October, 12 2023, 10:24am EDT

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Tim Shenk,Press Officer,Direct: 212-763-5764,E-mail:,tim.shenk@newyork.msf.org
Indiscriminate violence and the collective punishment of Gaza must cease
GAZA, BARCELONA, BRUSSELS, PARIS
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is horrified by the brutal mass killing of civilians perpetrated by Hamas, and by the massive attacks on Gaza, Palestine, now being pursued by Israel. MSF calls for an immediate cessation to the indiscriminate bloodshed, and the establishment of safe spaces and safe passage for people to reach them as a matter of urgency. People must be afforded safe access to essential supplies like food and water and health facilities. Essential humanitarian supplies like medicine, medical equipment, food, fuel, and water must also be allowed to enter the Gazan enclave. To facilitate this, Rafah border crossing with Egypt must be opened and bombings on the crossing point must cease.
Some 2.2 million people are currently trapped in the Gaza strip, where indiscriminate bombing has turned a chronic humanitarian crisis into a catastrophe. More than 300 MSF staff are in Gaza, some of whom have lost homes or family members; it has been near-impossible for them to move.
“The fighter jets are demolishing entire streets block by block,” says Matthias Kennes, MSF Head of Mission in Gaza. “There is no place to hide, no time to rest. Some places are being bombed on consecutive nights.”
“We know what it was like in 2014 and in 2021, thousands died. Each time, our medical colleagues go to work, not knowing if they will see their homes or their families again,” continues Kennes. “But they say this is different. This time, after five days, there have already been 1,200 deaths. What can people do? Where are they supposed to go?”
Millions of men, women and children are facing a collective punishment in the form of total siege, indiscriminate bombing, and the pending threat of a ground battle. Safe spaces must be established, humanitarian supplies must be allowed into Gaza. The wounded and sick must receive medical care. Medical facilities and personnel must be protected and respected; hospitals and ambulances are not targets.
The siege imposed by the Israeli government, including the withholding of food, water, fuel, and electricity is unconscionable. Following 16 years of military blockade of the Gaza strip, the medical facilities within are already weakened. This siege leaves no respite for patients caught up in the fighting, nor for medical staff. It represents an intentional block on life-saving items; the entry of these supplies and key medical staff must be facilitated urgently.
“In Ministry of Health hospitals, medical staff report that they are running out of anaesthetics and painkillers,” says Darwin Diaz, MSF Medical Coordinator in Gaza. “On the MSF side, we moved medical supplies from our two-month emergency reserves to Al-Awda hospital and now we have used three weeks’ worth of stock in three days.”
MSF staff, including medical personnel, have been extremely restricted in their movements since Saturday. They are unable to obtain safe passage to support Palestinian medical colleagues working day and night to treat the injured. People playing no role in the hostilities do not have a safe haven to go to. Our teams are witnessing a level of destruction that may already exceed previous escalations. Two of the hospitals MSF supports, Al-Awda and the Indonesian Hospital, have both sustained damage in airstrikes, while our own clinic sustained some damage in an explosion on Monday.
Today MSF is running a standalone clinic, and supporting Al-Awda hospital, Nasser hospital, and the Indonesian hospital in Gaza. MSF reopened an operational theatre in Al-Shifa on 10 October to receive burn and trauma patients. We have also donated medical supplies to Al-Shifa hospital and will continue providing support to hospitals. Our teams in Jenin, Hebron and Nablus are actively assessing the medical needs in the West Bank, as violence there is escalating. At least 27 Palestinians have been killed in settler attacks and clashes with the Israeli military.
Civilians, civilian infrastructure and healthcare facilities must be protected at all times. MSF calls on the Government of Israel to cease its campaign of collective punishment against the entirety of Gaza. Israel and Palestinian authorities and factions must establish safe spaces. The entry of humanitarian assistance, food, water, fuel, medicine, and medical equipment to the Gaza Strip must be facilitated urgently. The failure to do so will cost more lives.
Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) is an international medical humanitarian organization created by doctors and journalists in France in 1971. MSF's work is based on the humanitarian principles of medical ethics and impartiality. The organization is committed to bringing quality medical care to people caught in crisis regardless of race, religion, or political affiliation. MSF operates independently of any political, military, or religious agendas.
LATEST NEWS
Amazon Won't Display Tariff Costs After Trump Whines to Bezos
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said all companies should be "displaying how much tariffs contribute to the total price of products."
Apr 29, 2025
Amazon said Tuesday that it would not display tariff costs next to products on its website after U.S. President Donald Trump called the e-commerce giant's billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, to complain about the reported plan.
Citing an unnamed person familiar with Amazon's supposed plan, Punchbowl Newsreported that "the shopping site will display how much of an item's cost is derived from tariffs—right next to the product's total listed price."
Many Amazon products come from China. While U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed Sunday that "there is a path" to a tariff deal with the Chinese government, Trump has recently caused global economic alarm by hitting the country with a 145% tax and imposing a 10% minimum for other nations.
