“I did not see or treat a single combatant during my five weeks in Gaza. My patients were six-year-olds with shrapnel in their hearts and bullets in their brains,” said Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, an American surgeon who spoke to the UN last week. He described situations where, due to Israel’s bombardment, pregnant women arrived at his hospital with their fetuses cut in half inside of them.
As if it isn’t enough for Israel to kill kids with bombs and snipers, they also block all medicine from entering Gaza, ensuring that the children who survive their attacks at first live the remaining hours of their lives in horrible pain. What’s more, Israel deliberately targets the doctors who dare try to keep wounded Palestinians alive. “Sadistic” doesn’t even begin to describe the nature of the Israeli military. When I see videos of starving Palestinian kids with their skin clinging to their bones and their eyes visibly terrified, I don’t understand how anyone could hate a group of people so much that this is what they are willing to do to them. With each new low Israel reaches, I can believe it even less somehow. I start feeling so lost in how the world keeps letting this slide – and how my country rewards Israel for its depravity.
That Dr. Sidhwa’s testimony of the US’s “greatest ally” deliberately targeting and killing children didn’t air on every single mainstream news channel is scandalous – proof that these media outlets have aided and abetted the genocide in Gaza with their unfair treatment, portrayal, and censorship of Palestinians and allies. The BBC is currently blocking the release of a documentary called “Gaza: Medics Under Fire,” which shows how Israel has targeted and killed healthcare workers in Gaza. Although the documentary made it through all of the BBC’s editorial hurdles, they still won’t publish it, clearly demonstrating how Western media is working day and night to cover up Israel’s genocide.
Tell the BBC to publish Gaza: Medics Under Fire! Our CODEPINK chapter in London will deliver it!
I know a lot of you are curious about the ceasefire talks. To put it plainly: they aren’t going well.
Trump and Netanyahu are dangling a ceasefire deal over the heads of millions of starving Palestinians with seemingly no real intention of making it happen. While Israel and the US add clauses to the proposal that would allow Israel to re-start the genocide, Palestinians are blamed for halting the negotiations.
Usually, parties who are actually committed to peace and diplomacy demonstrate some goodwill during negotiations. However, over the last few days, Israel:
- Blew up and destroyed 70 residential towers in Gaza.
- Opened fire on Palestinians trying to get food distributed near Rafah.
- Denied food access to all of northern Gaza under the new US-Israel “aid plan,” forcing Palestinians to march for miles to a crowded “safe zone” so they don’t starve to death.
- Denied aid to some of the Palestinians that did show up to get food.
- Attacked residential buildings in Jabalia refugee camp, leaving two families stuck under the rubble.
Can you imagine? Can you imagine having to dig your daughter out from under your own house – along with every item that’s ever meant anything to you, every photograph of your children growing up? Can you imagine having to take her to a hospital that’s been the target of so many bombings that you can’t even recognize it anymore? Can you imagine your daughter’s doctor, the survivor of countless bombings themself, telling you that they don’t have anything to help your daughter? They can’t help with the pain. They can’t help patch her up. They can’t do anything. On top of the pain and suffering she will endure, she’s hungry too. The emotional toll paid by Palestinian parents and doctors who have to watch children die is something I will never be able to fully comprehend.
The narrative that gets spun about all of these stories by media groups like the BBC is that starving Palestinians somehow deserved to be bombed – and, of course, that Israel was simply responding to something that Hamas did. Again and again, Israel either justifies killing or kidnapping doctors or just denies the crimes altogether. Dr. Sidhwa did something powerful last week: he spoke on record about how much disdain Israel has for Palestinian children and the doctors that try to save their lives.
Meanwhile, the people who are trying to bring aid to Gaza to break the blockade – like Greta Thunberg of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla – are mocked and threatened openly by major US politicians like Senator Lindsey Graham.
We are reporting him to the Ethics Committee, you can too.
Matt Miller, the former State Department spokesperson who helped cover up the genocide for over a year recently admitted that he knew Israel was committing war crimes all along. While I absolutely despise Miller for the soulless way he smirked at journalists asking about Gaza in the press room, his comments expose to the world just how flagrantly the government lies to us. Their official lies are then regurgitated by outlets like the BBC, which advance the false narratives about Palestinians, their lives, and their fate. We need to disrupt the attempts of these powerful media institutions to obfuscate or conceal the war crimes being committed in our name.
And while we have you, here’s a few other ways to take action for Palestine:
👉 Here are other ways to engage:
- Report Sen. Lindsey Graham to the Ethics Committee for threatening humanitarians!
- WATCH: Medea's visit to Sen. Graham's office.
- Check out our updated BDS page
- Dive in deeper by joining our summer school: Feminists Resisting Fascism.
- Join the global call to action: Fast to Feed Gaza!
- Cultural workers: See how you can bring Palestine into your work place!
In Solidarity,
Danaka and the entire CODEPINK team
