Contributing Writers

Nearly seven months of constant bombardment, siege and obstruction of aid deliveries have annihilated the healthcare system in Gaza. Last week, the Palestinian Health Ministry said that around 600,000 Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip no longer have access to any kind of healthcare. The World Health Organization has said that Israel is “systematically dismantling” the health system in Gaza. Only 11 hospitals out of 36 hospitals in Gaza are partially functioning.

Democracy Now! speaks with Hala Rharrit, the first State Department diplomat to publicly resign over the Biden administration’s policies backing Israel’s assault and siege of the Gaza Strip. Rharrit is an 18-year career diplomat who served as the Arabic-language spokesperson for the State Department in the region. “I could no longer be a part of the State Department and promote this policy. It’s an inhumane policy.

Workers around the world rallied Wednesday to mark May Day, with many calling on the labor movement to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. In New York, Democracy Now! spoke to demonstrators who demanded that U.S. unions apply political pressure for a ceasefire in Gaza and to stop their government’s arms trade with Israel. “Workers do have the power to shape the world,” said Palestinian researcher Riya Al’sanah, who was among thousands gathered at a May Day rally in Manhattan.

A new report from Amnesty International finds the sale of U.S.weapons to Israel for use in its indiscriminate assault in Gaza is in violation of U.S. and international law. We speak to Budour Hassan, a Palestinian writer and contributing researcher to the report, who says the U.S. is “complicit in the commission of war crimes” and must “halt all arms transfer to Israel as long as Israel continues to fail to comply with international humanitarian law and international human rights law.

We look at how university administrators have responded to Palestine solidarity protests by students with Frederick Lawrence, former president of Brandeis University and now the CEO of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and a lecturer at Georgetown Law School. Brandeis was founded in 1948 by the American Jewish community in the wake of the Holocaust and named after the first Jewish Supreme Court justice, the celebrated free speech advocate Louis Brandeis.

We get an update from the University of California, Los Angeles, where police in riot gear began dismantling a pro-Palestinian encampment early Thursday, using flashbang grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas, and arresting dozens of students. The raid came just over a day after pro-Israel counterprotesters armed with sticks, metal rods and fireworks attacked students at the encampment. The Real News Network reporter Mel Buer was on the scene during the attack.

The Biden administration is claiming the International Criminal Court has no jurisdiction to charge Israeli officials for war crimes. This comes after rumors that the ICC may be close to issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials over possible crimes in Gaza. The International Court of Justice has rejected a request by Nicaragua to order Germany to halt exporting arms to Israel, but the court declined to throw out the case.

As protests continue on campuses across North America, we go to the University of Southern California, where the union representing about 3,000 graduate student workers at USC has filed an unfair labor practice charge against the school to end campus militarization and drop charges against students and faculty. The “rampant violence that they inflicted on our workers” violates the National Labor Relations Act, says Margaret Davis, president of UAW Local 872.

Tuesday’s raid on Columbia University came 56 years to the day that police raided Hamilton Hall, arresting 700 students protesting racism and the Vietnam War. Democracy Now! co-host Juan González, who was a student leader at the historic 1968 protest, says the violent crackdown on Columbia University and other campuses across the United States has refocused national attention on “an unjust war,” carried out by Israel with U.S. backing.

New York police in full riot gear stormed Columbia University and the City College of New York Tuesday night, arresting over 300 students to break up Gaza solidarity encampments on the two campuses. The police raid began at the request of Columbia President Minouche Shafik, who has also asked the police to remain a presence on campus until at least May 17 to ensure solidarity encampments are not reestablished before the end of the term.

An Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on Friday killed the eldest daughter and the infant grandson of the prominent Palestinian poet and past Democracy Now! guest Refaat Alareer, who himself was killed in an Israeli airstrike in December. Shaima Refaat Alareer was killed along with her husband and 2-month-old son while sheltering in the building of international relief charity Global Communities.

As Biden administration and U.S. college and university administrators increasingly accuse peaceful pro-Palestinian protesters on school campuses of antisemitism, we speak with Brown University professor of Holocaust and genocide studies Omer Bartov, who visited the student Gaza solidarity encampment at UPenn alongside fellow Israeli historian Raz Segal.

Columbia University students began occupying Hamilton Hall shortly after midnight Tuesday as the university moved to suspend students who joined Gaza solidarity protests, and renamed it Hind’s Hall, after Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli soldiers in Gaza in January.

Nearly 300 peaceful protesters were arrested over the weekend as student-led Gaza solidarity encampments across U.S. university and college campuses face an intensifying crackdown. Democracy Now! spoke with Columbia University professors and students Monday as they were threatened with suspension but voted to continue the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, which began almost two weeks ago.

