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cancer
Cancer Is 1 More Weapon In Israel’s War on Gaza
As current cancer patients die slow deaths with no access to the care they need, future patients, who will acquire cancer thanks to Israel’s genocidal mania, will no doubt meet the same fate unless there is significant intervention.
Sep 04, 2025
A week after the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, a large explosion incinerated a parking lot near the busy Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, killing more than 470 people. It was a horrifying, chaotic scene. Burnt clothing was strewn about, scorched vehicles piled atop one another, and charred buildings surrounded the impact zone. Israel claimed the blast was caused by an errant rocket fired by Palestinian extremists, but an investigation by Forensic Architecture later indicated that the missile was most likely launched from Israel, not from inside Gaza.
In those first days of the onslaught, it wasn’t yet clear that wiping out Gaza’s entire healthcare system could conceivably be part of the Israeli plan. After all, it’s well known that purposely bombing or otherwise destroying hospitals violates the Geneva Conventions and is a war crime, so there was still some hope that the explosion at Al-Ahli was accidental. And that, of course, would be the narrative that Israeli authorities would continue to push over the nearly two years of death and misery that followed.
A month into Israel’s Gaza offensive, however, soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would raid the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, dismantling its dialysis center with no explanation as to why such lifesaving medical equipment would be targeted. (Not even Israel was contending that Hamas was having kidney problems.) Then, in December 2023, Al-Awda Hospital, also in northern Gaza, was hit, while at least one doctor was shot by Israeli snipers stationed outside it. As unnerving as such news stories were, the most gruesome footage released at the time came from Al-Nasr children’s hospital, where infants were found dead and decomposing in an empty ICU ward. Evacuation orders had been given and the medical staff had fled, unable to take the babies with them.
For those monitoring such events, a deadly pattern was beginning to emerge, and Israel’s excuses for its malevolent behavior were already losing credibility.
Shortly after Israel issued warnings to evacuate the Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City in mid-January 2024, its troops launched rockets at the building, destroying what remained of its functioning medical equipment. Following that attack, ever more clinics were also targeted by Israeli forces. A Jordan Field Hospital was shelled that January and again this past August. An air strike hit Yafa hospital early in December 2023. The Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis in southern Gaza was also damaged last May and again this August, when the hospital and an ambulance were struck, killing 20, including five journalists.
While human-rights groups like the International Criminal Court, the United Nations, and the Red Cross have condemned Israel for such attacks, its forces have continued to decimate medical facilities and aid sites. At the same time, Israeli authorities claimed that they were only targeting Hamas command centers and weapons storage facilities.
The Death of Gaza’s Only Cancer Center
In early 2024, the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, first hit in October 2023 and shuttered in November of that year, was in the early stages of being demolished by IDF battalions. A video released in February by Middle East Eye showed footage of an elated Israeli soldier sharing a TikTok video of himself driving a bulldozer into that hospital, chuckling as his digger crushed a cinderblock wall. “The hospital accidentally broke,” he said. Evidence of Israel’s crimes was by then accumulating, much of it provided by the IDF itself.
When that Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital opened in 2018, it quickly became Gaza’s leading and most well-equipped cancer treatment facility. As the Covid-19 pandemic reached Gaza in 2020, all oncology operations were transferred to that hospital to free up space at other clinics, making it the only cancer center to serve Gaza’s population of more than 2 million.
“This hospital will help transform the health sector,” Palestinian Health Minister Jawad Awwad said shortly before its opening. “[It] will help people who are going through extreme difficulties.”
If Fallujah teaches us anything, it’s that Israel’s destruction will cause cancer rates to rise significantly, impacting generations to come.
Little did he know that those already facing severe difficulties due to their cancer diagnoses would all too soon face full-blown catastrophe. In March 2025, what remained of the hospital would be razed, erasing all traces of Gaza’s once-promising cancer treatment.
Before October 7, 2023, the most common cancers afflicting Palestinians in Gaza were breast and colon cancer. Survival rates were, however, much lower there than in Israel, thanks to more limited medical resources and restrictions imposed by that country. From 2016 to 2019, while cases in Gaza were on the rise, there was at least hope that the hospital, funded by Turkey, would offer much-needed cancer screenings that had previously been unavailable.
