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abby martin
UNICEF: Over 5,000 Gaza Children Treated for Malnutrition in May Alone
"Every one of these cases is preventable," said one UNICEF official. "The food, water, and nutrition treatments they desperately need are being blocked from reaching them."
Jun 19, 2025
The United Nations Children's Fund said Thursday that childhood malnutrition in the Gaza Strip is "rising at an alarming rate," with more than 5,000 children under the age of 5 treated for the life-threatening condition in May alone as Israel's U.S.-backed genocidal assault and siege against the Palestinian enclave continued for its 20th month.
UNICEF said that 5,119 children between 6 months and 5 years of age suffering acute malnutrition were admitted for treatment in Gaza last month, nearly 50% more than in April and a 150% increase from February, the month before Israel tightened its already crippling "complete siege" of the coastal strip.
Of the children admitted for treatment in May, 636 were diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition, the most lethal form of the condition.
"In just 150 days, from the start of the year until the end of May, 16,736 children—an average of 112 children a day—have been admitted for treatment for malnutrition in the Gaza Strip," UNICEF regional director for the Middle East and North Africa Edouard Beigbeder said in a statement.
"Every one of these cases is preventable," Beigbeder continued. "The food, water, and nutrition treatments they desperately need are being blocked from reaching them. Man-made decisions that are costing lives. Israel must urgently allow the large-scale delivery of lifesaving aid through all border crossings."
"This is an urgent warning. Concerted action is immediately needed to stop starvation from escalating, malnutrition from rising, disease from spreading, water from running dry, and ultimately, to prevent mounting, wholly preventable child deaths," Beigbeder added. "Humanitarian aid and commercial goods must be allowed to enter, from all available crossings, and be delivered quickly, safely, and with dignity to families in need wherever they are."
Gaza medical officials said late last month that more than 300 Palestinians—including many children and elders—had recently died from malnutrition and lack of medical care due to Israel's siege and bombing.
UNICEF said Thursday that "if the situation does not change immediately... cases of acute malnutrition are likely to continue to rise in coming weeks and could reach the highest level since the beginning of the conflict. This is among a population of children where wasting was non-existent 20 months ago."
The agency continued:
UNICEF has been able to deliver hundreds of pallets of supplies to prevent and treat malnutrition in the last three weeks, but these supplies are wholly inadequate and insufficient compared to the tremendous needs and broader context. The amount of ready-to-use-therapeutic-food (RUTF), a lifesaving essential for children suffering from acute levels of malnutrition, is running critically low.
The conflict has damaged or destroyed essential water, sanitation, and health systems in the Gaza Strip, and has limited the ability to treat severe malnutrition, with just 127 of 236 treatment centers remaining functional, due to displacement orders and incessant bombardments.
In addition to Israel's ethnic cleansing of Gaza—part of Operation Gideon's Chariots, the Israel Defense Forces campaign to conquer and occupy the strip—IDF troops have been committing near-daily massacres of aid-seeking Palestinians.
Over the past 621 days, Israeli forces have killed at least 55,493 Palestinians and wounded more than 129,300 others in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. At least 14,000 people are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble in the obliterated strip. More than 16,000 children have been killed.
Israel's conduct in the war is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including weaponized starvation.
Human rights defenders warned against losing focus on Gaza amid Israel's widened war on Iran and possible U.S. intervention.
"As Israeli leaders decry alleged war crimes about Iran's retaliatory strikes, they are still starving two million people in Gaza," journalist Abby Martin said on social media Thursday. "Every day, they bait the starving masses and kill them en masse. Don't forget about Gaza."
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Israel's Killing of Journalists in Gaza 'Unparalleled,' Says Watchdog
The Committee to Protect Journalists—which recorded 68 media professionals killed since October 7—said it is particularly concerned by Israel's "apparent pattern of targeting journalists and their families."
Dec 22, 2023
Journalists are being slain during Israel's current assault on Gaza at a rate unseen in modern history—with more killed in the last 10 weeks alone than have been killed in any country in any whole year since records began, the Committee to Protect Journalists revealed on Thursday.
CPJ said that at least 68 media professionals—61 Palestinians, four Israelis, and three Lebanese—have been killed since the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel and the Israeli military's retaliatory obliteration of the Gaza Strip.
Of particular concern to CPJ is Israel's "apparent
pattern of targeting journalists and their families."
"In at least one case, a journalist was killed while clearly wearing press insignia in a location where no fighting was taking place," the group said. "In at least two other cases, journalists reported receiving threats from Israeli officials and IDF officers before their family members were killed."
In October, Al Jazeera reporter and Gaza bureau chief Wael Al-Dahdouh found out during a live broadcast that his wife, son, daughter, and grandson had been killed in an Israeli airstrike.
Additionally, CPJ said 15 journalists have been injured—some seriously, like Agence France-Presse photojournalist Christina Assi, whose legs were blown off while she and a group of journalists were covering cross-border clashes between Israel and the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah.
At least 20 media professionals have also been arrested and others have reported being abused by Israeli troops—including one CNN Türk photojournalist who was assaulted during a live broadcast. Three other journalists are missing.