We speak with journalist and author Ari Berman about his new book, Minority Rule, which details how the United States has since its founding privileged the rights and interests of a small elite over the needs of the majority. He outlines how, for the first time in U.S. history, five of six conservative justices on the Supreme Court were appointed by Republican presidents who lost the popular vote, and confirmed by senators elected by a minority of Americans.

A new film about the once-thriving Palestinian city of Lyd, now known as the Israeli city Lod and home to Ben Gurion Airport, has begun screening in the United States. The film is a “science fiction documentary” that depicts the Palestinian city both with and without the 1948 Nakba, when over 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and villages. In Lyd, Israeli soldiers massacred hundreds of Palestinians in Dahmash Mosque during their takeover of the city.

Israeli police arrested seven rabbis and Israeli activists Friday at the Gaza border during an action that accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinians. The delegation of Rabbis for Ceasefire carried bags of food to the Erez crossing between Israel and northern Gaza amid reports that famine is imminent for more than 1 million Palestinians in Gaza.

Hundreds of activists aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla were blocked in Turkey on Saturday as they attempted to set sail for the besieged Palestinian territory with 5,500 tons of aid. Organizers say Guinea-Bissau withdrew its flagged ships under pressure from Israel and the United States. The Gaza Freedom Flotilla brings together a “cross-section of humanity” in hundreds of community leaders from all walks of life to raise awareness of Israel’s blockade of Gaza and rally support for its end.

We speak with journalist and author Ari Berman about his new book, Minority Rule, which details how the United States has since its founding privileged the rights and interests of a small elite over the needs of the majority. He outlines how, for the first time in U.S. history, five of six conservative justices on the Supreme Court were appointed by Republican presidents who lost the popular vote, and confirmed by senators elected by a minority of Americans.

The Supreme Court heard arguments this week about the legality of Idaho’s near-total abortion ban, which criminalizes the procedure in all circumstances unless the life of the parent is at risk. It’s the first such case to reach the high court since the conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. A key issue is whether a state ban can take precedence over the federal right to receive emergency care, including an abortion.

As a wave of student protests against Israel’s war on Gaza continues to spread from coast to coast, schools and law enforcement have responded with increasing brutality to campus encampments.

Student protests calling for university divestment from Israel and the U.S. arms industry have rocked campuses from coast to coast. The nonviolent protests, which have been characterized as “antisemitic” for their criticism of Israel, have been met with an intensifying police crackdown as university administrators threaten academic discipline and arrests. On Wednesday, local and state troopers violently arrested dozens at the University of Texas at Austin.

We speak with journalist and author Ari Berman about his new book, Minority Rule, which details how the United States has since its founding privileged the rights and interests of a small elite over the needs of the majority. He outlines how, for the first time in U.S. history, five of six conservative justices on the Supreme Court were appointed by Republican presidents who lost the popular vote, and confirmed by senators elected by a minority of Americans.

The Supreme Court heard arguments this week about the legality of Idaho’s near-total abortion ban, which criminalizes the procedure in all circumstances unless the life of the parent is at risk. It’s the first such case to reach the high court since the conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. A key issue is whether a state ban can take precedence over the federal right to receive emergency care, including an abortion.

As a wave of student protests against Israel’s war on Gaza continues to spread from coast to coast, schools and law enforcement have responded with increasing brutality to campus encampments.

Student protests calling for university divestment from Israel and the U.S. arms industry have rocked campuses from coast to coast. The nonviolent protests, which have been characterized as “antisemitic” for their criticism of Israel, have been met with an intensifying police crackdown as university administrators threaten academic discipline and arrests. On Wednesday, local and state troopers violently arrested dozens at the University of Texas at Austin.

Student protests calling for university divestment from Israel and the U.S. arms industry have rocked campuses from coast to coast. The nonviolent protests, which have been characterized as “antisemitic” for their criticism of Israel, have been met with an intensifying police crackdown as university administrators threaten academic discipline and arrests. On Wednesday, local and state troopers violently arrested dozens at the University of Texas at Austin.

We speak with journalist and author Ari Berman about his new book, Minority Rule, which details how the United States has since its founding privileged the rights and interests of a small elite over the needs of the majority. He outlines how, for the first time in U.S. history, five of six conservative justices on the Supreme Court were appointed by Republican presidents who lost the popular vote, and confirmed by senators elected by a minority of Americans.

The Supreme Court heard arguments this week about the legality of Idaho’s near-total abortion ban, which criminalizes the procedure in all circumstances unless the life of the parent is at risk. It’s the first such case to reach the high court since the conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. A key issue is whether a state ban can take precedence over the federal right to receive emergency care, including an abortion.