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Unfathomably, it's been a year since a horrific Hamas assault set off a more horrific Israeli genocide in which an insatiable, unraveling Zionist project has slaughtered, burned, starved, maimed and broken hundreds of thousands, mostly women and children, in the ungodly name of vengeance. A year of blood, terror, protests, rulings, another self-immolation and ceaseless dead babies, doctors, teachers, poets. Yet still, "The word 'ceasefire' is a wish, a dream." And in Gaza, "Every day, we live in hell."
The official death toll in Gaza is now almost 42,000; doctors who have volunteered there say the true toll is at least 118,908, or almost triple that. There are over 97,000 wounded, and most of Gaza's two million people are homeless. Given the ongoing violence, the tens of thousands missing, the unprecedented humanitarian crisis - famine looming, illness spreading, meager food, water, medical care - those obscene numbers will likely continue to soar. Meanwhile, Israel's unhinged genocidal campaign has failed to achieve its mythical "total victory" over Hamas while successively obliterating one red line of "civilized" warfare after another - bombing schools, hospitals, mosques, shelters, using starvation as a weapon, killing hundreds of civilians to rescue four captives, targeting journalists and doctors, and so heedlessly, relentlessly bombing residential areas that entire families, babies to grandparents, have been wiped out. Still, complicit Western allies, mostly us, send killing weapons and look away.
The result: "A year of war against children that has made Palestine the most precarious place in the world to be a child." Duly sacrificed on the altar of Israeli impunity are over 16,700 children killed, including newborns; at least 30,000 wounded, some as young as two with multiple limbs amputated; and many thousands of already disabled children seeing their fragile worlds implode: "They destroyed what was inside us." In an angry letter to Biden urging, "End this madness now!" 99 U.S. doctors who worked in Gaza describe healthy newborns dying of malnutrition, the "first time I held a baby's brain in my hand - the first of many," children regularly shot in the head or chest despite international rules deeming them innocents, and, in their dreams, the cries and screams of maimed children and grieving mothers "our consciences will not let us forget....Their mutilated bodies are a monument to cruelty."
Still it goes on, so pitilessly some media have changed update headlines from "Operation al-Aqsa Flood" to, say, "Israel's Genocide: Day 356." Last week, Israel intensified strikes on whatever's left of Gaza in eight massacres that killed 99 people, mostly sleeping women and children sheltering in schools - a sentence that should not exist. Among those killed was Wafa al-Udaini, a prominent English-speaking reporter who wrote for Palestinian and U.S. outlets. The 175th journalist killed by Israel, she documented the Palestinian struggle - what women endure in Israeli prisons, the horror of children's bodies shredded in a night strike, kids' occasional joy - to reflect their pain, courage, resilience and longing; she also mentored young Palestinian women writers to help them "tell their own stories in their own voice." Her words and work as both journalist and refugee, said one editor, were "her way of reclaiming her people’s narrative, why we do what we do on a daily basis...She was not just a storyteller – she was the story."
Untold thousands more dead, of course, have not been even identified, never mind celebrated. Last month, Israel tried to deliver 88 bodies, badly decomposed with no accompanying data, to Khan Younis' Nasser Hospital in a container truck, a grotesque repudiation of an International Law mandate that victims of armed conflict be "handled with dignity and properly managed." Gaza's Ministry of Health refused to receive them, and sent the truck back. "We cannot allow them to disappear into an anonymous grave,” they said. “Each of these individuals has a family, a history, a life that deserves recognition. We are demanding that their humanity be honored.” For families of over 10,000 missing, caught in a harrowing, months-long wait, ""Every day feels like a cruel game. You cling to hope, then you lose it again. And there's no end, no peace." Says Amina Nasir, 52, who's lost both her son and her brother, “I have nothing left. No news, no body, no grave. Just memories and questions. Its a torture I can't describe."