"The concentration of journalists killed in the Israel-Gaza war is unparalleled in CPJ's history and underscores how grave the situation is for press on the ground," CPJ president Jodie Ginsberg said Thursday.
CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program coordinator Sherif Mansour asserted that "with every journalist killed, the war becomes harder to document and to understand."
Some critics say that's the point—and the same reason that Israel denies permission for foreign journalists to report from Gaza.
"They don't want us to see the truth. That's why they're taking out the journalists," U.S. journalist Abby Martin told Middle East Eye earlier this month.
After Israeli forces killed Lebanese Reuters photojournalist Issam Abdallah in an attack that Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International called "apparently deliberate," Ziad Makary, Lebanon's information minister, asserted that "it is in the military strategy of Israel to kill journalists so that they kill the truth."
Previous probes—like the investigation into Israeli troops' 2022 killing of renowned Palestinian American Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh—have confirmed that Israel has deliberately targeted journalists and other civilians in the past.
In May, CPJ published Deadly Pattern, a report that found Israeli troops had killed at least 20 journalists over the past 22 years with utter impunity. While some of the slain journalists have been foreigners—including Italian Associated Press reporter Simone Camilli and British cameraman and filmmaker James Miller—the vast majority of victims have been Palestinian.
Israeli forces have also attacked newsrooms in every major assault on Gaza, including in May 2021 when the 11-story al-Jalaa Tower, which housed offices of Al Jazeera, The Associated Press, and other media outlets, was completely destroyed in an airstrike.
The new CPJ report comes as the death toll from Israel's 77-day war on Gaza topped 20,000, with more than 50,000 other Palestinians maimed or missing. More than 1.9 million of the besieged enclave's 2.3 million people have also been forcibly displaced, with most of their homes damaged or destroyed by Israeli bombardment. Gazans are also facing an imminent risk of famine and contagious disease.
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DC Belmarsh Tribunal Urges Biden to Drop Assange Charges
"How is it acceptable that perpetrators of the illegal invasion of Iraq are the ones who get to decide if the man who exposed their crimes is a journalist?" asked Abby Martin.
Dec 11, 2023
Seeking to pressure the Biden administration into dropping charges against jailed Australian WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, human rights and press freedom defenders gathered in Washington, D.C. over the weekend for the second U.S. session of the Belmarsh Tribunal.
The tribunal—organized by Progressive International in partnership with the Wau Holland Foundation—was held Saturday at the National Press Club, where Assange first premiered "Collateral Murder," a video showing a U.S. Army helicopter crew killing a group of Iraqi civilians and then laughing about it.
"As long as the Espionage Act is deployed to imprison those who expose war crimes, no publisher and no journalist will be safe. It is time to free the truth."
The Belmarsh Tribunal was first convened in London in 2021. The event is inspired by the Russell Tribunal, a 1966 event organized by philosophers Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre to hold the U.S. accountable for its escalating war crimes in Vietnam.
Saturday's gathering was co-hosted by Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and The Intercept D.C. bureau chief Ryan Grim.
"Believe it or not, there are only two persons in the world who have been punished for the war crimes that were revealed by WikiLeaks: Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange," Grim told attendees.
Srećko Horvat, the Croatian author, philosopher, and activist who co-founded the Belmarsh Tribunal,
said that "the pressure is mounting on the Biden administration to free Julian Assange."
"More than one man's life is at stake, but the First Amendment and freedom of the press itself," he added. "As long as the Espionage Act is deployed to imprison those who expose war crimes, no publisher and no journalist will be safe. It is time to free the truth."
Rebecca Vincent, director of campaigns at Reporters Without Borders, warned that "if the U.S. government succeeds to extradite Julian Assange to this country, he will become the first publisher imprisoned under the Espionage Act—but he will not be the last."
According to Progressive International:
U.S. congresspeople from both parties are lobbying U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and President Joe Biden to stop pursuing Assange under the Espionage Act. At the same time, Australian members of Parliament are making a major bipartisan push to demand the U.S. Justice Department end its legal campaign against Australian national Assange.
Assange—who suffers from physical and mental health problems including heart and respiratory issues—published classified materials, many of them provided by Manning, exposing U.S. and allied nations' war crimes, including the Afghan War Diary, the Iraq War Logs, and "Collateral Murder."
Since Assange's apprehension 13 years ago in London, he has been confined for seven years in the Ecuadorean Embassy while he was protected by the administration of former Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, and jailed in the U.K. capital's maximum-security Belmarsh Prison. He's currently being held on remand in the notorious lockup pending extradition to the United States after the U.K. High Court rejected his final appeal earlier this year.
If fully convicted, Assange—who is 52 years old and is married with two children—could be sentenced to up to 175 years behind bars.
"How is it acceptable that perpetrators of the illegal invasion of Iraq are the ones who get to decide if the man who exposed their crimes is a journalist?" asked American journalist Abby Martin during the event.
Pivoting to Israel's current war on Gaza—which many experts and observers around the world are calling a genocide as over 70,000 Palestinians have been killed, maimed, or left missing and 80% of the strip's population has been forcibly displaced—Martin asserted that "the people of Gaza have risked and lost their lives to expose the war crimes of the U.S. and Israel."
"The people of Iraq did not have that chance," she added. "They had WikiLeaks."
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