As Israel’s deadly attack on Gaza continues, we speak with Amira Hass, Haaretz correspondent for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, who says Israel’s bombing campaign is purposely wiping out entire families.
The Israeli bombing campaign of Gaza has killed at least 222 Palestinians, including 63 children, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects growing international calls for a ceasefire. The Norwegian Refugee Council has revealed 11 of the children killed in Gaza were taking part in a program to help them deal with trauma from growing up in the besieged enclave. At least six residents of Gaza died in Israeli strikes overnight, including the radio journalist Yousef Abu Hussein.
As the Israeli bombing of Gaza enters its ninth day, Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, Gaza and inside Israel are staging a historic general strike. This comes as violence is also spreading across Israel, with Jewish mobs attacking Palestinians in mixed Jewish and Arab communities. Last week, extremist Israeli settlers were filmed attacking Palestinian-owned shops in a Tel Aviv suburb.
As the Palestinian death toll in Gaza tops 200, the leading Israeli human rights group B’Tselem is accusing Israel of committing war crimes by killing blockaded civilians and destroying infrastructure on a massive scale. Executive director Hagai El-Ad says Israel has not done enough to distinguish between military and civilian targets or to act with proportionality. “We’ve seen war crimes in previous military assaults on Gaza,” he says.
The ongoing Israeli attack on Gaza, which has now killed at least 213 people, “really is an act of genocide,” says Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the Palestinian parliament and head of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society who has been leading efforts to manage the pandemic in the West Bank and Gaza. He says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces multiple corruption charges, is using the latest violence to save his political future.
The death toll in Gaza has reached 213, including at least 61 children, as Israel continues to attack the besieged area by air, land and sea using U.S.-made warplanes and bombs. The death toll in Israel stands at 11 from rockets fired from Gaza. Israel is facing increasing criticism for targeting doctors in its attack, and its airstrikes have reportedly damaged at least 18 hospitals and clinics, according to the World Health Organization.
Republican senators in Washington are attempting to block Kristen Clarke, a prominent voting rights advocate, from a top Justice Department position. The Senate Judiciary Committee has deadlocked on an 11-11 vote on whether to move Clarke’s nomination for assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to the Senate floor for a full vote.
We speak with Palestinian reporter Youmna al-Sayed, who was among the journalists who had to flee for their lives when Israel bombed and leveled a 12-story Gaza building that housed the offices of media organizations including the Associated Press and Al Jazeera. Israel has claimed, without evidence, that the building was being used by Hamas operatives, but al-Sayed says it’s part of a pattern of Israeli attacks on media. “This is no coincidence,” she says.
Matthias Schmale, director of UNRWA operations in Gaza, says civilians in the besieged territory are facing “terror from the skies” amid Israel’s bombardment, which has already killed nearly 200 people. “The price the civilian population is paying for this is unacceptable. This has to stop. This is terror on a civilian population.
Israel’s assault on Gaza has entered its second week, as Israel killed at least 42 Palestinians in Gaza Sunday in the deadliest day so far when it bombarded the besieged area with airstrikes, artillery fire and gunboat shelling. Israel has killed nearly 200 Palestinians, including 58 children and 34 women, and destroyed over 500 homes in Gaza, leaving 40,000 Palestinians homeless. Israel also leveled a 12-story building housing the offices of the Associated Press and Al Jazeera.
Republican senators in Washington are attempting to block Kristen Clarke, a prominent voting rights advocate, from a top Justice Department position. The Senate Judiciary Committee has deadlocked on an 11-11 vote on whether to move Clarke’s nomination for assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to the Senate floor for a full vote.
Palestinian scholar Hanan Ashrawi says Israel’s latest assault on Gaza is turning life in the besieged territory into “sheer hell,” aided by U.S. military and diplomatic support. “Israel has total license to use unbridled power to kill and destroy and maim and get away with it,” Ashrawi says.
As the death toll in Gaza reaches at least 119 amid Israel’s escalation of its aerial assault, Congressmember Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the first Palestinian American woman elected to Congress, delivered a powerful speech on the House floor Thursday to denounce the violence and attempted erasure of the Palestinian people. “I am the only Palestinian American member of Congress now,” Tlaib said. “I am a reminder to colleagues that Palestinians do indeed exist.
As MOVE family members and hundreds of supporters held a memorial Thursday to mark the deadly May 13, 1985, police bombing of their home in Philadelphia, Mayor Jim Kenney announced the resignation of the city’s top health official over stunning new revelations he cremated some of the bombing victims’ remains, including bone fragments, without the knowledge or permission of the families.
Republican senators in Washington are attempting to block Kristen Clarke, a prominent voting rights advocate, from a top Justice Department position. The Senate Judiciary Committee has deadlocked on an 11-11 vote on whether to move Clarke’s nomination for assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to the Senate floor for a full vote.
