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Doing so would appease the prime minister's far-right coalition partners at a time when his grip on power remains fragile.
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(Third column, 5th story, link)
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(Third column, 7th story, link)
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Former Amazon Labor Union President Chris Smalls joins us for one of his first interviews since he returned to the United States after he was beaten, arrested and detained by the Israeli military for attempting to bring aid to starving Palestinians in Gaza. Smalls calls Israel's assault and starvation of Gaza a "working-class issue," and was the only Black member of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition's latest attempt to break Israel's near-total blockade of Gaza. He describes his assault by Israeli soldiers, who "attacked me out of the 21 volunteers because of the color of my skin." Smalls was later one of the last to be released from Israel's Givon Prison, where he contracted scabies. "I can tell you right now, from my own experience, that Palestinians and people of color are not safe amongst the Israeli government," he says.
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As Palestinians face dire starvation caused by the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip, at least 181 Palestinians, including 94 children, have now died from hunger-related causes in Gaza. At the same time, in the West Bank, dozens of women are on hunger strike after an Israeli settler killed a Palestinian activist, Odeh Muhammad Hadalin. Israel is now refusing to return Hadalin's body to the family as his alleged killer walks free. Democracy Now! speaks with Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years' War on Palestine, who has family in the West Bank. "I think it's time for this idealized vision of Israel to shatter and for people to come to terms with the fact that we are funding and financing this ethnic cleansing, this genocide, this theft, day by day by day, of people's land in the West Bank," says Khalidi.
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Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip continue to kill and injure hundreds of Palestinians each day, including many people seeking aid amid deepening starvation across the territory. Despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's claim that there is "no starvation" in Gaza, a U.S. doctor who just returned from Gaza says the reality is undeniable. "It was evident to me, in my firsthand experience, that what I was seeing was malnourishment in my patients," says Dr. Ambereen Sleemi, a urogynecologist and the executive director of the International Medical Response Foundation based in New York. "We also saw it in our hospital staff. … Everybody would sit and talk about how hungry they were."
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For the first time, two leading Israeli human rights groups — B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel — have accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. B'Tselem's report, "Our Genocide," says, "Israel is taking coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip." We speak with B'Tselem's outreach director, Sarit Michaeli, in Tel Aviv, who says Israel's actions in Gaza are "the textbook definition of genocide."
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