And now Lebanon, where Israel burrows ever deeper into another quagmire without end or strategy, another place of dust, screams, sirens, rubble, bodies in pieces, nowhere to go. "We are all the same," writes Mohammed Mhawish of "a solidarity beyond words." "For the people of Lebanon, Gaza is not a distant cause; it is a mirror of their own suffering, a continuation of the story we’ve been living for decades. We know the bombs killing their children are the same ones killing ours." On the mournful one-year marker, that sense of oneness prompted tens of thousands worldwide to protest, and fight to end, the ongoing genocide. In the U.S., the focus was rightly on our persistent, unconscionable, American-taxpayer-funded arming of Israel despite its routinely revealed war crimes, and irregardless of Biden Administration claims it's been "working tirelessly" on a ceasefire. Critics: "That is not a thing." The brutal, bottom-line truth: Without U.S. arms, funds and diplomatic cover, "This genocide would not have been possible.”
On Saturday, the anniversary also spurred Arizona journalist Samuel Mena Jr. to set himself on fire during protests to renounce the genocide and what he saw as his own role in it. In a long essay, he described a U.S. of "hypocrisy, falsehood, and misdirection" that joins global colonial projects as its leaders and journalists deny their deadly impact. Despite so many dead children, "We took at face value this war is a war against Hamas. How many Palestinians were killed that I allowed to be branded as Hamas..struck with a missile cosigned by the American media?" To the painful query, "What are you going to do?" he said to the thousands of children who lost a limb, "with as much of my conviction as I possibly can, that, "I give my left arm to you (and) pray my voice was able to raise up yours." After he was hospitalized with non-life-threatening burns, the post was met with ugly comments - "They should've let you burn" - and calls for empathy. "However you view what Sam did," said a friend, “Sam was (only) asking for (us) to see each other’s humanity.”
To date, Israel's unrepentant leaders seem unable to do so. "Israel doesn’t need an excuse to exterminate Palestinians," said one weary Gazan. “Where is justice in this world?” "After a year," said another, "our souls feel suspended in time...as though the world has simply accepted our suffering as the natural state of affairs." Still, people endure "the long wait for the day the death stops." In the small coastal city of Deir al-Balah, where fishing, palm trees and calm have been erased for rubble, tents, traumatized children, a resident grows a yellow rose, a jasmine tree, basil, two palm trees, three olive trees: "That's how I define hope." A 24-year-old teacher writes for "the heavenly souls" of her family of 14 killed in a strike that "flew them away to fairer places"' as she, the only survivor, wheelchair-bound in the hospital, tells the stories of the burned and mourning children there. Once we die, her father said, "People will listen to our stories." Now, "Out from under the rubble, I see my martyrs waving for me. They all stand again. They smile. They live. They go back home."
Once they started invading us.
Taking our houses and trees, drawing lines,
pushing us into tiny places.
It wasn’t a bargain or deal or even a real war.
To this day they pretend it was.
But it was something else.
We were sorry what happened to them but
we had nothing to do with it.
- Naomi Shihab Nye,withthanksto Vox Populi
To begin a conversation
about Palestine & Israel
First, you must say:
I am your brother
& you are my sister...
Then, you can speak of history
and compare your losses.
- Yahia Lababidi
On the heels of Hurricane Helene devastating the U.S. Southeast and sparking fresh calls for action on the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, a long-awaited study revealed Thursday that the planet-heating pollution from liquefied natural gas is worse than that of coal.
"Liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports from the United States have risen dramatically since the LNG-export ban was lifted in 2016, and the United States is now the world's largest exporter," wrote Cornell University scientist Robert Howarth, who analyzed the greenhouse gas footprint of LNG produced in and exported from the U.S.
Howarth found that "the greenhouse gas footprint for LNG as a fuel source is 33% greater than that for coal" in terms of its 20-year global warming potential, and "even considered on the time frame of 100 years after emission... which severely understates the climatic damage of methane, the LNG footprint equals or exceeds that of coal."
