Clodsire

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5156849

by slammer

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5091655

Is the U.S. genuinely aiming to save Gaza’s population from starvation? Or is the true purpose of Israeli-U.S. aid in Gaza to empower Israel to prolong its war while pacifying Palestinians with minimal food supplies amid mounting international pressure? After Rafah was completely destroyed — homes flattened and entire families erased from the civil registry — Israel took full control of the city. On May 27, it distributed what it called “aid,” with U.S. assistance. During the so-called aid distribution, Palestinians who had walked long distances searching for basic food supplies were killed by the Israeli military. Has bread now become something we must pay for with blood?

For Gaza’s people, reaching the Israeli-U.S. aid point in Rafah was no easy task. The journey was long, dangerous and shadowed by constant airstrike threats. There is no safety in Gaza. But hunger — a weapon Israel has deliberately used against civilians — has forced many families to take the risk, especially after several children in the Strip have starved to death.

The suffering was not just hunger or distance — it was the complete collapse of life in Gaza. No transportation, no services, no infrastructure. All this hardship for a small bag of basic food! But what happened next was even more devastating. On May 27, after these families finally arrived, the Israeli army opened fire on civilians scrambling for food. Three were killed, 46 wounded. The military’s excuse? “There was chaos.”

But how can anyone expect order from a starving population, terrified of returning home empty-handed to hungry children?

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5023165

Following Parliament’s motion for an arms embargo on Israel, activists are pressuring the Sánchez government to turn words into action on Gaza genocide

On Tuesday, May 20, a majority of representatives in the Spanish Parliament voted in favor of a motion calling for an arms embargo on Israel. Spearheaded by the progressive blocs Podemos, Sumar, and the Republican Left of Catalonia, everyone but the right-wing supported the motion – including Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE).

While the news undoubtedly marks an important achievement for the months-long grassroots Palestine solidarity mobilizations in Europe and beyond, many activists caution against interpreting it as a decisive sign of Spain’s concrete commitment to halting the genocide in Gaza. “The Spanish government has the power to introduce a full arms embargo on Israel as early as tomorrow via Royal Decree,” warned the End Arms Trade with Israel campaign, which has rallied behind this demand since 2024 with the backing of over 600 organizations. “Why hasn’t it acted? What’s holding it back?”

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4946432

On a sweltering January day in 2018, Pope Francis addressed 100,000 of the faithful in Puerto Maldonado, Peru, not far from where gold mining had ravaged an expanse of Amazon rainforest about the size of Colorado. “The native Amazonian peoples have probably never been so threatened on their own lands as they are at present,” he told the crowd. He simultaneously condemned extractive industries and conservation efforts that “under the guise of preserving the forest, hoard great expanses of woodland and negotiate with them, leading to situations of oppression for the Native peoples.”

Francis denounced the insatiable consumerism that drives the destruction of the Amazon, supported those who say Indigenous peoples’ guardianship of their own territories should be respected, and urged everyone to defend isolated tribes. “Their cosmic vision and their wisdom have much to teach those of us who are not part of their culture,” he said.

During his 12 years as pontiff, Francis radically reshaped how the world’s most powerful religious institution approached the moral and ethical call to protect the planet. Beyond his invocations for Indigenous rights, Francis acknowledged the Church’s role in colonization, and considered climate change a moral issue born of rampant consumption and materialism. As the Trump administration dismantles climate action and cuts funding to Indigenous peoples around the world — and far-right politics continues to rise globally — experts see the conclave’s selection of Robert Francis Prevost, or Pope Leo XIV, as he is now known, as a clear beacon that the faith-based climate justice movement his predecessor led isn’t going anywhere.

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4944204

May 15 marks a new anniversary of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine perpetrated by the nascent State of Israel in 1948. Seventy-seven years after that original “catastrophe,” a crime prolonged by colonial occupation, the situation of the Palestinian people is desperate. After a brief and fragile ceasefire on March 2, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has resumed its brutal offensive in Gaza, a veritable genocide broadcast live, and carried out with the military and financial means and diplomatic cover of the Zionist state’s main allies: the United States and the European powers. In 18 months, the Israeli army has murdered more than 52,000 Gazans — including some 18,000 children. The Lancet, a journal that tracks the situation in Gaza, estimates that that figure could actually be at least double.

