facilities functioning in the south, the whole of Gaza, memorably described by Human Rights Watch as “an open air prison”, has now become what I’m prepared to describe as an open air concentration camp, with almost no food and no water, and with infectious diseases starting to spread.
In addition, Israeli bombing raids continue to slaughter innocent civilians in significant numbers, as in yesterday’s horrific attack on Tal al-Zaatar School in northern Gaza, a UN facility sheltering internally displaced people, where at least one hundred people were killed, including, as ever, a significant number of children.
The only conclusion that can be reached is that, in addition to the war crimes involved in attacking hospitals and deliberately ensuring that they cannot function, Israel is attempting to make the whole of northern Gaza uninhabitable, through deliberately shutting down its hospitals, and through attempts to force its entire population to evacuate to the south, a policy that appears to be nothing less than the proposed ethnic cleansing and displacement of over a million people.
I have to say that I don’t think this is even possible, as hundreds of thousands of people are still in northern Gaza, and show no desire to leave what, in many cases, have been their homes for several generations, since they were first dispossessed and driven into the Gaza Strip during the original ethnic cleansing of Palestine during the blood-soaked establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
This may well be what is provoking the Israelis to step up their devastating bombing raids in the north — with the massacre at Tal al-Zaatar School being an example — in order to ‘persuade’ people to leave, but even if they do, and I dread to fear how many more massacres will take place as Israel tries to achieve its aims, the south of Gaza is not a desirable destination.
Despite having spent the last month urging people to relocate, the south also continues to be bombed, and two days ago, adding insult to injury, Israel dropped leaflets in southern Gaza telling people to leave areas that they had previous declared safe (although, as everyone in Gaza knows, nowhere is actually safe). In addition, some government spokespeople are now, cynically and opportunistically, suggesting that the Hamas operational facilities that they have been unable to find in the north are actually located in the south, indicating that south Gaza’s hospitals will be the next target.
What Israel clearly wants is to concentrate Gaza’s entire population in the south, and then to expel them forever. In their dreams — and is some of their public statements — this involves either persuading Egypt to allow a vast and permanent tent city to arise in the Sinai Peninsula, or persuading western countries to take in 2.3 million people as refugees. Neither plan, however, seems remotely viable, leaving a ceasefire and a return, after too many long years, to the negotiating table as the only viable option.
For Israel, of course, continuing to kill as many Palestinian civilians as possible is absolutely fine, as is the prospect of widespread deaths through starvation, dehydration and infectious diseases arising as a result of its “complete siege”, but it’s by no means certain that the west’s continued indulgence of Israel’s actions will continue indefinitely, as they grapple, if not with questions of morality, which are apparently extremely difficult for most politicians to recognize, then with the refusal of a majority of their voters to endorse the continuing slaughter, threatening their precious political careers.
No one, however, should be in any doubt about the severity of Gaza’s humanitarian crisis after six weeks of the “complete siege.” As Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, explained just two days ago, “massive outbreaks of infectious disease, and hunger” now seem inevitable, with “catastrophic consequences if fuel supplies [run] out, including the collapse of sewage systems and healthcare and an end to the already scarce supplies of humanitarian aid.”
At some point, surely, this sickening and relentless display of genocidal intent is going to have to be brought to an end.
* * * * *
Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (see the ongoing photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here, or you can watch it online here, via the production company Spectacle, for £2.50).
In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.
Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here.
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16 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:
Here’s my latest article, an analysis of how Israel is engaged in a ‘war on hospitals’ in Gaza. This is prohibited under international humanitarian law, because hospitals are protected facilities, which cannot be attacked, or prevented from performing their medical functions.
In Gaza, however, Israel has been both attacking hospitals, and preventing them from functioning, claiming, without presenting any credible evidence, that they are being used as a front for military activities, and today Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest, which was occupied by the Israeli military three days ago, was forcibly evacuated, with just five doctors remaining with 150 patients who are too ill to be moved, including the 35 surviving premature babies clinging to life after the fuel ran out to power their incubators.
Israel’s intent, as I see it, is to make Gaza uninhabitable, and to facilitate its dream of the total ethnic cleansing of its 2.3 million inhabitants, even though that seems like an empty hope, as well as being a crime against humanity, related to Israel’s genocidal intent in Gaza.
...on November 18th, 2023 at 6:57 pm
Andy Worthington says...
An absolutely horrific report by the WHO based on an urgent and “very high-risk joint humanitarian mission to Al-Shifa Hospital” yesterday with various UN organizations.
As they stated:
“Due to time limits associated with the security situation, the team was able to spend only one hour inside the hospital, which they described as a ‘death zone’ and the situation as ‘desperate.’ Signs of shelling and gunfire were evident. The team saw a mass grave at the entrance of the hospital and was told more than 80 people were buried there.
