Nine years later, more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in the last month. This resurgence of large-scale violence began with Hamas’ attack on October 7, leaving 1,200 Israelis dead and around 240 taken as hostages. The Israeli government’s response has been an intense air bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza. Its claimed intent—to eliminate Hamas. But, as the days go by and the killings of Palestinian civilians continue, the same feeling I felt nine years ago has returned. With relentless and indiscriminate bombing, the children of Gaza face elimination.
As of now, 4,237 Palestinian children have been killed in just over a month. Over 1,000 more are missing or buried under the rubble of bombarded buildings. Those not killed by bombs are dying from starvation, disease, and dehydration. Most at risk are the youngest—children born during the war in shelters and streets amid rubble. Medical workers are using the term “wounded child no surviving family,” to describe 2023 war orphans in Gaza. The United Nations describes this a “graveyard of children.”
A full 70% of the Gaza’s population—more than 1.5 million people—has been displaced. The Israeli government has bombed hospitals, refugee camps, schools, and even U.N. shelters. There is no safe place for the innocent.
Her disappointment in US President Joe Biden is something shared by the bulk of Americans. NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza." The slaughter continues. It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service. Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide." AFP notes, "At least 13,000 Palestinians have been killed, 30,000 injured, says Gaza's Health Ministry." The world watches as the US government is exposed as just another part of the killing machine. And the see those who stand up and those who just go along. At ZNET, Dan Sheehan writes:
Then, earlier this morning, the news broke that Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, essayist, and poetry editor of the New York Times Magazine, Anne Boyer, has resigned from her post, writing in her resignation letter that “the Israeli state’s U.S.-backed war against the people of Gaza is not a war for anyone” and that she “won’t write about poetry amid the ‘reasonable’ tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to this unreasonable suffering.”
Here is Boyer’s extraordinary resignation letter—in which she takes direct aim at the language used by her (now former) employer in its coverage of the war on Gaza—in full:
I have resigned as poetry editor of the New York Times Magazine.
The Israeli state’s U.S-backed war against the people of Gaza is not a war for anyone. There is no safety in it or from it, not for Israel, not for the United States or Europe, and especially not for the many Jewish people slandered by those who claim falsely to fight in their names. Its only profit is the deadly profit of oil interests and weapon manufacturers.
The world, the future, our hearts—everything grows smaller and harder from this war. It is not only a war of missiles and land invasions. It is an ongoing war against the people of Palestine, people who have resisted throughout decades of occupation, forced dislocation, deprivation, surveillance, siege, imprisonment, and torture.
Because our status quo is self-expression, sometimes the most effective mode of protest for artists is to refuse.
I can’t write about poetry amidst the ‘reasonable’ tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to this unreasonable suffering. No more ghoulish euphemisms. No more verbally sanitized hellscapes. No more warmongering lies.
If this resignation leaves a hole in the news the size of poetry, then that is the true shape of the present.
—Anne Boyer
Sandy English (WSWS) explains:
Boyer is a poet and essayist, the author of 10 books, and the winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction. Her resignation and letter have struck a blow against the pretensions of the New York Times—which has supported the slaughter in Gaza in its editorial policy and reporting—to be evenhanded and “objective,” instead of what it is, an organ of CIA-Pentagon-White House propaganda that invariably sides with oppressor against the oppressed, essentially pro-imperialist yellow journalism.
As the World Socialist Web Site noted on the resignation—almost certainly coerced—of another New York Times writer, Jazmine Hughes, earlier this month for signing a writers’ petition calling for a ceasefire in Gaza:
“The Times is itself complicit in this world-historic crime. The protest letter [signed by Hughes] cited an October 14 op-ed by the paper’s Editorial Board entitled ‘Israel Can Defend Itself and Uphold Its Values’ which, while weakly calling upon the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to attempt to ‘minimize’ civilian casualties, declared that the Israeli regime deserved the unequivocal support of the United States and its allies in prosecuting its war against the people of Gaza.
“At the same time,” the WSWS pointed out, “the Times systematically downplays the war atrocities of the Israeli military. While it cannot avoid reporting on the massive scale of death and suffering being inflicted on Gaza, it employs a crude sleight of hand in its coverage.”
Boyer’s phrases, “sanitized hellscapes” and “warmongering lies” are precise and excoriating. They rip the veil off the official lying and chloroforming of public opinion by the Times, the country’s flagship liberal publication.
The killing of civilians in Gaza schools and large evacuations from Al-Shifa Hospital are actions that fly in the face of basic protections civilians are afforded under international law, the United Nation's top human rights official said Sunday.
“Rules of international humanitarian law, including the principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions in carrying out the attacks must be strictly adhered to,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said. “Failure to adhere to these rules may constitute war crimes,” he said.
The Israeli military has previously pushed back against accusations of war crimes, saying its strikes on what it says are Hamas targets follow international law and that it seeks to minimize civilian casualties.
Recapping some of Saturday's events, THE GUARDIAN notes:
More than 80 people were killed on Saturday by double Israeli strikes on the Jabalia refugee camp, Gaza’s health ministry said. “At least 50 people” were killed in an Israeli strike on early Saturday morning at the UNRWA-run al-Fakhouri school in the Jabalia refugee camp a Gaza health ministry official said. Another strike on a separate building in the camp killed 32 people of the same family, 19 of them children, according to the official.
Médecins Sans Frontières strongly condemned a “deliberate attack” on a convoy evacuating its staff members and their families, which it said had resulted in one death and one injury. The convoy was attacked on Saturday, as it was trying to evacuate 137 people, from MSF premises located near Al-Shifa hospital.
Thousands of demonstrators, including family members of hostages kidnapped by Hamas, marched into Jerusalem on Saturday in angry calls for the Israeli government to do more to bring their relatives home. The march capped a five-day trek from Tel Aviv and represented the largest protest on behalf of the hostages since they were dragged into Gaza by Hamas on 7 October.
In an op-ed in the Washington Post on Saturday, US president Joe Biden said that the Palestinian Authority should govern Gaza and the West Bank following the war between Israel and Hamas. “Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalized Palestinian Authority, as we all work toward a two-state solution,” he wrote. He also said that “extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank must stop.”
And Adam Fulton (GUARDIAN) notes:
The head of a prominent media institution in the Gaza Strip and two other journalists were killed over the weekend in Israel’s offensive in the territory, their relatives have said. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said the weekend deaths raised to 48 the number of journalists and media workers it had confirmed killed in the region since 7 October.
Kat's "Kat's Korner: Seasoned entertainers (Dolly Parton, Ann-Margaret and Cher)" went up earlier today. The following sites updated:
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