Advocates of bold climate action welcomed the formal publication of what Third Act founder Bill McKibbencalled a "crucial paper."
"LNG exports present HUGE risks to our planet and climate—and we need to reject any attempts to expand them!"
The study, published online by the journal Energy Science & Engineering, follows U.S. President Joe Biden pausing approvals for all LNG exports to non-fair trade agreement countries and comes a month out from the presidential election, in which Democratic Vice President Kalama Harris is facing Big Oil-backed Republican former President Donald Trump.
"This is a HUGE deal for the Biden administration's ongoing review of LNG exports," said Jamie Henn, executive director of Fossil Free Media and a founder of 350.org, sharing Howarth's findings on social media. Climate campaigners are calling on the Biden-Harris administration to make the January pause permanent.
"This should be the final nail in the coffin for the false narrative that LNG was somehow a climate solution," Henn added in a statement. "This now peer-reviewed paper demonstrates that LNG is worse for the climate than coal, let alone clean energy alternatives. Approving more LNG exports is clearly incompatible with the public interest."
As Henn and others acknowledged, Howarth's research has been targeted by journalists and the fossil fuel industry.
"This paper has been widely discussed, revised, and is now peer-reviewed and published," said Jason Rylander, legal director for the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute. "LNG is not a bridge fuel to clean energy. It's a highway to climate hell."
Alex Walker, climate finance program manager at the Canadian group Environmental Defense, also responded to the research by stressing that, contrary to claims by the fossil fuel industry and its political allies, "LNG is not a bridge fuel."
Congressman Sean Casten (D-Ill.) said on social media that "there is no environmental case for increased U.S. LNG exports."
Howarth is on the board of directors of the Food & Water Watch, which similarly pointed to the paper as further proof that "LNG exports present HUGE risks to our planet and climate—and we need to reject any attempts to expand them!"
Cassidy DiPaola, communications director at Fossil Free Media, declared Thursday that "the science is clear."
"There's no place for LNG in a clean energy future," DiPaola said. "It's time to double down on truly clean alternatives like wind, solar, and energy efficiency."
Consumer advocates demanded congressional hearings on alleged price fixing by oil giants on Monday after the Federal Trade Commission banned an executive from serving on the board of Chevron, saying he had colluded with international representatives to keep oil prices high.
The FTC said it would prohibit John B. Hess, CEO of the Hess Corporation, from serving on Chevron's Board of Directors as part of Chevron's acquisition of the company, citing Hess' public and private communications "with the past and current secretaries general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and an official from Saudi Arabia."
"In these communications, Mr. Hess stressed the importance of oil market stability and inventory management and encouraged these officials to take actions on these issues and speak about them at different events," said the FTC.
The FTC's complaint marks the second time since May that an oil executive has been accused of collusion and price fixing to ensure Americans would continue paying high prices for gas, adding an estimated $500 per year, per vehicle, in fuel costs for the average U.S. household.
Democratic lawmakers have demanded a probe by the Department of Justice into collusion by fossil fuel companies, following the FTC's revelation that Scott Sheffield, founder of Pioneer Natural Resources, communicated with OPEC representatives via text messages, WhatsApp, and in person to encourage high oil prices.
"Americans who are struggling to make ends meet cannot afford any more price fixing collusion between Big Oil CEOs and foreign countries."
Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said that "jail time should seriously be considered," highlighting the financial pain Sheffield's actions added to households already struggling to afford groceries, childcare, and other essentials.
The five largest U.S. oil companies have reported more than $250 billion in profits over the last two years.
"We cannot allow fossil fuel companies to gouge the American public in concert with OPEC while raking in record profits," said Tyson Slocum, director of consumer advocacy group Public Citizen's energy program. "The FTC is lifting the veil on an effort, apparently by multiple U.S. oil companies, to communicate with foreign actors to artificially raise energy prices for American families and around the world. We reiterate the call for Congress to immediately hold hearings to investigate illegal conduct by Big Oil."