Palestinian scholar Hanan Ashrawi says Israel’s latest assault on Gaza is turning life in the besieged territory into “sheer hell,” aided by U.S. military and diplomatic support. “Israel has total license to use unbridled power to kill and destroy and maim and get away with it,” Ashrawi says.
As the death toll in Gaza reaches at least 119 amid Israel’s escalation of its aerial assault, Congressmember Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the first Palestinian American woman elected to Congress, delivered a powerful speech on the House floor Thursday to denounce the violence and attempted erasure of the Palestinian people. “I am the only Palestinian American member of Congress now,” Tlaib said. “I am a reminder to colleagues that Palestinians do indeed exist.
As MOVE family members and hundreds of supporters held a memorial Thursday to mark the deadly May 13, 1985, police bombing of their home in Philadelphia, Mayor Jim Kenney announced the resignation of the city’s top health official over stunning new revelations he cremated some of the bombing victims’ remains, including bone fragments, without the knowledge or permission of the families.
Republican senators in Washington are attempting to block Kristen Clarke, a prominent voting rights advocate, from a top Justice Department position. The Senate Judiciary Committee has deadlocked on an 11-11 vote on whether to move Clarke’s nomination for assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to the Senate floor for a full vote.
Palestinian scholar Hanan Ashrawi says Israel’s latest assault on Gaza is turning life in the besieged territory into “sheer hell,” aided by U.S. military and diplomatic support. “Israel has total license to use unbridled power to kill and destroy and maim and get away with it,” Ashrawi says.
As the death toll in Gaza reaches at least 119 amid Israel’s escalation of its aerial assault, Congressmember Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the first Palestinian American woman elected to Congress, delivered a powerful speech on the House floor Thursday to denounce the violence and attempted erasure of the Palestinian people. “I am the only Palestinian American member of Congress now,” Tlaib said. “I am a reminder to colleagues that Palestinians do indeed exist.
As MOVE family members and hundreds of supporters held a memorial Thursday to mark the deadly May 13, 1985, police bombing of their home in Philadelphia, Mayor Jim Kenney announced the resignation of the city’s top health official over stunning new revelations he cremated some of the bombing victims’ remains, including bone fragments, without the knowledge or permission of the families.
We look at the crisis unfolding in Israel-Palestine with Nathan Thrall, former director of the Arab-Israeli Project at the International Crisis Group and writer now based in Jerusalem, who says despite a buildup of Israeli troops on the Gaza border, Israel wants to avoid a ground invasion of the besieged territory and return to the status quo that existed before the latest round of violence.
Televised images of Israeli mobs attacking Palestinians have been widely denounced by Israeli media and public figures, but Palestinian writer Budour Hassan says the selective outrage ignores decades of occupation that have led to this point. “There is some mention of these lynch mobs that are attacking Palestinians in mixed cities. What is not mentioned is who emboldened these lynch mobs.
On Monday, we spoke to writer and poet Mohammed El-Kurd, whose family is facing forceful eviction from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem. He also spoke on CNN and MSNBC. After these interviews, Israeli forces arrested him and forcibly removed him from Sheikh Jarrah. It was captured in a dramatic video shared widely on social media. “They just threw me in the street and told me that I couldn’t come back into the neighborhood,” El-Kurd says.
The death toll in Gaza has reached at least 83, including 17 children, and hundreds of people have been injured, as Israel’s aerial bombardment of the besieged territory continues. Israel is now sending troops to the Gaza border for a possible ground invasion as many Palestinians are celebrating Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
This week marks the 36th anniversary of the day the city of Philadelphia bombed its own citizens. On May 13, 1985, police surrounded the home of MOVE, a radical Black liberation organization that was defying orders to vacate. Police flooded the home with water, filled the house with tear gas, and blasted the house with automatic weapons, all failing to dislodge the residents. Finally, police dropped a bomb on the house from a helicopter, killing 11 people, including five children.
As Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner attempts to overhaul the city’s criminal justice system, he faces a Democratic primary election next week against Carlos Vega, a former homicide prosecutor who is one of three dozen veteran prosecutors fired by Krasner when he took office in 2018.
In Pennsylvania, more than half of incarcerated people are jailed due to probation violations. We speak with formerly incarcerated activist LaTonya Myers, who says probation and parole, rather than being a stepping stone to freedom, act as a “streamline to mass incarceration,” with punitive rules landing people back behind bars for minor violations.
Four years ago, the longtime civil rights attorney Larry Krasner shocked the political establishment in Philadelphia by being elected district attorney. Now he faces a tough reelection next week. We delve into his record as captured in a new eight-part series by PBS “Independent Lens” that follows how Krasner, who had sued the Philadelphia Police Department 75 times during his career, ran on a platform of ending mass incarceration and has fought to overhaul the DA’s Office.