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For Immediate Release
November, 15 2023, 12:35pm EDT
Contact:
Phone: 202-225-3965
Members of Congress Call on Biden Administration to Establish a Ceasefire, Protect Children in the Gaza Strip
Today, Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14), Mark Pocan (WI-2), and Betty McCollum (MN-4) led Members of Congress in sending a letter to President Biden, asking him to support a bilateral ceasefire in Gaza, in order to protect the one million children living there. The full letter is available here.
The letter reads in part, “We write to you to express deep concern about the intensifying war in Gaza, particularly grave violations against children, and our fear that without an immediate cessation of hostilities and the establishment of a robust bilateral ceasefire, this war will lead to a further loss of civilian life and risk dragging the United States into dangerous and unwise conflict with armed groups across the Middle East. Further, we write urging clarity on your strategic objectives for achieving de-escalation and stability in the region.”
More than 4,500 children have been killed in the Gaza Strip and another 7,695 children have sustained injuries. Additionally, at least 1,750 children have been reported missing and are presumed to be dead or trapped under rubble. Several schools in Gaza have been bombed as part of Israeli air strikes and more than half of hospitals in the Gaza Strip have completely shut down.
The letter is co-signed by Representatives Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, James McGovern, Mary Gay Scanlon, Raúl Grijalva, Pramila Jayapal, Joaquin Castro, Delia Ramirez, Henry Johnson, Greg Casar, Jesús “Chuy” Garcia, Bonnie Watson Coleman, Nydia Velázquez, Ayanna Pressley, Jonathan Jackson, Barbara Lee, André Carson, Jamaal Bowman, Summer Lee, Veronica Escobar, and Ilhan Omar.
The letter is endorsed by MoveOn, Amnesty International, Demand Progress, Center for International Policy, Center for Jewish Nonviolence, Churches for Middle East Peace, CIVIC, Common Defense, Friends Committee for National Legislation (FCNL), MADRE, Oxfam America, Win Without War, POMED, Working Families Party, Action Corps, Adalah Justice Project, American Friends Service Committee, Americans Justice In Palestine, Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), Democracy for Arab World Now, IfNotNow, Institute for Policy Studies New Internationalism Project, Jewish Voice for Peace Action, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, Migrant Roots Media, National Iranian American Council Action, Pax Christi Metro DC-Baltimore, Pax Christi USA, Peace Action, Peace Action Montgomery, The Duty Legacy, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Women for Weapons Trade Transparency and the Yemeni Alliance Committee. Quotes from those organizations follow.
“It’s welcome news that Representatives Ocasio-Cortez, Pocan, and McCollum, along with dozens of their House colleagues, are urging the Biden Administration to establish an immediate bilateral ceasefire in Israel-Palestine and asking for greater humanitarian access in all parts of Gaza,” said Hassan El-Tayyab, legislative director for Middle East policy at FCNL. “It’s critical that others follow their lead and call for a ceasefire to de-escalate this explosion of violence that has already led to the deaths of at least 11,000 civilians, including nearly 5,000 children. Every major humanitarian organization working in Gaza is pleading with the international community to reach an immediate ceasefire and open up aid access so they can continue their vital work in the Gaza Strip. It’s critical that Congress and the Administration listen before more innocent lives are lost.”
“The scale of humanitarian need in Gaza is huge – and growing exponentially by the day. Yet, right now, aid is all but impossible to deliver as bombs continue to fall. 2.2 million people are living under siege, denied safe shelter, food, water and other essentials - all while the fuel needed to deliver aid has run out,” said Scott Paul, Associate Director of Peace & Security at Oxfam America. “Israel is entitled to protect its people, but it must do so while complying with international humanitarian law. Civilians in Israel and Gaza have been paying the price for political failure and must be protected. To save lives now and in the future, we need an urgent ceasefire, an end to the siege, safe humanitarian access, and the return of all hostages.”
“This joint effort led by Representatives Ocasio-Cortez, McCollum, and Pocan urging President Biden to establish a robust bilateral ceasefire comes at a critical moment. More and more Palestinian civilians are losing their lives each day amid Israeli military operations and the unfolding of an unprecedented, man-made humanitarian catastrophe in the occupied Gaza Strip,” said Elizabeth Rghebi, Advocacy Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International USA. “An immediate ceasefire by all parties to the conflict is the only way to prevent further loss of life, to deliver humanitarian aid to those in desperate need, and to provide an opportunity to secure the safe release of hostages.”
“We welcome this joint effort led by Representatives Ocasio-Cortez, McCollum, and Pocan calling for an urgent ceasefire to prevent further civilian deaths and deliver life-saving humanitarian aid,” said Annie Shiel, US Advocacy Director at Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC). “Amid continued bombardment and ground fighting, civilians have virtually run out of options to seek safe refuge. The situation for civilians in Gaza — and especially children — is catastrophic. A ceasefire is needed immediately.”