Government watchdog Accountable.US described the news as "another Big Oil CEO caught colluding with OPEC."
"Americans who are struggling to make ends meet cannot afford any more price fixing collusion between Big Oil CEOs and foreign countries," said Chris Marshall, a spokesperson for the group. "They should be held accountable to make sure consumers pay a fair price at the pump."
With Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his allies attempting to sow doubt over the 2024 election results if he loses, more than four dozen watchdogs and advocacy groups on Monday wrote to every member of Congress, demanding lawmakers' commitment to ensuring the peaceful transfer of power in January 2025.
Organized by the group Courage for America, which advocates against "an extremist agenda that puts money and power over the freedoms of our families and communities," the letter notes that there are less than 100 days until January 6, 2025, the day Congress is scheduled to certify the 2024 election results.
That date will also mark the fourth anniversary of the violent riot at the U.S. Capitol, with supporters of Trump descending on the building with the aim of stopping lawmakers from certifying the 2020 election results after the then-president told them to "take back our country" and demand that Congress "only count the electors" who he viewed as "lawfully slated."
On January 6, 2025, said the groups on Monday, "if Congress disregards its patriotic and constitutional duties to the American people, our most fundamental rights and freedoms will be jeopardized once again."
The signatories, including Public Citizen, People's Action, and Friends of the Earth, urged lawmakers to "denounce any attempt to intimidate, harass, threaten, or incite political violence; reject attempts to spread misinformation about the integrity of the United States' elections; and agree to accept the ultimate outcome of the election, promptly certify the result, and support the peaceful transfer of power."
The letter was sent days after U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters that he would support certifying the election results—"if we have a free, fair, and safe election."
Johnson's implied suggestion that the election won't be fair, four years after the top Republican promoted Trump's meritless claims that the 2020 election had been rigged, was called "disturbing" by journalist Chris Geidner.
Johnson has also led the charge against noncitizen voting, which he has admitted is already against federal law but has nevertheless introduced a bill to prevent.
U.S. Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), the top-ranking Democrat on the House Committee on House Administration, which oversees issues related to elections, responded to Johnson's remarks and proposed legislation in an op-ed at MSNBC, noting that his committee "has held numerous hearings that demonstrate state and local election officials are prepared for November's elections and protections against potential fraud and election tampering remain strong and highly effective."
"The lies being spread by Trump, Speaker Johnson, House Republicans and extreme right-wing conspiracy theorists about noncitizen voting have been repeatedly debunked. Yet they have persisted in a clear attempt to generate anxiety in the minds of voters, and to serve, come November, as the foundation for false claims of election fraud," wrote Morelle. "Congress' duty to uphold the will of the people is embedded in the Constitution and federal law... Congress must, in no uncertain terms, ensure January 6, 2025, will not be a repeat of January 6, 2021, as we certify the results of the Electoral College."
Trump has also suggested without evidence that fraudulent voting—instances of which were found just 31 times out of more than 1 billion votes cast between 2000-14 in one comprehensive study—will be rampant in the election, saying in one social media post recently, "If you vote illegally you're going to jail."
The last time members of Congress joined a Trump-led effort to stop the peaceful transfer of power, reads the letter sent Monday, "lives were lost and a violent mob took over the United States Capitol in an attempt to subvert the will of the American people."
"That must never happen again," the groups wrote. "Ensuring the peaceful certification of the next presidential election is a critical responsibility. You have the responsibility to uplift our democratic institutions in the face of rising political violence and threats. A failure to do so would not only be a dangerous dereliction of your oath of office but a stain on our democracy."
In his first public statement since being released from prison in June, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Tuesday urged European lawmakers to take action to protect journalists from being prosecuted for their reporting work, warning that his yearslong case is directly tied to self-censorship and the chilling of press freedom.
Assange spoke to the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights (PACE) at the Council of Europe, which includes members from across the continent, in Strasbourg, France, and warned that current legal protections for journalists and whistleblowers "were not effective in any remotely reasonable time," as evidenced by the 14 years he spent in prison or otherwise in confinement for his work.