“Lack of clean water, fuel, medicines, food and other essential aid over the last six weeks have caused Al-Shifa Hospital — once the largest, most advanced, and best equipped referral hospital in Gaza — to essentially stop functioning as a medical facility. The team observed that, due to the security situation, it has been impossible for the staff to carry out effective waste management in the hospital.
“Corridors and the hospital grounds were filled with medical and solid waste, increasing the risk of infection. Patients and health staff with whom they spoke were terrified for their safety and health and pleaded for evacuation. Al-Shifa Hospital can no longer admit patients, with the injured and sick now being directed to the seriously overwhelmed and barely functioning Indonesian Hospital.
“There are 25 health workers and 291 patients remaining in Al-Shifa, with several patient deaths having occurred over the previous 2 to 3 days due to the shutting down of medical services. Patients include 32 babies in extremely critical condition, two people in intensive care without ventilation, and 22 dialysis patients whose access to life-saving treatment has been severely compromised.
“The vast majority of patients are victims of war trauma, including many with complex fractures and amputations, head injuries, burns, chest and abdominal trauma, and 29 patients with serious spinal injuries who are unable to move without medical assistance. Many trauma patients have severely infected wounds due to lack of infection control measures in the hospital and unavailability of antibiotics.
“Given the current state of the hospital, which is no longer operational or admitting new patients, the team was requested to evacuate health workers and patients to other facilities. WHO and partners are urgently developing plans for the immediate evacuation of the remaining patients, staff and their families.
“Over the next 24-72 hours, pending guarantees of safe passage by parties to the conflict, additional missions are being arranged to urgently transport patients from Al-Shifa to Nasser Medical Complex and European Gaza Hospital in the south of Gaza. However, these hospitals are already working beyond capacity, and new referrals from Al-Shifa Hospital will further strain overburdened health staff and resources.
“WHO is deeply concerned about the safety and health needs of patients, health workers and internally displaced people sheltering at the few remaining partially functional hospitals in the north, which are facing the risk of closure due to a lack of fuel, water, medical supplies, food, and the intense hostilities. Immediate efforts must be made to restore the functionality of Al-Shifa and all other hospitals to provide urgently needed health care services in Gaza.
“WHO reiterates its plea for collective efforts to bring an end to the hostilities and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. We call for an immediate ceasefire, the sustained flow of humanitarian assistance at scale, unhindered humanitarian access to all of those in need, the unconditional release of all hostages, and the cessation of attacks on health care and other vital infrastructure.
“The extreme suffering of the people of Gaza demands that we respond immediately and concretely with humanity and compassion.”
https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1726015961625399341
...on November 19th, 2023 at 12:47 am
Andy Worthington says...
Natalia Rivera Scott wrote:
I saw a heartbreaking video of a doctor in the UK reading a message from a doctor inside the hospital in Gaza asking for help and saying they wouldn’t survive. The doctor reading the message broke down in tears …
...on November 19th, 2023 at 1:11 am
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, I saw that too, Natalia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCPKsERW8VU
I’ve been seeing quite a lot of people crying lately: an American Jew interviewed in the street in Sweden, for example: https://twitter.com/TorahJudaism/status/1725204427567493463
If you can bear it, read the report I just posted from the WHO, which conducted an emergency visit to Al-Shifa just after the evacuation, describing how “Al-Shifa Hospital, once the largest, most advanced & best equipped referral hospital in Gaza” has become a “death zone.” As I stated when sharing it on X, “The people who did this – the Israeli government & military – are monsters. No one with any humanity should be supporting them in any way.” https://twitter.com/GuantanamoAndy/status/1726041941677068363
...on November 19th, 2023 at 1:12 am
Andy Worthington says...
Pam Hardy wrote:
Having forced them out in the worst circumstances imaginable … they have destroyed the hospital and its facilities … why!? Because they can.
...on November 19th, 2023 at 1:44 am
Andy Worthington says...
It is so horrendous, Pam. And most of the western media just doesn’t care. That said, I think Al-Shifa will come to be seen as the pivotal moment when Israel – the vile Zionist project – began to die. They can’t really pretend any more that this is about Hamas, when they’re so blatantly destroying hospitals and killing the most defenceless civilians – the premature babies, the dialysis patients, the most broken, bombed people somehow clinging on to life – through their relentless and inhumane siege, while forcing anyone who can be moved to leave on foot, or in wheelchairs, or even in hospital beds, as snipers pick them off, and nothing but starvation and disease awaits them in south.
...on November 19th, 2023 at 1:45 am
Andy Worthington says...