“Over the last five weeks, Israeli airstrikes and siege have killed at least 4,609 Palestinian children, including three premature babies in Al-Shifa Hospital who had to be taken from incubators due to lack of electricity,” said Beth Miller, Political Director at Jewish Voice for Peace Action. “More children are still trapped under the rubble of buildings destroyed in Israeli bombings. No child should ever have to face the overwhelming scale and horror of the violence that Palestinian children in Gaza are experiencing. Representatives Ocasio-Cortez, McCollum, and Pocan, are pushing forward a critical demand for Palestinian children's life to be valued and protected, and for the Biden administration to finally put an end to this nightmare by calling for a ceasefire now."”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an American politician serving as the U.S. Representative for New York's 14th congressional district.
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'Free Palestine!': 200 Stanford Grads Walk Out on Google CEO's Keynote Speech
"Today, we denied the speech of a genocidal company’s CEO," said Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine. "We walked towards our People’s Commencement. We started imagining a better future for our education."
Jun 15, 2026
Around 200 graduating students at Stanford University in California walked out of Sunday's commencement speech by Google CEO Sundar Pichai to protest his company's complicity in Israel's genocidal war on Gaza and the Trump administration's deadly anti-immigrant crackdown.
With graduating students across the country booing commencement speakers who mention artificial intelligence, Pichai was careful to avoid discussing the historically disruptive—and potentially apocalyptic—technology during his speech, even joking about the difficulty of doing so given his job and the fact that his name can't be spelled without the "ai" at the end. It was an apparently wise decision, especially given a recent interview in which he opined that humans aren't "evolved" enough to fully understand the profound technology shift AI is driving.
However, protesting students were already walking out and chanting, "Free, Free Palestine!" by the time Pichai started speaking. Students waved Palestinian flags and blew whistles as they marched out of the venue.
BREAKING: Stanford University graduates staged a walkout during Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s keynote address at commencement Sunday.
The walkout was organized by Students for Justice in Palestine and No Tech for Apartheid as a protest against Google’s contracts with the IDF, Dept.… pic.twitter.com/j2SI2dtwLC
— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) June 14, 2026
Protesting students condemned Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion cloud-computing and AI contract signed in 2021 between the Israeli government and Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. The deal prohibits Google or Amazon from refusing service to the Israeli government, military, or intelligence agencies.
The Project Nimbus contract sparked the #NoTechForApartheid campaign, in which disaffected tech workers and dozens of advocacy groups rose up against Big Tech’s complicity in Israeli human rights crimes in Palestine and Google's violation of its own AI principles.
"Shout out to all the graduates who walked out today. To all the graduates who chose conscience rather than comfort, we thank you," Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)—which organized the protest with No Tech for Apartheid—said in an Instagram post.
"Today, Sundar Pichai was met with the sight of hundreds of students who showed they could not be allured anymore with the talk of a dollar or rapidly expanding AI," SJP continued. "We know about the crimes of Google in collaborating with Israel, [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement], and companies like Palantir."
"Today, we denied the speech of a genocidal company’s CEO," the group added. "We walked towards our People’s Commencement. We started imagining a better future for our education."
Sunday's walkout followed similar demonstrations at Stanford's previous three commencements over the university's crackdown on pro-Palestine protests as Israeli forces killed and wounded hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened around 2 million Gazans, with full US government support.
Earlier this year, a judge declared a mistrial in a case involving five current and former Stanford students who in 2024 occupied the university president's office to protest the Gaza genocide and demanded the school divest from companies supporting Israel's military.
Sunday's protesters also decried Google's contracts with ICE and other Department of Homeland Security agencies.
For the second year in a row, Stanford grads held a "People's Commencement." This year's featured Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University Palestine defender imprisoned for more than 100 days last year by the Trump administration's ICE.
"What good is education if it teaches us how to succeed and not how to care?" Khalil said during his speech. "What good is knowledge if we lack the courage to act from it?"
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'A Global Crisis': Report Reveals Over 40% Rise in Violent Attacks on Education
The coalition leader behind the report called the figures "a warning that the global norms that once protected children are collapsing," and "the world is drifting toward a place where even the youngest are no longer off‑limits.”
Jun 15, 2026
From the Gaza Strip to Ukraine and beyond, violent attacks on students, teachers, and schools have surged in recent years, according to a report released Monday by an international coalition.
The report, titled "Education Under Attack 2026," documents at least 8,566 attacks on education and cases of military forces using educational facilities from the beginning of 2024 to the end of last year, a more than 40% increase from the previous two-year period.
"We believe the true increase is far higher," noted Felicity Pearce, lead researcher for the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA) report, in a statement. "Escalating conflict, shrinking humanitarian access, and widespread information blackouts mean many attacks are never reported."