"I want to be totally clear," said Assange. "I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today because after years of incarceration I pleaded guilty to journalism. I pleaded guilty to seeking information from a source."
Watch Assange's testimony below:
Assange was released from Belmarsh Prison in London in June after being incarcerated there for five years. His release was secured when he agreed to plead guilty to one felony count of illegally obtaining and disclosing national security materials in a deal with the U.S. government.
He had spent years fighting U.S. efforts to extradite him, threatening him with a sentence of up to 170 years in a federal prison, as punishment for state secrets WikiLeaks published.
The media organization reported on a series of leaks provided by former U.S. Army soldier Chelsea Manning regarding the Army's killing of unarmed civilians in Iraq, as well as publishing diplomatic cables.
"I was formally convicted by a foreign power for asking for receiving and publishing truthful information about that power, while I was in Europe," said Assange, who is Australian, on Tuesday. "The fundamental issue is simple: Journalists should not be prosecuted for doing their jobs."
Assange told PACE members that he had believed that Article 10 of European Convention of Human Rights, which protects the right to freedom of expression and freedom of the media, would protect him from prosecution.
"Similarly, looking at the U.S. First Amendment to its Constitution... No publisher had ever been prosecuted for publishing classified information from the United States," said Assange. "I expected some kind of harassment legal process. I was pre-prepared to fight for that."
He continued:
My naiveté was in believing in the law. When push comes to shove, laws are just pieces of paper and they can be reinterpreted for political expediency.
They are the rules made by the ruling class more broadly. And if those rules don't suit what it wants to do, it reinterprets them or hopefully changes them... In the case of the United States, we angered one of the constituent powers of the United States. The intelligence sector... It was powerful enough to push for a reinterpretation of the U.S. Constitution.
He said he ultimately "chose freedom over unrealizable justice," as the U.S. was intent on imprisoning him for the rest of his life unless he entered the guilty plea.
Assange added that his case set a "dangerous precedent," and that since his arrest he has observed "more impunity, more secrecy, more retaliation for telling the truth, and more self-censorship."
"It is hard not to draw a line from the U.S. government crossing the Rubicon by internationally criminalizing journalism to the chilled climate for freedom of expression now," said Assange.
His comments echoed the findings of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which published its annual press freedom index in May. The group found that "in the Americas, the inability of journalists to cover subjects related to organized crime, corruption, or the environment for fear of reprisals poses a major problem."
The U.S. fell 10 places in the annual ranking, with citing "open antagonism from political officials" such as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, "including calls to jail journalists." RSF also cited the government's pursuit of Assange's extradition.
In Europe, said Assange on Tuesday, "the criminalization of news-gathering activities is a threat to investigative journalism everywhere."
Israeli forces continued attacks on the outskirts of Beirut and in southern Lebanon on Saturday.
There were 13 Israeli strikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut overnight and another five on Saturday, one of which may have been targeted at paramedics, according toAl Jazeera. The number of casualties is not yet clear.
"There is increasing destruction and it's clear that complete blocks are being destroyed one after another," Al Jazeera's Ali Hashem reported from Beirut.
"One strike hit near the airport, and we understand another missile hit near a paramedic team to prevent them from getting to the scene of the bigger strike," he reported.
The Israeli military issued evacuation warnings for certain suburban areas south of Beirut on Friday night, indicating attacks would follow, The New York Timesreported.
Israeli forces unleashed a "huge strike" on the same area earlier Friday in an attempt to kill Hashem Safieddine, the presumed successor to recently assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, according to the Times. Al Jazeera reported that "bunker buster" bombs were believed to be used in the Friday attack, as they were in Nasrallah's killing. It's not clear if Safieddine was killed, though media reports indicate that he likely was.
Israel's military also continued attacks in southern Lebanon on Saturday.
