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cease-fire
Can We Stage a Jailbreak From the Grim Prisons Created by the Gaza War?
Life becomes limited when we accept that it must be a nightmare for the weak, when we confess that we are more addicted to comfort than we are to compassion.
Jun 04, 2025
Here at the United Nations in New York City, the Security Council is expected to vote on a resolution calling on all parties to respect an immediate and permanent cease-fire in Gaza.
The slaughter in Gaza entraps and attacks the helpless, turning shelters into mass graves, erasing entire families, weaponizing nutrition and famine. The spiraling violence shrieks for our attention, screams for effective protection. Who will save innocent people from snipers, aerial attacks, tank-fired missiles, poisoned water, and starvation? The U.S. and many allies instead work to insulate Israel from accountability.
“Overcoming this cocoon of protection,” said international human rights lawyer and former U.N. official Craig Mokhiber, “requires solidarity between movements, unions, religious communities, and like-minded states working to isolate the Israeli regime and to impose economic, trade, travel, diplomatic, cultural, and other consequences to compel change.”
Meanwhile, all of Gaza remains an open-air prison containing numerous centers where people, including children, are tortured by Israel’s starvation, siege, and bombing.
In NYC, on day 14 of a Veterans For Peace and Allies Fast for Gaza, a former U.S. Marine who helped initiate the fast, Phil Tottenham, urges us to care about Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian woman whose witness on behalf of Palestinians apparently led to her unjust imprisonment.
The current administration has slated her for deportation purely on the grounds that she criticized the government of a foreign country. Far from her home in New Jersey, she is trapped in a Texan county jail. Her plight makes me think of another prisoner, Ron Feiner, an IDF soldier who chose to face prison rather than continue attacking people in Gaza. “I’m horrified by the never-ending war in Gaza,” said Feiner, “by the abandonment of the hostages, by the continued killing of innocent people, and by the complete lack of political vision.” He is now on day nine of what could be a quite dangerous 20-day sentence in an Israeli military prison.
The director of Gaza’s now-demolished Kamal Adwan Hospital, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, is suffering a longer and much more perious sentence at Israel’s grim Ofer Prison, where his work to heal the sick has seen him designated an “enemy combatant,” and where multiple protracted beating sessions—torture sessions really—have possibly cost him an eye
I think of pediatrician Dr. Alla al-Najjar, whose valuable work at the Nasser medical complex has cost her the lives of all but one of her 10 children, as well as her husband, also an M.D. They were taken from her in a targeted strike on her home while she was at the hospital complex attempting to save other Gazan children. Now she continues her work, trying mightily to save 11-year-old Adam, her only surviving child.
We must also note the appalling conditions of ordinary Palestinian prisoners, many of them held without charge. “They are subjected to a systematic campaign of abuse, starvation, and deliberate medical neglect,” said a recent Addameer report, which goes on to describe “widespread arrest campaigns across cities, villages, and refugee camps, which have led to a massive increase in the number of prisoners and detainees.” Prisoners survive on minimal rations, and many endure brutal and life-threatening treatment.
Meanwhile, all of Gaza remains an open-air prison containing numerous centers where people, including children, are tortured by Israel’s starvation, siege, and bombing.
None of this has been inflicted for the purposes of freeing the remaining hostages captured by Hamas and by the other armed groups who flooded into Israel on one day of rebellion, 20 months ago. The cease-fire agreed upon last November would, had Israel and the U.S. honored it, have provided for the release of all the hostages. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist collaborators would have lost their excuse for ethnically cleansing Gaza, and after that the West Bank.
In 1972, an iconic photo of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, “running naked, screaming in agony, her body burned by napalm dropped by the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese army,” became a catalyst which helped end the war in Vietnam. Now, 50 years later, images of burning children in Gaza are relentless.
Recently, a video of 7-year-old Ward al-Sheikh Khalil, her tiny body surrounded by flames, went viral. She and her family were sleeping in a school where forcibly displaced Palestinians had moved into classrooms and the courtyard. She survived Israel’s aerial attack, but her mother and five siblings did not. Her father remains in critical condition.