Judith Lienhard wrote:
They have known for decades, that to destroy social support is to make Palestine uninhabitable.
This was the intention all along.
...on November 19th, 2023 at 1:45 am
Andy Worthington says...
I suspect it only started to look like a viable dream when Netanyahu got re-elected, Judith, and openly brought fascists into his government – the repulsive Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. How quickly western leaders have forgotten how troubling it was just ten months ago, and how troubling again when Netanyahu tried to destroy the judiciary. How easily amnesia overcame them on October 7.
...on November 19th, 2023 at 1:46 am
Andy Worthington says...
Mary MacGregor Green wrote:
Several US corporate news media reported it as fact that Hamas had been in the underground below the hospitals and so, I waited a day for other news outlets to verify or not … and I am coping with shock every day now … so I depend on my elected officials to step up, but no one is …
...on November 19th, 2023 at 1:47 am
Andy Worthington says...
Yes, most media outlets conspired in the Israeli-concocted fantasy that Hamas had a James Bond-style super-base hidden beneath the hospital, Mary, just as they did at the end of 2001 when they shared the US’s fantasies about Osama bin Laden’s terrorisat techno-lair under the Tora Bora mountains. People need to wake up and recognize that they’re being played by their own governments and media, but most don’t. Goebbels would approve.
...on November 19th, 2023 at 1:47 am
Andy Worthington says...
Tristan Socrates wrote:
Still OPPRESSED
and posted the following quote from Winston Churchill:
“I do not apologize for the takeover of the region by the Jews from the Palestinians in the same way I don’t apologize for the takeover of America by the whites from the Red Indians or the takeover of Australia from the blacks. It is natural for a superior race to dominate an inferior one.”
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1373064140310115&set=p.1373064140310115&type=3
...on November 19th, 2023 at 1:50 am
Andy Worthington says...
The colonial mindset in a nutshell, Tristan, and one that, I’m glad to say, I never recognised. I’m from a northern English working class background, and it was quite illuminating for me to realise as I grew up that my own ancestors had also been oppressed by this same elite. A lot of people nowadays could do with a bit more class consciousness.
When the US-led coalition invaded Afghanistan, and British leaders started pontificating about liberating the Afghans through occupation, I used to rail against their arrogance – the same sense of white supremacist ideology held by Churchill – asking anyone who would listen to imagine how they would feel if Britain was occupied by a foreign power who claimed themselves superior. The elite never see it from the point of view of the oppressed and occupied. They didn’t in Afghanistan, they didn’t in Iraq, and they don’t – and haven’t – in Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians for 75 years.
...on November 19th, 2023 at 1:51 am
Andy Worthington says...
Some good news finally, as the World Health Organization (WHO) and other humanitarian organizations have been allowed to undertake a second visit to Al-Shifa Hospital, a life-saving mission in which, as they described it, “31 very sick babies were evacuated, along with 6 health workers and 10 staff family members.”
As they also explain, “6 Palestine Red Crescent ambulances were used for the transfer. The babies were taken to Al-Helal Al-Emairati Maternity Hospital, where they are receiving urgent care in the neonatal intensive care unit. Further missions are being planned to urgently transport remaining patients and health staff out of Al-Shifa Hospital, pending guarantees of safe passage by parties to the conflict.”
As they also say, “We’re deeply moved and impressed by the extraordinary bravery and service of the health workers in Gaza, who continue to serve under the most dire and difficult circumstances.” https://twitter.com/DrTedros/status/1726224272350179572
However, as I noted on X while sharing this, “This is very good news, as, finally, Israel recognizes that being known as ‘premature baby murderers’ is a PR disaster. But PLEASE don’t forget that Israel has already killed over 5,000 children and babies in bombing raids and continues to do so, and has also shut down ALL of N Gaza’s hospitals. They are still ‘baby murderers.'” https://twitter.com/GuantanamoAndy/status/1726258030742733044
Journalist Sharif Kouddous notes that, in its first update since November 15, the Ministry of Health in Gaza has added that the babies are scheduled to be transferred to Egypt tomorrow, adding that parents are “urged to go urgently to Tal al-Sultan to identify their children.” https://twitter.com/sharifkouddous/status/1726251965137690997
...on November 19th, 2023 at 3:27 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Updated info on the premature babies moved from Al-Shifa to Emirati Hospital yesterday. 31 were moved, but eleven were “in critical condition”, and all the babies were “fighting serious infections due to lack of medical supplies and the impossibility to continue infection control measures in Al-Shifa Hospital.”