"From northern Israel, I can see dark gray clouds of dust and smoke rising above two [Lebanese] villages as warplanes zoom overhead and the sound of artillery echoes through the area," the Times' Natan Odenheimer reported Saturday.
An Israeli strike in northern Lebanon killed Hamas commander Saeed Ali on Saturday, the armed Palestinian group said. Hamas has a longstanding presence in Lebanon.
According to Al Jazeera, which cited Israeli media reports, the Israeli military is planning to expand its ground incursion into southern Lebanon, which began earlier this week, and to conduct "large-scale assaults" on Lebanon, Iran, and Gaza. The media outlet didn't provide details.
Iran fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday, principally targeting military facilities. Iran said the strikes were retaliation for Israeli assassinations of Hezbollah and Hamas leaders. Most of the strikes were intercepted by Israeli and U.S. forces.
Observers are now watching closely to see how Israel responds, and what role the U.S.—Israel's chief diplomatic ally and military supplier—might play. President Joe Biden said Friday that he'd advise Israel to consider "alternatives" to striking Iranian oilfields.
"The Gulf of Mexico is so warm that the models couldn't predict how strong Milton has gotten so quickly," said the Sunrise Movement. "This is a climate emergency."
"This is not normal," said climate advocates Monday as they expressed the same shock as weather experts who were reporting on the rapid strengthening of Hurricane Milton, whose winds sped up to 175 miles per hour as Florida residents struggled to recover from last month's devastating storm, Helene.
Milton was classified as a Category 5 hurricane Monday afternoon—just five hours after it had been designated a Category 2 storm with 100 mile-per-hour winds and 48 hours after it became a tropical storm churning eastward over the Gulf of Mexico.
The winds "explosively" intensified over a matter of hours, according to the National Hurricane Center.
As the hurricane gathered strength, weather analyst Colin McCarthy of U.S. Stormwatch said that "not a single weather model predicted the storm would strengthen this quickly."
The storm was expected to make landfall on Florida's Gulf Coast on Wednesday, and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis—who vehemently denies scientists' consensus that human-caused climate change is causing more extreme weather—called for widespread evacuations ahead of "life-threatening" hazards.
"If we knew exactly where it's going to hit, we probably would evacuate fewer people," DeSantis said Monday morning. "But we don't know that."
President Joe Biden declared an emergency in Florida Monday afternoon and ordered federal assistance to the state.
The New York Times reported that Milton could weaken before Wednesday as it makes its way through the Gulf, but that could be accompanied by a widening of the hurricane's size, threatening a greater portion of the vulnerable state.
"The entire peninsula, the entire west coast, has potential to have major, major impact because of the storm surge," said DeSantis on Sunday.
Milton is expected to be the second hurricane to hit Florida in two weeks, with parts of the state still reeling from the damage left by Helene.
DeSantis said Monday that emergency workers had picked up 180,000 cubic yards of debris across the state, and said, "There's still a lot of it."
The Tampa Bay area, where residents were warned by National Weather Service meteorologist Rick Davis on Monday that Milton could be "the worst hurricane in their lifetime," was inundated last month with record-high storm surges.
Barrier islands were damaged by Helene, and the destruction of sand dunes has left the area especially exposed to hazards, Davis told The New York Times.
"Just after our latest hurricane, we are extremely vulnerable, especially to surge," said Davis. "Our ground is extremely saturated from several hurricanes already this year, and we're going to have river flooding. So people that may be 20 miles inland from the coast won't get storm surge, but they could get rainfall flooding, river flooding, retention ponds could flood creeks."
Climatologists have warned that warmer oceans and bodies of water including the Gulf of Mexico are likely to cause more intense hurricane seasons. The Gulf has reached an average surface temperature of nearly 90°F—the hottest it's been since modern records have been kept, Brian McNoldy, a climate researcher at the University of Miami, toldVox in August.
"The Gulf of Mexico is so warm that the models couldn't predict how strong Milton has gotten so quickly," said national climate advocacy group Sunrise Movement.