The genocidal war on the Palestinians has also spread to the West Bank, with tens of thousands of people displaced and under attack by both the Israeli army and armed settler gangs. As can be seen in No Other Land (the Oscar-winning documentary) or in the more recent film, The Settlers, the violent attacks against the Palestinian population, their homes, and lands, which accompany the expansion of settler settlements, have been ongoing since long before October 2023 and are part of a plan, openly discussed by Netanyahu’s cabinet ministers, to annex the territory. But with the latest war in Gaza, those plans have taken a leap forward, with the scandalous collaboration of the Palestinian Authority. According to a report by journalists from The New York Times, the streets of the West Bank — Palestinian territory occupied by Israel — are increasingly resembling Gaza: homes reduced to rubble, walls riddled with bullet holes, and bulldozers everywhere. One of the hardest-hit targets was Jenin, from which 40,000 Palestinians have been displaced — the largest population transfer since 1967, when Israel took control of the territory. This does not include the approximately 9,500 Palestinian prisoners held in harsh conditions by the IDF, many of them subjected to torture.

If the genocide was financed and sponsored by former President Joe Biden (one of the factors explaining the Democratic Party’s defeat), it received a strong boost from the White House when President Donald Trump, flanked by Netanyahu, announced his “proposal” to transform Gaza into a luxury resort once the Israeli army finished the dirty work of displacing the two million Gazans to Egypt or Jordan. Although Trump soon abandoned his real estate project in the face of rejection from the United States’ Arab allies and the bewilderment of military analysts and strategists, his announcement was read by the promoters of Greater Israel as a green light to annex all of Gaza.

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4892566

But in Gaza today, cash has all but disappeared. Aside from the brief ceasefire interlude that started in January and Israel ended on 19 March, when some cash aid was delivered by international organizations, no cash had entered Gaza for 15 months prior and none since.

In the first three months alone after October 2023, according to the World Bank, Israel destroyed or damaged 93 percent of all bank branches.

With no banks and only the cash that was already there – so overused by now that it is starting to disintegrate – Palestinians in Gaza have had to improvise.

Digital transactions have eased some of the pressure, while bartering has become common.

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4755937

The last time Pope Francis called the Palestinians of Gaza and gave them his blessings was two days before he passed away on 21 April. His funeral was held on Saturday in St Peter's Basilica, drawing mourners from around the world.

Ever since Israel embarked on its extermination campaign in Gaza in October 2023, the Pope - unlike the majority of western leaders complicit in the genocide - maintained close and consistent video contact with the colonised Palestinians.

He offered prayers, encouragement and solidarity to Gaza's small Christian community and to the besieged population more broadly.

A lone western voice in their defence, he is being mourned in Gaza with deep sorrow - even as some in Israel celebrate his death.

In his final months, the Argentinian Pope became increasingly condemnatory of Israel's war on the Palestinian people. He decried its extermination of Gaza's civilians, tens of thousands of whom have been killed, describing its crimes bluntly: "This is cruelty, this is not war."

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4746458

Louis Theroux spends time with the growing community of Israeli religious-nationalist settlers. Their settlements are illegal under international law, and they have been protected by the army, the police and the Israeli government.

Since the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October 2023, in which 1,200 Israelis were killed, there has been an acceleration in the establishment of settlements, with settlers pursuing a campaign of violence against local Palestinian communities.

What was once a fringe movement has now won support at the highest levels of government, with their supporters holding key positions in the cabinet and able to influence not only the role the military plays but also the future of this conflict.

Louis Theroux embeds himself in the West Bank, meeting prominent settlers - including the ‘godmother’ of the movement, Daniella Weiss - and travelling throughout the territory to understand the consequences of their activity. Louis also meets Palestinians whose lives have been impacted by settlers moving into their communities. As the world focuses on Gaza, where at least 50,000 Palestinians are estimated to have been killed by Israeli forces since 7 October, Louis discovers that the settlers are already making plans to move into that territory, too.

posted the documentary in peertube since the youtube one was taken down and the twitter one could also be taken down

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4729425

2025-04-25, via ReliefWeb

GAZA, Palestine – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has depleted all its food stocks for families in Gaza.