The 2024-25 attacks harmed at least 10,600 students, educators, and other personnel across 83 countries, including 55 that are not in active conflict. GCPEA found the highest incidence in Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Haiti, Palestine, and Ukraine, while Cameroon, Myanmar, Nigeria, and Yemen had the greatest numbers of people harmed or killed.
"Cameroon continued to face overlapping security crises, which continued to heavily affect civilians in 2024-2025, marked by persistent violence in the Far North region and protracted armed conflict in the Northwest and Southwest regions," the report explains. GCPEA recorded at least 67 attacks on schools, 85 attacks on students and staff, and 11 reports of military use of educational facilities.
It's now been a decade since the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia signed peace accords, but GCPEA still identified at least 160 reports of attacks on educational facilities, 129 reports of attacks on students and personnel, and 107 reports of military use of schools.
In the DRC, as "armed conflict intensified" between the Rwandan Defense Force-backed March 23 Movement and the Congolese national armed forces—supported by Burundi's military and allied militias—there were at least 350 attacks on schools, 15 attacks on students and staff, and 313 cases of military use of facilities.
"Conflict in Ethiopia continued to impact access to education for millions of children," the publication states. GCPEA tracked around 100 attacks on schools and seven on students and personnel—though acknowledged monitoring and reporting challenges—as well as approximately 1,200 schools used for military purposes, a sharp increase from the previous period.
"As armed gangs in Haiti merged and gained control over more of the country, escalating violence included attacks on schools, school students, and staff, as well as the military use of schools, and disrupted education for over 1.2 million children," according to the report. Specifically, there were at least 339 attacks on schools, 55 attacks on students and staff, and 27 reports of military use of facilities.
In Myanmar, "as internal conflict intensified between the military junta that seized power in February 2021 and armed resistance groups," GCPEA tracked 212 attacks on schools, 18 attacks on students and personnel, and 84 military occupations.
As armed conflict between the Nigerian government and non-state armed groups continued during the reporting period, attacks on schools dropped slightly, to nine, while attacks on students and staff were consistent, at 14—but at least 90 people were killed or injured, and over 700 were abducted. There were at least five incidents of the military using schools.
"Israel continued to commit genocidal violence against the Palestinian population in Gaza," the report says, and there were increased attacks on schools, students, and teachers in both the coastal strip—where most educational buildings have been "severely damaged"—and the occupied West Bank. Across Palestine, GCPEA identified at least 620 attacks on schools, 2,400 attacks on students and staff, and 10 cases of the military use of educational facilities.
As Ukrainian forces continued to fight Russian invaders, GCPEA tracked more than 900 attacks on schools and at least one case of military use of a school. The report also points out that "1,611 schools had been damaged or destroyed since the start of the full-scale invasion, including at least 339 that had been completely destroyed," forcing 741,000 children to study in a hybrid format, and another 443,000 to learn entirely online.
In Yemen, "a fragile truce largely held through 2024 and 2025," but the continued battle among the internationally recognized government, Houthi forces, and regional actors meant there were still at least 16 attacks on schools, 62 attacks on students and staff, and 63 cases of military use of facilities.
Lisa Chung Bender, director of the GCPEA, told The Guardian that the report's findings "are a warning that the global norms that once protected children are collapsing."
"A warning that the world is drifting toward a place where even the youngest are no longer off‑limits," she said. "And a warning that if we do not hold the line now, we may never get it back."
The report urges support for the Safe Schools Declaration, and features recommendations for governments and civil society.
Its release follows the latest publication from the Explosive Weapons Monitor, which was released last week and documents at least 22,616 civilian fatalities from explosive weapons across 65 countries and territories last year. The monitor found 1,416 attacks on education in 2025, a 64% increase from 2024, and also highlighted Myanmar, Palestine, and Ukraine.
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Letting Big Tech Off the Hook, UK Kids' Social Media Ban Called 'Right Diagnosis' But 'Wrong Prescription'
"Banning under-16s risks treating children as the problem rather than addressing the companies and systems that create the risks in the first place."
Jun 15, 2026
It's not yet clear whether Australia's ban on social media for children under age 16 has had a positive impact on kids' mental health and safety, but British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Monday that the country's law is being used as a model for the United Kingdom's own blanket ban—leading critics, including the parent of a child who died by suicide after viewing harmful content on social media, to question whether Starmer was simply opting for a "politically expedient" solution to the harms of online platforms.
Banning young teenagers and children from using social media, said advocacy groups, does nothing to ensure powerful tech companies will make their products safer by design for all users.
Starmer announced the ban online in a video in which he highlighted his support for the policy "as a parent as much as a prime minister," and noted that in public comments, "thousands of parents" said their children "are addicted to social media."
We are banning social media access for under 16s.
These days kids must find their feet in a world where technology intrudes into every area of their life.
I just can’t let that go on anymore. So we’re giving children their childhoods back. pic.twitter.com/jn7iQrcwk8
— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) June 15, 2026
"It can leave them trapped in a cycle of endless scrolling that displaces play, sleep, and time with the family," said the prime minister, who leads the Labour Party and is facing threats to his leadership following the party's major losses in May's elections. "It can harm their mental health, and frankly, parents need our support on this. That is why today the government has decided to ban social media access for children under 16."
Starmer said new age-related regulations for social media platforms including TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat, as well as gaming and livestreaming platforms, will be introduced by the end of this year, with the new laws going into effect in early 2027. The government also said it was examining restrictions for users under 18, such as "overnight curfews" and mandated blocking of "infinite scrolling."
More details about the ban are expected to be released next month.
But Kerry Moscoguiri, chief executive of Amnesty International UK, said that removing children from platforms that broadcast harmful content is "a case of the right diagnosis but the wrong prescription."
“The UK government is right to recognize that many children face serious harms online," said Moscoguiri. "Too many social media companies have built products and business models that prioritize keeping children engaged for longer, often at the expense of their well-being, privacy, and rights."
“But the problem is not that children exist on social media; it’s that social media companies have built platforms that are unsafe by design," she added. "Banning under-16s risks treating children as the problem rather than addressing the companies and systems that create the risks in the first place."
The ban comes after mounting reports of Big Tech companies' efforts to keep all users, including young people, on their platforms for as long as possible using algorithms and "infinite scrolling." Numerous cases have linked children's suicides to their exposure to thousands of posts regarding self-harm and suicidal ideation, as well as to cyberbullying through social media. And reporting by Reuters last year revealed that Meta's artificial intelligence chatbots were permitted by the company to have sexually provocative conversations with minors.
Advocacy groups like Amnesty have called for restrictions on social media platforms' most addictive and manipulative features, such as infinite scrolling, autoplay, and hyper-personalized recommendations.
Moscoguiri warned that bans like the one imposed by Australia last year will force children "to surrender their privacy in order to participate in modern digital life." In Australia, companies are required to perform age verification by collecting data from bank accounts or scanning users' photo IDs.
Instead of a blanket ban, she said, "we need strong regulation that tackles surveillance-based business models, protects children’s data, and puts safety ahead of profit.”
“The responsibility for children’s safety should rest first and foremost with the companies that build and profit from these platforms," said Moscoguiri. "Government action should focus on ending invasive profiling of children, [and] tackling addictive and manipulative design features."
As children's safety groups in the UK were expecting Starmer's announcement in recent days, Ian Russell, chair of the Molly Rose Foundation and the father of a 14-year-old girl who died by suicide in 2017 after viewing content related to self-harm and suicide on social media, told the BBC that he was, "quite frankly, dismayed" that a blanket ban was likely coming to the UK.
"Keir Starmer promised to tighten up the online safety world by regulating better," said Russell, who has called for social media giants like Meta to remove and regulate content that's harmful to young users' mental health. "If he's playing politics, what he's doing is gambling with young people's lives, and I find that deplorable."
https://t.co/oqDAdFFI8p
Very strong words ahead of expected social media ban from @mollyroseorg -
Ian Russell tells us govt is rushing in a blanket ban, rather than more sophisticated controls, under political pressure, in a 'deplorable way' pic.twitter.com/AMxcleLixU
— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) June 13, 2026
In Australia, which last year became the first country to impose a nationwide blanket ban on kids under 16 using social media, the law has had unclear benefits, with many young teens still managing to use the platforms—where Big Tech has not been forced to place controls that would make it safer for young users to be there.
Carole Cadwalladr, an investigative journalist, said that imposing a ban that includes age verification, as Australia's does, "looks like rushed populist techsolutionism that will hand more power to the platforms."
"This is going to hand even more surveillance powers to the very companies that already know way too much about us. Do you want [X executive chair] Elon [Musk] to have a copy of your biometrics? Do you want [Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg] to scan your face? That’s what we will all be doing," Cadwalladr added. "This isn’t reining in Silicon Valley power. It’s gifting them even more power. Of course, parents want these companies safe and regulated but that’s a job for government, not the end user."
Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, acknowledged that he has advocated for a ban on social media for children under 16 and called it "the right step to protect young people"—but said the UK government must impose restrictions on social media giants themselves, not just their most vulnerable users.
"Bans only treat the symptom, not the problem," said Khan. "Social media companies need to reimagine their platforms so they can offer a safe and healthy environment for all users, where restricting access wouldn’t be necessary."
"There’s nothing inevitable about algorithms which feed us a diet of dangerous content," he added. "Londoners deserve platforms which prioritize people, not just profit."
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