Sadly, heartbreakingly, “none of the infants were accompanied by family members”, as the Ministry of Health had “only limited information” about their parents, and was not, at the time of evacuation, “able to find close family members.”
https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1726324027814265175
28 of the 31 babies have now been evacuated to Egypt, while three “have remained in Gaza because the families of two of them want them to remain there for ‘personal reasons’, and because a third is unidentified”, according to the Guardian. A medical spokesperson told the BBC that the babies remaining in Gaza were “in a stable condition.”
...on November 20th, 2023 at 4:11 pm
Anna says...
Since then, Al Shifa’s director Mohammed Abu Salmiya and an unknown number of other medical staff, have been arrested by Mossad, while travelling south with WHO escort …
The Indonesian hospital also was ordered to evacuate – in four hours …
The premature babies are in UAE, but being without sufficient oxygen and other vitals for such a long period, might already have irreversibly damaged their tiny brains.
A pediatric cardiologist (!) in Johns Hopkins has ranted on X that all Palestinians should be exterminated (I paraphrase), some retired Israeli general (forget his name) applauded the spreading infections – as that will hasten the victory while reducing the number of Israeli soldiers having to die to achieve that – at least he was honest about his and his country’s intentions. And of course the former state department advisor to Obama, who has been harassing an Egyptian street food seller in NY, including threatening to ask the Egyptian secret service to arrest his family there and pull out their nails one by one …
There’s the unspeakable horror of the Palestinians’ fate and in addition the total collapse of what we grew up to cherish and protect. Human rights, morality, ethics, on governmental level all going down the drain before our very eyes.
I am beginning to be physically sick, in the tram people continue to sit and watch TV dramas on their smartphones, no one seems to be bothered. Family members of the victims and generally muslims must feel so lonely & abandoned. One day when walking past a cafe window, someone tapped the glass pane, raised his thumb and pointed at the ‘Free Palestine’ button on my lapel. Such a minimal sign of understanding and support apparently goes a long way.
...on November 23rd, 2023 at 7:52 pm
Andy Worthington says...
The horrors just seem endless, Anna. I’ve been on X (formerly Twitter) a lot, because it’s featured so many voices, and photos and videos coming out of Gaza, but it’s hard to stay sane while doing so. Watching Al Jazeera too. As for British media, I can’t watch the biased news here anymore at all, and I can barely tolerate the Guardian anymore, as they’re so deeply infiltrated by notions of Zionist exceptionalism too. One of their star columnists, Jonathan Freedland, boasts of being great friends with Mark Regev, the Australian-born Israeli government spokesman who is, quite frankly, one of the most repulsive human beings I’ve ever had the misfortune to have to endure.
I don’t know what happens next. Hopefully this four-day “pause” will bring some relief, as humanitarian aid is allowed into Gaza, to prevent people starving to death, or dying from dehydration, and hopefully there will be fuel too, and medical supplies – although it’s difficult to see how useful much of that will be without the hospitals that Israel has so unforgivably destroyed while the west has done nothing.
I saw that there’s an option of prolonging the four-day “pause” – after the 50 Israeli hostages are released in exchange for the 150 Palestinian women and children held so lawlessly in “administrative detention” – by a day for each ten additional hostages released by Hamas, so perhaps the best we can hope for is that this “pause” extends for maybe a fortnight, allowing western countries and the brokers in the Middle East to finally nail down some sort of definitive ceasefire. I can’t say that, in my heart of hearts, I’m hopeful, however, as Netanyahu and his cabinet and the Israeli military all seem to live only for one thing, and that is to kill as many Palestinian civilians as they can, every minute of every day, for as long as they can.
What has become of us that our leaders seem so blithely unconcerned? The only consolation is that so many of us – so very many of us around the world – are appalled to the point of sickness by what is happening to the Palestinians in Gaza, and are continuing to make as much noise as we can about it, but it’s also true that we’re having to cope with generally feeling so very powerless, as our leaders and our media continue to treat the Palestinians – and us – with barely disguised contempt.
If there is any residue left of the human rights, morality and ethics that you mention, perhaps this is the dawning of some kind of tectonic political shift – but I doubt that too, on the scale that is required, although I do see changes that I don’t think will go away as a result of this, an empowerment of people outside of our corrupted main political parties who may be able to shift the balance of power in some way in the coming years.
It’s certainly what’s required, not just for the people of Gaza, but also to deal with the other great conflict that none of our leaders or our media want to deal with, even though they’re running out of options to hide from it: our collective war on the planet and our precious atmosphere, which isn’t going away, and which requires us to recognize that the enemy is us – in the same way, I think, that, with Gaza, anyone who supports Israel’s actions in any way whatsoever is failing to realize that the enemy is actually themselves.
...on November 24th, 2023 at 2:03 am