“The repercussions of the current conflict on cancer care in Gaza will likely be felt for years to come,” according to a November 2023 editorial in the medical journal Cureus. “The immediate challenges of drugs, damaged infrastructure, and reduced access to specialized treatment have long-term consequences on the overall health outcomes of current patients.”
In other words, lack of medical care and worse cancer rates will not only continue to disproportionately affect Gazans compared to Israelis, but conditions will undoubtedly deteriorate significantly more. And such predictions don’t even take into account the fact that war itself causes cancer, painting an even bleaker picture of the medical future for Palestinians in Gaza.
The Case of Fallujah
When the Second Battle of Fallujah, part of America’s nightmarish war in Iraq, ended in December 2004, the embattled city was a toxic warzone, contaminated with munitions, depleted uranium (DU), and poisoned dust from collapsed buildings. Not surprisingly, in the years that followed, cancer rates increased almost exponentially there. Initially, doctors began to notice that more cancers were being diagnosed. Scientific research would soon back up their observations, revealing a startling trend.
In the decade after the fighting had mostly ended, leukemia rates among the local population skyrocketed by a dizzying 2,200%. It was the most significant increase ever recorded after a war, exceeding even Hiroshima’s 660% rise over a more extended period of time. One study later tallied a fourfold increase in all cancers and, for childhood cancers, a twelvefold increase.
The most likely source of many of those cancers was the mixture of DU, building materials, and other leftover munitions. Researchers soon observed that residing inside or near contaminated sites in Fallujah was likely the catalyst for the boom in cancer rates.
“Our research in Fallujah indicated that the majority of families returned to their bombarded homes and lived there, or otherwise rebuilt on top of the contaminated rubble of their old homes,” explained Dr. Mozghan Savabieasfahani, an environmental toxicologist who studied the health impacts of war in Fallujah. “When possible, they also used building materials that were salvaged from the bombarded sites. Such common practices will contribute to the public’s continuous exposure to toxic metals years after the bombardment of their area has ended.”
While difficult to quantify, we do have some idea of the amount of munitions and DU that continues to plague that city. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United States fired between 170 and 1,700 tons of tank-busting munitions in Iraq, including Fallujah, which might have amounted to as many as 300,000 rounds of DU. While only mildly radioactive, persistent exposure to depleted uranium has a cumulative effect on the human body. The more you’re exposed, the more the radioactive particles build up in your bones, which, in turn, can cause cancers like leukemia.
With its population of 300,000, Fallujah served as a military testing ground for munitions much like those that Gaza endures today. In the short span of one month, from March 19 to April 18, 2003, more than 29,199 bombs were dropped on Iraq, 19,040 of which were precision-guided, along with another 1,276 cluster bombs. The impacts were grave. More than 60 of Fallujah’s 200 mosques were destroyed, and of the city’s 50,000 buildings, more than 10,000 were imploded and 39,000 damaged. Amid such destruction, there was a whole lot of toxic waste. As a March 2025 report from Brown University’s Costs of War Project noted, “We found that the environmental impact of warfighting and the presence of heavy metals are long-lasting and widespread in both human bodies and soil.”
Exposure to heavy metals is distinctly associated with cancer risk. “Prolonged exposure to specific heavy metals has been correlated with the onset of various cancers, including those affecting the skin, lungs, and kidneys,” a 2023 report in Scientific Studies explains. “The gradual buildup of these metals within the body can lead to persistent toxic effects. Even minimal exposure levels can result in their gradual accumulation in tissues, disrupting normal cellular operations and heightening the likelihood of diseases, particularly cancer.”
And it wasn’t just cancer that afflicted the population that stuck around or returned to Fallujah. Infants began to be born with alarming birth defects. A 2010 study found a significant increase in heart ailments among babies there, with rates 13 times higher and nervous system defects 33 times higher than in European births.
“We have all kinds of defects now, ranging from congenital heart disease to severe physical abnormalities, both in numbers you cannot imagine,” Dr Samira Alani, a pediatric specialist at Fallujah General Hospital, who coauthored the birth-defect study, told Al Jazeera in 2013. “We have so many cases of babies with multiple system defects… Multiple abnormalities in one baby. For example, we just had one baby with central nervous system problems, skeletal defects, and heart abnormalities. This is common in Fallujah today.”