According toCNN, which spoke with two senior White House officials on Tuesday, Trump's call to Bezos "came shortly after one of the senior officials phoned the president to inform him of the story" from Punchbowl.
"Of course he was pissed," one officials said of Trump. "Why should a multibillion-dollar company pass off costs to consumers?"
Asked about how the call with Bezos went, Trump told reporters: "Great. Jeff Bezos was very nice. He was terrific. He solved the problem very quickly, and he did the right thing, and he's a good guy."
Earlier Tuesday, during a briefing, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called Amazon's reported plan "a hostile and political act," and said that "this is another reason why Americans should buy American."
Leavitt also asked why Amazon didn't have such displays during the Biden administration and held up a printed version of a 2021 Reutersreport about the company's "compliance with the Chinese government edict" to stop allowing customer ratings and reviews in China, allegedly prompted by negative feedback left on a collection President Xi Jinping's speeches and writings.
Asked whether Bezos is "still a Trump supporter," Leavitt said that she "will not speak to" the president's relationship with him.
As CNBCdetailed Tuesday:
Less than two hours after the press briefing, an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC that the company was only ever considering listing tariff charges on some products for Amazon Haul, its budget-focused shopping section.
"The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store has considered listing import charges on certain products," the spokesperson said. "This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon properties."
But in a follow-up statement an hour after that one, the spokesperson clarified that the plan to show tariff surcharges was "never approved" and is "not going to happen."
In response to Bloomberg also reporting on Amazon's claim that tariff displays were never under consideration for the company's main site, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick wrote on social media Tuesday, "Good move."
Before Amazon publicly killed any plans for showing consumers the costs from Trump's import taxes, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the chamber's floor Tuesday that companies should be "displaying how much tariffs contribute to the total price of products."
"I urge more companies, particularly national retailers that compete with Amazon, to adopt this practice. If Amazon has the courage to display why prices are going up because of tariffs, so should all of our other national retailers who compete with them. And I am calling on them to do it now," he said.
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) on Tuesday framed the whole incident as an example of how "Trump has created a government by and for the billionaires," declaring: "If anyone ever doubted that Trump, and Musk, and Bezos, and the billionaires are all [on] one team, just look at what happened at Amazon today. Bezos immediately caved and walked back a plan to tell Americans how much Trump's tariffs are costing them."
Casar also claimed Bezos wants "big tax cuts and sweatheart deals," and pointed to Amazon's Prime Video paying $40 million to license a documentary about the life of First Lady Melania Trump. In addition to the film agreement, Bezos has come under fire for Amazon's $1 million donation to the president's inauguration fund.
As the owner of
The Washington Post, Bezos—the world's second-richest person, after Trump adviser Elon Musk—also faced intense criticism for blocking the newspaper's planned endorsement of the president's 2024 Democratic challenger, Kamala Harris, and demanding its opinion page advocate for "personal liberties and free markets."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Medicare for All, Says Sanders, Would Show American People 'Government Is Listening to Them'
"The goal of the current administration and their billionaire buddies is to pile on endless cuts," said one nurse and union leader. "Even on our hardest days, we won't stop fighting for Medicare for All."
Apr 29, 2025
On Tuesday, Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Democratic Reps. Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Debbie Dingell of Michigan reintroduced the Medicare for All Act, re-upping the legislative quest to enact a single-payer healthcare system even as the bill faces little chance of advancing in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives or Senate.
Hundreds of nurses, healthcare providers, and workers from across the country joined the lawmakers for a press conference focused on the bill's reintroduction in front of the Capitol on Tuesday.
"We have the radical idea of putting healthcare dollars into healthcare, not into profiteering or bureaucracy," said Sanders during the press conference. "A simple healthcare system, which is what we are talking about, substantially reduces administrative costs, but it would also make life a lot easier, not just for patients, but for nurses" and other healthcare providers, he continued.
"So let us stand together," Sanders told the crowd. "Let us do what the American people want and let us transform this country. And when we pass Medicare for All, it's not only about improving healthcare for all our people—it's doing something else. It's telling the American people that, finally, the American government is listening to them."
Under Medicare for All, the government would pay for all healthcare services, including dental, vision, prescription drugs, and other care.
"It is a travesty when 85 million people are uninsured or underinsured and millions more are drowning in medical debt in the richest nation on Earth," said Jayapal in a statement on Tuesday.
In 2020, a study in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet found that a single-payer program like Medicare for All would save Americans more than $450 billion and would likely prevent 68,000 deaths every year. That same year, the Congressional Budget Office found that a single-payer system that resembles Medicare for All would yield some $650 billion in savings in 2030.
Members of National Nurses United (NNU), the nation's largest union of registered nurses, were also at the press conference on Tuesday.
In a statement, the group highlighted that the bill comes at a critical time, given GOP-led threats to programs like Medicaid.