Life becomes limited when we accept that it must be a nightmare for the weak, when we confess that we are more addicted to comfort than we are to compassion—when the service of our appetites causes us to ignore the starving and those deliberately consigned to flames. We who fast might not succeed in our attempted “jailbreak” from this grim prison where we must watch the inmates die off one by one in the next ward over. But in whatever way you can, we urge you to join the attempt.
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Video Shows Girl Trying to Escape Inferno as Gaza Family 'Burned Alive' in Israeli Massacre
"What we are doing in Gaza is a war of extermination: indiscriminate, unrestrained, brutal, and criminal killing of civilians," said former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
May 26, 2025
Video footage of a young girl trying to flee an inferno caused by a Monday Israeli airstrike that killed dozens of Palestinians including her mother and siblings sparked global outrage and calls for an immediate cease-fire in what one former Israeli prime minister called a "war of extermination."
Medical officials in Gaza said that at least 36 people were killed by an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombing of the Fahmi al-Jarjawi School in the al-Daraj neighborhood of Gaza City. The Gaza Government Media Office (GMO) said that 18 children were killed in the "brutal massacre."
"The school was supposed to be a place of safety. Instead, it was turned into an inferno," Gaza Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal told reporters. "We heard desperate cries for help from people trapped alive inside the blaze, but the fire was too intense. We couldn't get to them."
From the flames of the massacre committed by the Israeli criminal occupation forces at Fahmi Al-Jarjawi School in Gaza City’s Al-Daraj neighborhood — a school that had become a refuge for displaced families — comes the image of a child: Ward Jalal Al-Sheikh Khalil, the only… pic.twitter.com/FMpXlFOMN9
— حسام شبات (@HossamShabat) May 26, 2025
Video recorded at the scene of the strike showed the silhouette of a young girl—identified as 7-year-old Ward al-Sheikh Khalil—moving against the infernal backdrop as she tried to escape the blaze. According toThe National, paramedic Hussein Muhaysin rushed in to rescue the child, whom he said "was moments away from death."
"When we pulled her out, she was in shock, silent, trembling, unable to comprehend what had just happened," Muhaysin said. "We couldn't bring ourselves to tell her that her entire family was killed in the bombing."
The child's mother and at least five siblings were reportedly killed in the bombing.
"Only her father survived, and he is now in critical condition," said Muhaysin.
"We see tragedy every day, but holding a child who has lost everything, who doesn't even know yet, that's a kind of pain no one can explain," he added.
The IDF admitted to the bombing—one of 200 it said it carried out Monday—and claimed it targeted "a Hamas and Islamic Jihad command and control center." As usual, no evidence was provided to support the claim.
Meanwhile in the northern Gaza city of Jabalia, another predawn IDF strike
reportedly killed 19 people—mostly women and children—sheltering in the Abdel Rabbo family home. Medical officials told reporters that recovery operations were still underway on Monday afternoon, with charred and mangled bodies being pulled from the rubble.
Moumen Abdel Rabbo, who rushed to the scene following the attack, told The National: "It was sudden. The house was completely flattened. Ambulances barely made it through to recover the wounded and the dead. Some bodies are still trapped under the rubble."
Abdel Rabbo said that Israeli bombing continued nearby and drones buzzed overhead as first responders—who are often attacked and killed by Israeli "double-tap" strikes—dug through the ruins in search of survivors and victims.
"How can we search for survivors under fire?" he asked. "These were civilians; mothers, toddlers, elderly people. This wasn't a military target. It was our home."
The GMO said Monday that more than 2,200 Palestinian families have been entirely wiped out since October 2023.
The U.S.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a statement Monday condemning the school shelter bombing and Sunday's "barbaric" killing of two Red Cross workers—weapon contamination officer Ibrahim Eid and hospital security guard Ahmad Abu Hilal—in an IDF airstrike on their home in Khan Younis. The weekend bombing followed the March 23 massacre of 15 Palestinian first responders including Red Crescent paramedics by Israeli ground troops in Rafah.
"How many more children, women, the elderly, journalists, healthcare workers, and first responders must [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu slaughter with American weapons before [U.S. President Donald] Trump forces him to accept a permanent cease-fire deal that ends the genocide for good and frees all captives?" asked CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad.
"Every hour that Israel's genocidal crimes continue with impunity—and with our government's complicity—adds more dishonor to a shameful period in the history of our nation and the world," Awad added.
Hamas, which led the October 7, 2023 assault on Israel that left more than 1,100 Israelis and others dead—at least some of whom were killed by so-called " friendly fire" and under the intentionally fratricidal Hannibal Directive—is believed to still be holding 23 living hostages of the 251 people it kidnapped during the attack.
On Monday, the Trump administration refuted reports that Hamas had agreed to a cease-fire proposal by Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff under which 10 hostages would be released in exchange for a 70-day truce.
Although Witkoff toldCNN Monday that the "deal is on the table" and that "Israel will agree" to it, he subsequently walked back his claims. An unnamed Palestinian official toldThe Times of Israel that Witkoff changed his mind on the proposed deal. The envoy blamed Hamas for an unspecified "unacceptable" response to proposal, which he also claimed he never proffered.
Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes including extermination and forced starvation in Gaza—said Monday evening that he hopes to be able to announce at least some progress toward a hostage release deal on Tuesday and that his government "will not give up on the release of our hostages, and if we do not achieve this in the coming days, we will achieve it later."
Israeli forces are currently carrying out Operation Gideon's Chariots, a campaign to conquer, indefinitely occupy, and ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza to make way for possible Jewish recolonization.
Amid IDF attacks including a Friday airstrike on the Khan Younis home of Drs. Hamdi and Alaa al-Najjar that killed nine of the couple's 10 children, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wrote that his country's relentless obliteration of Gaza amounted to "war crimes."
"What we are doing in Gaza is a war of extermination: indiscriminate, unrestrained, brutal, and criminal killing of civilians," said Olmert, who led Israel during the 2008-09 Operation Cast Lead war on Gaza. "We are doing this not because of an accidental loss of control in a particular sector, not because of a disproportionate outburst of fighters in some unit—but as a result of a policy dictated by the government, knowingly, intentionally, viciously, maliciously, recklessly."
While Israel has nominally allowed a trickle of aid to enter Gaza—where officials say hundreds of people, mostly children and elderly, have starved to death in recent days—officials said Sunday that only around 100 of the 46,200 trucks scheduled to enter Gaza over the past 84 days have actually made it into the besieged enclave.
Hamas said Sunday that "the occupation orchestrates the crime of starvation in Gaza and uses it as a tool to establish a political and field reality, under the cover of misleading relief projects that have been rejected by the United Nations and international organizations, due to lack of transparency and minimal humanitarian standards."
On Sunday, Jake Wood, who led the controversial U.S.- and Israel-backed organization established to distribute aid in Gaza, resigned, citing concerns that the mission would violate basic "humanitarian principles."
The U.N.'s International Court of Justice is currently weighing a genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel that cites the "complete siege" among evidence of genocidal intent.
More than 190,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israel's 598-day annihilation of Gaza, including at least 14,000 people who are missing and feared dead and buried beneath rubble, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. However, a peer-reviewed study
published in January by the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet found Gaza fatalities were likely undercounted by 41%.
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We Need a Coffee Party to Waken the People Being Strip-Mined by Dangerous Donald
As the marches, rallies, and town meetings swell, the demand that Trump be fired will boost popular support for his Impeachment and removal from office.
May 17, 2025
Dictator Donald Trump’s ego has gone global and dominates the news cycle. His domestic opponents are left with too little too late rebuttals and, again, are victims of his genius in diverting and distracting them and the media.
Take his “triumphant” trip to the wealthy Arab Nations in the Gulf. Their rulers flattered him 24/7 as the boss of the world while he flattered them in return for their business deals (some benefitting him and his family) and arms purchases. Trump enjoys being in charge. But he wasn’t.
Before, during, and after his trip, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remained his MASTER on the matters that count to the Israeli perpetrator of genocide. Trump said nothing serious about a cease-fire; nothing about opening the border to Gaza to thousands of waiting trucks (paid for by the U.S. taxpayer) carrying food, water, medicine, and other critical necessities for the starving, dying, besieged Palestinians in Gaza; nothing about the demands that Netanyahu lift his ban on American and other Israeli and foreign reporters going independently into Gaza.