While comprehensive health assessments in Iraq are scant, evidence continues to suggest that high cancer rates persist in places like Fallujah. “Fallujah today, among other bombarded cities in Iraq, reports a high rate of cancers,” researchers from the Costs of War Project study report. “These high rates of cancer and birth defects may be attributed to exposure to the remnants of war, as are manifold other similar spikes in, for example, early onset cancers and respiratory diseases.”
As devastating as the war in Iraq was—and as contaminated as Fallujah remains—it’s nearly impossible to envision what the future holds for those left in Gaza, where the situation is so much worse. If Fallujah teaches us anything, it’s that Israel’s destruction will cause cancer rates to rise significantly, impacting generations to come.
Manufacturing Cancer
The aerial photographs and satellite footage are grisly. Israel’s US-backed military machine has dropped so many bombs that entire neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble. Gaza, by every measure, is a land of immense suffering. As Palestinian children hang on the brink of starvation, it feels strange to discuss the health effects they might face in the decades ahead, should they be fortunate enough to survive.
While data often conceals the truth, in Gaza, numbers reveal a dire reality. As of this year, nearly 70% of all roads had been destroyed, 90% of all homes damaged or completely gone, 85% of farmland affected, and 84% of healthcare facilities obliterated. To date, Israel’s relentless death machine has created at least 50 million tons of rubble, human remains, and hazardous materials—all the noxious ingredients necessary for a future cancer epidemic.
From October 2023 to April 2024, well over 70,000 tons of explosives were dropped on Gaza, which, according to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, was equivalent to two nuclear bombs. While the extent and exact types of weaponry used there are not fully known, the European Parliament has accused Israel of deploying depleted uranium, which, if true, will only add to the future cancer ills of Gazans. Most bombs contain heavy metals like lead, antimony, bismuth, cobalt, and tungsten, which end up polluting the soil and groundwater, while impacting agriculture and access to clean water for years to come.
In due time, Israel will undoubtedly use the cancers it will have created as a means to an end, fully aware that Palestinians there have no way of preparing for the health crises that are coming.
“The toxicological effects of metals and energetic materials on microorganisms, plants, and animals vary widely and can be significantly different depending on whether the exposure is acute (short term) or chronic (long term),” reads a 2021 report commissioned by the Guide to Explosive Ordnance Pollution of the Environment. “In some cases, the toxic effects may not be immediately apparent, but instead may be linked to an increased risk of cancer, or increased risk of mutation during pregnancy, which may not become evident for many years.”
Given such information, we can only begin to predict how toxic the destruction may prove to be. The homes that once stood in the Gaza Strip were mainly made of concrete and steel. Particles of dust released from such crumbled buildings can themselves cause lung, colon, and stomach cancers.
As current cancer patients die slow deaths with no access to the care they need, future patients, who will acquire cancer thanks to Israel’s genocidal mania, will no doubt meet the same fate unless there is significant intervention.
“[A]pproximately 2,700 [Gazans] in advanced stages of the disease await treatment with no hope or treatment options within the Gaza Strip under an ongoing closure of Gaza’s crossings, and the disruption of emergency medical evacuation mechanisms,” states a May 2025 report by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. “[We hold] Israel fully responsible for the deaths of hundreds of cancer patients and for deliberately obliterating any opportunities of treatment for thousands more by destroying their treatment centers and depriving them of travel. Such acts fall under the crime of genocide ongoing in the Gaza Strip.”
Israel’s methodical destruction in Gaza has taken on many forms, from bombing civilian enclaves and hospitals to withholding food, water, and medical care from those most in need. In due time, Israel will undoubtedly use the cancers it will have created as a means to an end, fully aware that Palestinians there have no way of preparing for the health crises that are coming.
Cancer, in short, will be but another weapon added to Israel’s ever-increasing arsenal.
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Former President Biden Has 'Aggressive Form' of Prostate Cancer
Biden, 82, is the oldest person to have held the office of the presidency.
May 18, 2025
Former U.S. President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, according to a Sunday statement from his personal office.
"Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms. On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone," according to a statement sent to CBS News and other outlets. "While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management."
A Gleason score, a grading system for prostate cancer, ranks the seriousness of cancer from six, which is considered "low-grade" cancer, to 10, which is considered "high-grade" cancer.