"The goal of the current administration and their billionaire buddies is to pile on endless cuts and attacks so that we become too demoralized and overwhelmed to move forward," said Bonnie Castillo, registered nurse and executive director of NNU. "Even on our hardest days, we won't stop fighting for Medicare for All."
Per Sanders' office, the legislation has 104 co-sponsors in the House and 16 in the Senate, which is an increase from the previous Congress.
A poll from Gallup released in 2023 found that 7 in 10 Democrats support a government-run healthcare system. The poll also found that across the political spectrum, 57% of respondents believe the government should ensure all people have healthcare coverage.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Advocates Warn GOP Just Unveiled 'Most Dangerous Higher Ed Bill in US History'
"This is the boldest attempt we've seen in recent history to segregate higher education along racial and class lines," said the Debt Collective.
Apr 29, 2025
At a markup session held by a U.S. House committee on the Republican Party's recently unveiled higher education reform bill Tuesday, one Democratic lawmaker had a succinct description for the legislation.
"This bill is a dream-killer," said Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.) of the so-called Student Success and Taxpayer Savings Plan, which was introduced by Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) as part of an effort to find $330 billion in education programs to offset President Donald Trump's tax plan.
Tasked with helping to make $4.5 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans possible, Walberg on Monday proposed changes to the Pell Grant program, which has provided financial aid to more than 80 million low-income students since it began in 1972. The bill would allocate more funding to the program but would also reduce the number of students who are eligible for the grants, changing the definition of a "full-time" student to one enrolled in at least 30 semester hours each academic year—up from 12 hours. Students would be cut off from the financial assistance entirely if they are enrolled less than six hours per semester.
David Baime, senior vice president for government relations for the American Association of Community Colleges, suggested the legislation doesn't account for the realities faced by many students who benefit from Pell Grants.
"These students are almost always working a substantial number of hours each week and often have family responsibilities. Pell Grants help them meet the cost of tuition and required fees," Baime toldInside Higher Ed. "We commend the committee for identifying substantial additional resources to help finance Pell, but it should not come at the cost of undermining the ability of low-income working students to enroll at a community college."
The draft bill would also end subsidized loans, which don't accrue interest when a student is still in college and gives borrowers a six-month grace period after graduation, starting in July 2026. More than 30 million borrowers currently have subsidized loans.
The proposal would also reduce the number of student loan repayment options from those offered by the Biden administration to just two, with borrowers given the option for a fixed monthly amount paid over a certain period of time or an income-based plan.
At the markup session on Tuesday, Bonamici pointed to her own experience of paying for college and law school "through a combination of grants and loans and work study and food stamps," and noted that her Republican colleagues on the committee also "graduated from college."
"And more than half of them have gone on to earn advanced degrees," said the congresswoman. "And yet those same individuals who benefited so much from accessing higher education are supporting a bill that will prevent others from doing so."
“In a time when higher ed is being attacked, this bill is another assault,” @RepBonamici calls out committee leaders for wanting to gut financial aid.
“With this bill, they will be taking that opportunity [of higher ed] away from others. This bill is a dream killer.” pic.twitter.com/UjTYvnOEKv
— Student Borrower Protection Center (@theSBPC) April 29, 2025
Democrats on the committee also spoke out against provisions that would cap loans a student can take out for graduate programs at $100,000; the Grad PLUS program has allowed students to borrow up to the cost of attendance.
The Parent PLUS program, which has been found to provide crucial help to Black families accessing higher education, would also be restricted.
"Black students, brown students, first-generation college students, first-generation Americans, will not have access to college," said Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.).
“We cannot take away access to loans, and not replace it with anything else, not make the system better. We know the outcome here—Black, brown, and poor students will not figure it out. Instead, only elite students from the 1% will continue to access education.”@RepSummerLee🙇 pic.twitter.com/oGbRH154Ed
— Student Borrower Protection Center (@theSBPC) April 29, 2025
As the Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) warned last week, eliminating the Grad PLUS program without also lowering the cost of graduate programs would "subject millions of future borrowers to an unregulated and predatory private student loan market, while doing little to reduce overall student debt and the need to borrow."
Aissa Canchola Bañez, policy director for SBPC, told The Hill that the draft bill is "an attack on students and working families with student loan debt."
"We've seen an array of really problematic proposals that are on the table for congressional Republicans," Canchola Bañez said. "Many of these would cause massive spikes for families with monthly student loan payments."
With the proposal, which Republicans hope to pass through reconciliation with a simple majority, the party would be "restructuring higher education for the worse," said the Debt Collective.
"It's the most dangerous higher ed bill in U.S. history," said the student loan borrowers union. "It strips the Department of Education of virtually every authority to cancel student debt. Eliminates every repayment program. Abolishes subsidized loans."
"This is the boldest attempt we've seen in recent history to segregate higher education along racial and class lines," the group added. "We have to push back."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular