Welcome to Andy Worthington

Another necessary update about Israel’s ongoing assault on northern Gaza, where, it is abundantly and heartrendingly clear, a particularly malignant version of the “Generals’ Plan” for the ethnic cleansing of the whole area, home to 400,000 inhabitants, has been underway since the start of the month, and is now being implemented with unprecedented savagery. Hundreds of civilians have been killed in relentless bombing raids, all three of northern Gaza’s surviving hospitals have been violently decommissioned, the western media haven’t even realized what is happening (or don’t care), and Israel’s leaders, meanwhile, are still promising that Israeli forces will operate in Gaza for “years to come”, even after the killing of Hamas’ leader, Yahya Sinwar, on Thursday. I point out how impossible the notion of continuing military operations in Gaza “for years to come” is, because, by then, quite genuinely, no Palestinian will be left alive, and I wonder whether western leaders — in the US in particular — have any intention of finally acting decisively to stop Israel before it matches the most notorious crimes against humanity committed by the Nazis in the Second World War. Without intervention, that is exactly where this unfettered genocidal fury is heading.

With the death of Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ leader, the inevitable triumphalism of Netanyahu, and wider Israeli society, is fundamentally misplaced, as I explain here, because he died on the frontline, not hiding in a tunnel, as Israel alleged, and will therefore be an inspiration to the continued resistance to Israel’s occupation. However, the triumphalism is most fundamentally misplaced because his death exposes how Israel’s claims regarding its actions over the last year — eliminating Hamas — has effectively reached a dead end, and it will be increasingly difficult for Netanyahu and his ministers to now avoid an ever-brighter burning spotlight shining on what they are really doing in Gaza, which, from the beginning, has been a project of collective punishment, ethnic cleansing and genocide, with the ultimate intention being to empty the Gaza Strip of its Palestinian population, and to colonize it with Israeli settlers. Can the west really continue to support a seemingly ceaseless genocide when its true basis has now been so clearly exposed?

My update on the horrendous situation in northern Gaza, following an Israeli attack, on Sunday night, on displaced civilians and medical patients in the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Hospital, in Deir al-Balah in northern Gaza, in which a video captured a 19-year old student being burned alive. This image has gone viral, prompting widespread outrage, and I can only hope that it helps people to understand that the attack on the Al-Aqsa camp is just part of a truly depraved plan to empty the whole of northern Gaza of its 400,000 remaining residents. In theory, this involves issuing evacuation orders, and letting everyone leave, but the reality is far worse, as Israel is forcing the remaining hospitals to close, cutting off all supplies of food, water and medical supplies, engaging in increasing numbers of bombing raids, and also killing those who try to leave, via the use of snipers, and armed drones and quadcopters.

Key findings from, and my analysis of a hugely significant report by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, issued on October 10, which found that “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”

My latest article, providing urgent updates about deadly new developments in northern Gaza, largely ignored in the western media. Coinciding with the anniversary of the October 7 attacks, and the start of Israel’s year-long genocide, a horrific new plan has been initiated by the Israel military — to empty the whole of northern Gaza of its remaining 400,000 inhabitants. The plan, first publicized last month, is intended to create a “closed military zone” in the whole of the north of Gaza, with those still living there given just one week to comply with evacuation orders before they will, inevitably, be regarded as terrorists who can be killed. To secure its aims, however, Israel is already killing civilians, in bombing raids, through the use of armed drones and quadcopters, and via snipers on the ground, with additional reports that soldiers are going house to house and summarily executing those they find. A total siege has also been imposed, preventing the delivery of any food, water, fuel or medical supplies. Evacuation orders have been issued for the last three hospitals in the north, even though 300 critical ill patients have nowhere to go, and journalists have been specifically targeted, with one killed today, and several severely wounded.

My account of Israel’s descent into unparalleled depravity over the last 365 days, drawing on and summarizing my experiences of being perpetually sickened by the relentless evidence of uncountable atrocities committed by Israel and recorded and live-streamed by Palestinians themselves, and by the public glorification of these crimes by their killers, who, shamefully, have been relentlessly defended and supported by most western leaders, as the international community’s “rules-based order” has effectively collapsed. I also look at how, marking the anniversary of the October 7 attacks last year, Israel is now repeating its war crimes and crimes against humanity in Lebanon, and seeking war with Iran, and, in Gaza, is marking the anniversary by launching the Gaza genocide Part 2, which involves once more bombing and invading northern Gaza to deal with the 300,000 to 500,000 Palestinians who have resisted every effort to remove them over the last year, so that northern Gaza can become a “closed military zone”, where, eventually, its rabid settlers can eventually realize their long-cherished dreams of colonizing it with luxury beachfront properties built on the corpses of murdered Palestinians.

Photos from, and my report about the nine global monthly coordinated vigils for the closure of Guantánamo that took place across the US and around the world on October 2, 2024, the last vigils before the Presidential Election on November 5. The vigils take place on the first Wednesday of every month, and the next date is November 6, the day after the election, when I urge people to turn out to demand the release of prisoners before the end of the Biden presidency.

My latest interview with Chris Cook on his Gorilla Radio show in western Canada, in which we discussed WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange’s first public appearance since he regained his freedom in June, and recent clampdowns of freedom of expression via social media censorship, which also included the new album by The Four Fathers, a collection of protest songs that was also caught up in the censorship dragnet, making us, briefly, “the band that was banned.”

My report on Julian Assange’s powerful testimony at a hearing of the Legal Affairs Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg on October 1, 2024, at what was his first public appearance since his release in June. Also included is a transcript of his testimony, plus a video.

My reflections on my recent family holiday in Sicily, in which I refreshed my mind and my general sense of well-being through a ten-day digital detox, which involved me being completely offline — away from the internet and from all social media, and without a phone. To balance my very evident privilege, I also assess the environmental cost of flying, the increasing recognition that summers are getting noticeably hotter in the Mediterranean, despite an “entitlement” culture that still believes that a foreign summer holiday is some sort of “right”, and the hidden environmental pressures of tourism — or over-tourism.