The Democrats have failed to mobilize their voters into a powerful grassroots force or even encourage their partisans to do so on their own.
The media interpreted his skipping visiting Israel as a snub when it really was a clever way to avoid facing up to Netanyahu, especially for breaking the January cease-fire that Trump took credit for, and starting the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. Trump took Netanyahu breaking “his truce” as an affront to his famous ego by cowardly shutting his mouth.
To further favor Netanyahu and his U.S. domestic Lobby, Trump told the new president of war-torn Syria to make peace with Israel and join the Abraham Accords, negotiated by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. At the same time, Israel is using American-made F-16s to bomb Syria (without provocation) hundreds of times while seizing more and more of powerless Syria’s territory!
Domestically, Trump every day boasts about MAGA as he is Wrecking America. Simultaneously, second thoughts are seeping into his MAGA crowd and among the “Amen” sycophants that make up the GOP in Congress. They’re starting to say, in so many words, “Hey, we didn’t vote for this or that.”
Now Trump, aside from his delusionary rhetoric, is playing a Zig Zag game which indicates he senses when he is going off the cliff. His polls are dropping slowly and will drop further when the tariff-induced prices start climbing and the economy signals the dreaded stagflation on the horizon.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party and its so-called leadership is still backing and filling, despite powerful demands at packed Town Meetings in their Districts for their members of Congress to be “comprehensively aggressive,” as one Democratic voter put it.
First, they need to consult the dictionary so that they can discover the words that fit Tyrant Trump and the poisonous tusks of Felon Musk. Political cowards have trouble using plain, strong language to depict Trump’s fascist dictatorship moving into police state seizures of innocent people for using their freedom of speech.
They can learn from some of their predecessors like underdog Harry Truman in his 1948 presidential race with poll-favored Thomas Dewey. Here is “Give ’em hell Harry” speaking to 90,000 farmers and their families in a field in Dexter, Iowa:
I wonder how many times you have to be hit on the head before you find out who’s hitting you?… These Republican gluttons of privilege are cold men. They are cunning men… They want a return of the Wall Street economic dictatorship… I’m not asking you just to vote for me. Vote for yourselves!
When Trump, in 2016, started using MAGA as his constant slogan, the Democratic Party paid a consultant to later come up with the yawn-inducing slogan: “Build Back Better.” Kamala Harris used “the opportunity economy” as her catchphrase instead of the electric rhetoric and kitchen table agenda of Bernie Sanders—still the most popular politician in America.
Trump gives the Democrats so many unexploited opportunities. Three examples:
First, the Dems have missed making a big deal out of Trump and Musk shielding the biggest sources of their alleged interest in “rooting out waste, fraud, and inefficiency” in the executive branch. They do not touch “corporate crime” ripping off Medicare, Medicaid, et al. for tens of billions of dollars yearly, or huge amounts of corporate subsidies, giveaways, brazen tax dodges, and the bloated, unauditable military budget that Trump wants to increase by $100 billion more than requested by the generals.
Second, he keeps shouting “impeach,” the judges who cross him. The Democrats should return the favor by filing Impeachment articles in the House against Trump (See: the 22 Impeachable Offenses). Instead the so-called Democratic Party leaders are clamping down on the tiny number of House Democrats who want to do just that.
Third, the Democrats have failed to mobilize their voters into a powerful grassroots force or even encourage their partisans to do so on their own, as did the “Tea Party” in 2009 against Barack Obama. (Call it the “Coffee Party” to waken the population—liberal and conservative working families—both strip-mined by the plutocrat-oligarch Dangerous Donald.)
Trump recently bloviated “I Run the Country and the World.” The “Coffee Party” masses can focus all their growing pain and suffering from Trumpism with the outcry he well understands: “YOU’RE FIRED.” (See my recent column: “YOU’RE FIRED!” –GROWING MILLIONS OF AMERICANS ARE REJECTING TRUMP.)
As the marches, rallies, and town meetings swell, the demand that Trump be fired will boost popular support for his Impeachment and removal from office, as happened with Richard Nixon in 1974 for far lesser transgressions. “Impossible,” you say? Not when the congressional Republicans see the polls and economic recession dragging their sagging political future for 2026 by continuing their allegiance to Trump.
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