Biden has kept a relatively low profile since exiting the 2024 presidential race last summer following a disastrous debate performance in June that generated widespread concern about his fitness to serve as the Democratic candidate.
Since then, reports about this decline have continued to surface. On Friday, Axios released audio of Biden's interviews with Special Counsel Robert Hur, who investigated his handling of classified documents from before he took office in 2021. In the audio recordings of the interviews, which took place in October 2023, Biden has a difficult time remembering key dates and details.
Earlier in May, Biden did a television interview during which he refuted the notion that he suffered serious mental decline during his final year in office.
Democrats have continued to deal with the fallout of around Biden's departure from the race and reports regarding his mental acuity, with some fielding tough questions about their awareness of his decline before he decided to drop out.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Biden are the two oldest presidents to ever be sworn in, with Trump besting Biden by a few months when he was sworn in this past January. Biden, who is 82, is the oldest person to have held the office of the presidency.
Elected officials in both parties, including Trump, offered Biden well wishes and messages of support on Sunday.
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Sanders Calls Trump Anti-Science Agenda an 'Attack Against Anyone Who Has Ever Loved Someone With Cancer'
A Senate HELP Committee report found that there has been a $2.7 billion drop in National Institutes of Health research funding commitments in the first three months of 2025 compared to last year.
May 13, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump is conducting an "unprecedented and illegal" broadside against science and scientists that will have devastating consequences for regular Americans, according to a report released Tuesday by Sen. Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont.
The report, which casts Trump's actions as a "war on science" that will lead to "preventable suffering" and "needless loss of life," was compiled by the minority staff with the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, where Sanders is the ranking member.
To compile the report, staff interviewed federal health workers, analyzed National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant funding data, reviewed self-reported data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and more.
The report concludes that Trump's moves against science will yield fewer breakthroughs for combating diseases, a less robust public health response to future infectious disease threats, and even less trust in public institutions.
In a statement on Tuesday, Sanders said that "Trump's war on science is an attack against anyone who has ever loved someone with cancer."
All told, according to the report, as of April 2025 the Trump administration has terminated at least $13.5 billion in health funding and has dismissed thousands of employees who support America's scientific infrastructure.
In what the report calls the "clearest sign" of the administration's effort to defund science, it states that NIH committed $2.7 billion less to research in the first three months of 2025 compared to the same time period last year, representing an effective 35% cut.
When the researchers behind the report conducted an analysis of National Cancer Institute grants, they found there has been a 31% decline in cancer research grant funding in the first three months of 2025, compared to the first three months of 2024.
The report also relays accounts from federal workers who highlight the Trump administration's efforts to impose control over "scientific speech."
For example, one HHS official said: "We get requests from the media to provide scientific expertise. Normally, [political appointees] would never get involved in this type of non-high-profile stuff but now they have to approve every single media request."
Also, "researchers across the federal science agencies report that certain scientific topics now trigger heightened scrutiny or political review before publication, presentation, or grant consideration," according to the report. The researchers also state that over 100 scientific meetings have been delayed or canceled.
The report also focuses on the impact of firings at HHS. The report states that at least 10,000 workers at HHS agencies have been terminated, on top of some 10,000 who have left voluntarily of been forced out by the Trump administration, citing public reports. This tally aligns with a tracker of federal personnel cuts maintained by The New York Times.
According to the report, federal employees believe that the loss of "public capacity" could mean more power for the private sector. One HHS official quoted in the report anonymously said: "I chose to go into federal service because I care about people. I want to be able to answer to the taxpayer, not the shareholder."
Speaking of overall cuts to HHS, "the agency in charge of the health and well-being of all Americans including tens of millions of seniors, children, and working families may be cut down to... less than one-sixth the size of UnitedHealth Group," according to the report.
The report states that these firings have lead to "chaos" across HHS, and that disruptions have been particularly acute at NIH.
"Initially, we had whole labs full of people that were fired. Complete chaos. Nobody had any idea if their tests were being run," said an anonymously quoted staffer at the NIH Clinical Center—the country's biggest hospital devoted solely to clinical research.
"Trump's war on science is not making America healthy again," Sanders said. "It is making Americans and people throughout the world sicker."
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