Officials called on residents to evacuate Monday rather than waiting for the hurricane to get closer to making its expected landfall. More than a dozen school districts in the state announced they were closing ahead of the storm.
But as pro-labor media group More Perfect Union reported, workers on Monday were already sharing stories online of how companies are planning to stay open until at least Tuesday night, making it impossible for people to obey evacuation orders.
One person working in retail management said that "after waiting all weekend to see if the corporate overlords would say we're closed until further notice, I got notice today that we're business as usual until Tuesday night... This gives me no time to evacuate or prepare accordingly."
"Workers died during Hurricane Helene because they weren't given time to evacuate," said More Perfect Union. "This must stop."
"It has been difficult for the U.S. public, journalists, and members of Congress to get an accurate understanding of the amount of military equipment and financial assistance that the U.S. government has provided."
U.S. armed aid to Israel and related spending on American militarism in the Middle East cost taxpayers at least $22.76 billion over the past year, according to new research published Monday.
The Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs—which has long been the premier source for statistics on the human and economic costs of ongoing U.S.-led post-9/11 wars and militarism in the Middle East and beyond—called the $22.76 billion estimate "conservative."
"This figure includes the $17.9 billion the U.S. government has approved in security assistance for Israeli military operations in Gaza and elsewhere since October 7—substantially more than in any other year since the U.S. began granting military aid to Israel in 1959," report authors Linda Bilmes, William Hartung, and Stephen Semler wrote. "Yet the report describes how this is only a partial amount of the U.S. financial support provided during this war."
In addition to the repeated multibillion-dollar rounds of military aid to Israel, related U.S. operations in the region, particularly bombing and shipping defense in and near Yemen—where Houthi rebels have attacked maritime commerce and launched missiles at Israel—have cost over $2 billion since last October.
"It has been difficult for the U.S. public, journalists, and members of Congress to get an accurate understanding of the amount of military equipment and financial assistance that the U.S. government has provided to Israel's military during the past year of war," the report states. "There is likewise little U.S. public awareness of the costs of the United States military's own related operations in the region, particularly in and around Yemen."
The analysis adds that regional hostilities "have escalated to become the most sustained military campaign by U.S. forces since the 2016-19 air war" against the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
"The Costs of War project has an obligation to look at the consequences of the U.S. backing of Israel's military operations after October 7, especially as it reverberates throughout the region," Costs of War director Stephanie Savell said in a statement. "Our project examines the human and budgetary costs of U.S. militarism at home and abroad, and for the last year, people in Gaza have suffered the highest consequences imaginable."
According to the Gaza Health Ministry and international agencies, Israel's yearlong assault on Gaza has left at least 149,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, and millions more forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened. U.S. military aid to Israel has continued in successive waves, even as the country stands trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice.
The Hamas-led October 7 attack on resulted in more than 1,100 Israeli and other deaths—at least some of which were caused by so-called "friendly fire" and intentional targeting under the Hannibal Directive—with more than 240 people kidnapped.
Although the Costs of War Project report mainly covers U.S. aid to Israel since last October, it also notes that since 1948—the year the modern state of Israel was founded, largely through the ethnic cleansing of Palestine's Arabs—American taxpayers have contributed over a quarter trillion inflation-adjusted dollars to the key Mideast ally.
A second report published Monday by the Costs of War Project found that around 90% of Gaza's population has been forcibly displaced by the Israeli onslaught and 96% of Gazans face "acute levels of food insecurity." The publication cites a letter sent last week by a group of U.S. physicians to President Joe Biden—who has repeatedly declared his "unwavering" support for Israel—stating that "it is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 118,908, an astonishing 5.4% of Gaza's population." That figure includes 62,000 deaths due to starvation.
"In addition to killing people directly through traumatic injuries, wars cause 'indirect deaths' by destroying, damaging, or causing deterioration of economic, social, psychological and health conditions," report author Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins wrote. "These deaths result from diseases and other population-level health effects that stem from war's destruction of public infrastructure and livelihood sources, reduced access to water and sanitation, environmental damage, and other such factors."
