Contributing Writers

Protesters in Atlanta held a week of action to stop the construction of the massive $90 million police training complex known as “Cop City” in the Weelaunee Forest. This comes as activists have been organizing for a citywide referendum on the project which officials have tied up in court. Meanwhile, 61 people facing RICO, or racketeering, and domestic terrorism charges appeared in court this month as the state tries to characterize them as “militant anarchists.

As the United Nations calls again for a ceasefire in Gaza, Palestinian health officials are warning thousands of women, children and sick people could soon die as Israel continues its bombardment of Gaza. Gaza is also facing a second day of a communications blackout. “Gaza City itself is a hollow shell” where “the streets have been turned into graveyards” and “the smell of death is everywhere,” says independent journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous.

As protests for a ceasefire in Gaza continue around the United States, the Jewish-led peace organization IfNotNow helped organize Wednesday’s protest at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. The protesters held hands to block the entrance to the building and were met with pepper spray and police use of force. “Let’s be clear that police escalated the protest,” says Eva Borgwardt, national spokesperson for IfNotNow.

Speakers at Tuesday’s “March for Israel” on the National Mall included Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Christian fundamentalist House Speaker Mike Johnson and radical Christian Zionist pastor John Hagee, who once said God “sent Hitler to help Jews reach the Promised Land.

Ruth Ben-Artzi, the niece of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, joins Democracy Now! to call for the Netanyahu government to focus efforts on releasing Israeli hostages and to stop the bombing. A professor of political science at Providence College, Ben-Artzi recently joined prominent Rhode Island rabbis, Jewish leaders and Israelis demanding a ceasefire in Gaza.

We speak with two experts in international criminal law about the long history of Palestinians attempting to seek justice in global institutions and the “very grave crimes” for which Israel is being prosecuted regarding the country’s ongoing assault and siege of Gaza.

As Israel rejects growing international calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, the Center for Constitutional Rights in the United States is suing President Biden for failing to prevent genocide. The center is seeking an emergency order to block Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin from providing further military funding, arms and diplomatic support to Israel.

Speakers at Tuesday’s “March for Israel” on the National Mall included Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Christian fundamentalist House Speaker Mike Johnson and radical Christian Zionist pastor John Hagee, who once said God “sent Hitler to help Jews reach the Promised Land.

We speak to Rabbi Alissa Wise, an organizer with Rabbis for Ceasefire and the founding co-chair of Jewish Voice for Peace’s Rabbinical Council, about Tuesday’s “March for Israel” in Washington, D.C., that was covered widely by the mainstream media and platformed antisemitic Christian Zionists.

Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, discusses proposals for a prisoner swap with Hamas, the ongoing cycle of Palestinian oppression and resistance, censorship of pro-Palestine advocacy in the United States, what he calls a “generational struggle” among American Jews over Zionism, and more on Israel’s current assault of Gaza.

The Israel military raid on Al-Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza, where thousands of Palestinians are sheltering, is an “unprecedented attack on civilian society” in the “darkest time in modern history,” that is being justified in the West by “a deep-rooted and frightening racism,” says Dr. Mads Gilbert, who worked at Al-Shifa. “You don’t do these things to people you consider equal.” Dr.

We feature one of the final interviews with Palestinian doctor Hammam Alloh, who died Saturday when an Israeli artillery shell struck his wife’s home, killing him, his father, brother-in-law and father-in-law. On October 31, Democracy Now! spoke to Dr.

Worldwide protests calling for a ceasefire are drawing attention to the role of weapons manufacturers and distributors supplying machinery to Israel’s assault on Gaza, with demonstrators blocking shipping tankers and entrances to weapons factories, and unionized workers refusing to handle military materiel over the war in Gaza.