Today, WFP delivered its last remaining food stocks to hot meals kitchens in the Gaza Strip. These kitchens are expected to fully run out of food in the coming days. For weeks, hot meal kitchens have been the only consistent source of food assistance for people in Gaza. Despite reaching just half the population with only 25 percent of daily food needs, they have provided a critical lifeline.

WFP has also supported bakeries to distribute affordable bread in Gaza. On March 31, all 25 WFP-supported bakeries closed as wheat flour and cooking fuel ran out. The same week, WFP food parcels distributed to families – with two weeks of food rations – were exhausted. WFP is also deeply concerned about the severe lack of safe water and fuel for cooking – forcing people to scavenge for items to burn to cook a meal.

No humanitarian or commercial supplies have entered Gaza for more than seven weeks as all main border crossing points remain closed. This is the longest closure the Gaza Strip has ever faced, exacerbating already fragile markets and food systems. Food prices have skyrocketed up to 1,400 percent compared to during the ceasefire, and essential food commodities are in short supply raising serious nutrition concerns for vulnerable populations, including children under five, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and the elderly.

More than 116,000 metric tons of food assistance – enough to feed one million people for up to four months – is positioned at aid corridors and is ready to be brought into Gaza by WFP and food security partners as soon as borders reopen.

The situation inside the Gaza Strip has once again reached a breaking point: people are running out of ways to cope, and the fragile gains made during the short ceasefire have unravelled. Without urgent action to open borders for aid and trade to enter, WFP’s critical assistance may be forced to end.

WFP urges all parties to prioritize the needs of civilians and allow aid to enter Gaza immediately and uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4729539

Across the country, a troubling trend is accelerating: the return of institutionalization – rebranded, repackaged and framed as “modern mental health care”. From Governor Kathy Hochul’s push to expand involuntary commitment in New York to Robert F Kennedy Jr’s proposal for “wellness farms” under his Make America Healthy Again (Maha) initiative, policymakers are reviving the logics of confinement under the guise of care.

These proposals may differ in form, but they share a common function: expanding the state’s power to surveil, detain and “treat” marginalized people deemed disruptive or deviant. Far from offering real support, they reflect a deep investment in carceral control – particularly over disabled, unhoused, racialized and LGBTQIA+ communities. Communities that have often seen how the framing of institutionalization as “treatment” obscures both its violent history and its ongoing legacy. In doing so, these policies erase community-based solutions, undermine autonomy, and reinforce the very systems of confinement they claim to move beyond.

Take Hochul’s proposal, which seeks to lower the threshold for involuntary psychiatric hospitalization in New York. Under her plan, individuals could be detained not because they pose an imminent danger, but because they are deemed unable to meet their basic needs due to a perceived “mental illness”. This vague and subjective standard opens the door to sweeping state control over unhoused people, disabled peopleand others struggling to survive amid systemic neglect. Hochul also proposes expanding the authority to initiate forced treatment to a broader range of professionals – including psychiatric nurse practitioners – and would require practitioners to factor in a person’s history, in effect pathologizing prior distress as grounds for future detention.

This is not a fringe proposal. It builds on a growing wave of reinstitutionalization efforts nationwide. In 2022, New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, directed police and EMTs to forcibly hospitalize people deemed “mentally ill”, even without signs of imminent danger. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom’s Care courts compel people into court-ordered “treatment”.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/29208277

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4713217

A forthcoming Supreme Court decision is poised to weaken a bedrock law that requires federal agencies to study the potential environmental impacts of major projects.

The case, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado, concerns a proposed 88-mile railroad that would link an oil-producing region of Utah to tracks that reach refineries in the Gulf Coast. Environmental groups and a Colorado county argued that the federal Surface Transportation Board failed to adequately consider climate, pollution, and other effects as required under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, in approving the project. In 2023, the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the challengers. The groups behind the railway project, including several Utah counties, appealed the case to the highest court, which is expected to hand down a decision within the next few months.

Court observers told Grist the Supreme Court will likely rule in favor of the railway developers, with consequences far beyond Utah. The court could limit the scope of environmental harms federal agencies have to consider under NEPA, including climate impacts. Depending on how the justices rule, the decision could also bolster — or constrain — parallel moves by the Trump administration to roll back decades-old regulations governing how NEPA is implemented.

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