The new report comes less than two weeks after Israel secured yet another U.S. armed aid package, this one worth $8.7 billion. Meanwhile, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it faced a nearly $9 billion shortfall for Hurricane Helene relief efforts.
"As a result of rising temperatures, the hydrological cycle has accelerated. It has also become more erratic and unpredictable, and we are facing growing problems of either too much or too little water," the WMO lead said.
The climate crisis is destabilizing the world's water cycle, depriving millions of people of the freshwater resources they need while inundating others with deadly and catastrophic floods.
That's the picture painted by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)'s third-ever State of Global Water Resources report, released on Monday, which found that 2023 was the driest year for the world's rivers in more than three decades.
"Water is the canary in the coalmine of climate change," WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said in a statement. "We receive distress signals in the form of increasingly extreme rainfall, floods, and droughts which wreak a heavy toll on lives, ecosystems, and economies."
A total of 3.6 billion people struggle to access sufficient water for at least one month per year, according to U.N. Water, and this number is projected to swell to over 5 billion by 2050. In 2023, which was also the hottest year on record, river catchment areas around the world were at their driest in 33 years. As in the two years before, more than half of all catchment areas saw abnormal conditions, with most of them seeing below-average water flow.
Especially hard-hit river systems included the Mississippi and Amazon basins, which shrank to record-low water levels, as well as riparian systems in much of Northern, Central, and South America. Argentina's GDP shrank by 3% due to drought, the WMO found. Meanwhile, the report showed how major river systems in Asia—the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Mekong river basins—were drier than usual across almost all of their reach.
Another threat to freshwater access is the melting of glaciers. In 2023, the world's glaciers lost their greatest amount of mass in 50 years at over 600 metric gigatons of water. This ice loss was primarily driven by melting in western North America and Europe's Alps. Switzerland's glaciers shrank by 10% in two years.
"It was either too dry or too wet—and neither is encouraging."
"The worldwide loss of glacier volume, equivalent to 600 gigatons of water according to the latest WMO report, is alarming," said report contributor Robert Reinecke of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. "It is the greatest loss we have witnessed in the past five decades."
Saulo added: "Melting ice and glaciers threaten long-term water security for many millions of people. And yet we are not taking the necessary urgent action."
While 2023 saw drought and ice melt, its high temperatures combined with the shift from La Niña to El Niño halfway through and the positive phase of the Indian Ocean Dipole also fueled extreme precipitation events.
"It was either too dry or too wet—and neither is encouraging," Reinecke said. "We have to expect both extremes more frequently as global temperatures continue to rise."
Africa saw the deadliest flooding, with Storm Daniel causing a dam collapse in Libya that killed more than 11,000 people in September 2023. Also hard hit were the Greater Horn of Africa, Congo, Rwanda, Mozambique, and Malawi.
"As a result of rising temperatures, the hydrological cycle has accelerated," Saulo said. "It has also become more erratic and unpredictable, and we are facing growing problems of either too much or too little water. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture which is conducive to heavy rainfall. More rapid evaporation and drying of soils worsen drought conditions."
To respond to these shifting conditions, WMO urged more monitoring and data sharing and said that the Early Warnings for All initiative must cover water-related hazards.
"Far too little is known about the true state of the world's freshwater resources," Saulo said. "We cannot manage what we do not measure. This report seeks to contribute to improved monitoring, data-sharing, cross-border collaboration, and assessments."
In response to the report, water advocate Mina Guli also called for increased conservation efforts.
"To tackle this crisis, we must invest more resources into protecting and restoring our freshwater ecosystems. Healthy rivers, lakes, and wetlands do so much more than provide water—they are our best defense against the worsening impacts of climate change and play a crucial role in ensuring food and water security while also reversing nature loss," Guli wrote on social media.