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hunger
UN Expert: Send Navies to Break Israeli Blockade, End Genocide in Gaza
"History will not forget," said UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese.
Aug 14, 2025
The United Nations human rights expert assigned to the Palestinian territories illegally occupied by Israel is calling on countries around the world to send military forces to end the genocidal Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip.
Since March 2024, "I've warned the UN I serve at great personal cost: the destruction of Gaza's health system is clear proof of genocidal intent," Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese said on social media Wednesday. "I'm in disbelief at its paralysis. States must break the blockade, send NAVIES with aid, and stop the genocide. History will not forget."
Albanese also shared her new joint statement with Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng, special rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. They said that "in addition to bearing witness to an ongoing genocide we are also bearing witness to a 'medicide,' a sinister component of the intentional creation of conditions calculated to destroy Palestinians in Gaza which constitutes an act of genocide."
"Deliberate attacks on health and care workers, and health facilities, which are gross violations of international humanitarian law, must stop now," the pair continued. "There is a moral imperative for the international community to end the carnage and allow the people of Gaza to live on their land without fear of attack, killing, and starvation, and free from permanent occupation and apartheid."
Their comments came as a growing number of governments are recognizing the state of Palestine or threatening to do so. In a Wednesday interview with The Guardian, Albanese stressed that the renewed push for Palestinian statehood should not "distract the attention from where it should be: the genocide."
"Ending the question of Palestine in line with international law is possible and necessary: End the genocide today, end the permanent occupation this year, and end apartheid," she said. "This is what's going to guarantee freedom and equal rights for everyone, regardless of the way they want to live—in two states or one state, they will have to decide."
As Common Dreams reported earlier Thursday, Israel's finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, claimed that the Israeli and U.S. governments have approved an expansion of settlements in the West Bank, which he said "finally buries the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognize and no one to recognize."
Meanwhile, in Gaza, the 22-month Israeli assault has left the coastal enclave in ruins and killed at least 61,776 Palestinians and wounded 154,906 others—though experts warn the real figures are likely far higher. Those who have survived so far are struggling to access essentials, including food, largely due to Israeli restrictions on humanitarian aid and killings of aid-seekers.
On Thursday, over 100 groups—including ActionAid, American Friends Service Committee, Médecins Sans Frontières, Oxfam, and Save the Children—released a letter stressing that since Israel imposed registration rules in early March, most nongovernmental organizations "have been unable to deliver a single truck of lifesaving supplies."
"This obstruction has left millions of dollars' worth of food, medicine, water, and shelter items stranded in warehouses across Jordan and Egypt, while Palestinians are being starved," the letter notes. As of Thursday, the Gaza Health Ministry put the hunger-related death toll at 239, including 106 children.
Both the registration process and the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation "aim to block impartial aid, exclude Palestinian actors, and replace trusted humanitarian organizations with mechanisms that serve political and military objectives," the letter argues, noting that Israel is moving to "escalate its military offensive and deepen its occupation in Gaza, making clear these measures are part of a broader strategy to entrench control and erase Palestinian presence."
The coalition called on all governments to "press Israel to end the weaponization of aid," insist that NGOS not be "forced to share sensitive personal information," and "demand the immediate and unconditional opening of all land crossings and conditions for the delivery of lifesaving humanitarian aid."
During an emergency United Nations Security Council meeting on Sunday, Riyad Mansour, the state of Palestine's permanent observer to the UN, formally requested "an immediate international protection force to save the Palestinian people from certain death."
In response, Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the US-based advocacy group DAWN, said in a Tuesday statement, "Now that Palestine has formally requested protection forces, the UN General Assembly should move urgently to mandate such a force under a Uniting for Peace resolution."
"Israel has made clear for the past two years that no amount of pleading, pressure, or negotiation will end its atrocities and deliberate starvation in Gaza; only international peacekeeping forces can achieve that," she added.
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Head of Largest US Teachers Union Warns Trump Budget Law Will Worsen Child Hunger Crisis
"These are not abstract numbers," wrote National Education Association president Becky Pringle. "These are real children who show up to school eager to learn but are instead distracted by hunger."
Aug 13, 2025
The leader of the largest teachers union in the United States is sounding the alarm over the impact that President Donald Trump's newly enacted budget law will have on young students, specifically warning that massive cuts to federal nutrition assistance will intensify the nation's child hunger crisis.
Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association (NEA)—which represents millions of educators across the U.S.—wrote for Time magazine earlier this week that "as families across America prepare for the new school year, millions of children face the threat of returning to classrooms without access to school meals" under the budget measure that Trump signed into law last month after it cleared the Republican-controlled Congress.
Estimates indicate that more than 18 million children nationwide could lose access to free school meals due to the law's unprecedented cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid, which are used to determine eligibility for free meals in most U.S. states.
The Trump-GOP budget law imposes more strict work-reporting requirements on SNAP recipients and expands the mandates to adults between the ages of 55 and 64 and parents with children aged 14 and older. The Congressional Budget Office said earlier this week that the more aggressive work requirements would kick millions of adults off SNAP over the next decade—with cascading effects for children and other family members who rely on the program.
"Educators see this pain every day, and that's why they go above and beyond—buying classroom snacks with their own money—to support their students."
Pringle wrote in her Time op-ed that "our children can't learn if they are hungry," adding that as a middle school science teacher she has seen first-hand "the pain that hunger creates."
"Educators see this pain every day, and that's why they go above and beyond—buying classroom snacks with their own money—to support their students," she wrote.
The NEA president warned that cuts from the Trump-GOP law "will hit hardest in places where families are already struggling the most, especially in rural and Southern states where school nutrition programs are a lifeline to many."
"In Texas, 3.4 million kids, nearly two-thirds of students, are eligible for free and reduced lunch," Pringle wrote. "In Mississippi, 439,000 kids, 99.7% of the student population, were eligible for free and reduced-cost lunch during the 2022-23 school year."
"These are not abstract numbers," she added. "These are real children who show up to school eager to learn but are instead distracted by hunger and uncertainty about when they will eat again. America's kids deserve better.
Pringle's op-ed came as school leaders, advocates, and lawmakers across the country braced for the impacts of Trump's budget law.
"We're going to see cuts to programs such as SNAP and Medicaid, resulting in domino effects for the children we serve," Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) said during a recent gathering of lawmakers and experts. "For many of our communities, these policies mean life or death."
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The Price of Survival in Gaza
We have endured more suffering and psychological pain than mountains could bear.
Aug 08, 2025
Since this war began, I am living a life like Robinson Crusoe's. He faced an existential ordeal on his island, but fought brilliantly for his survival: Here in the ruins of Gaza, I face the same ordeal, and fight with all my might to survive. I may envy Crusoe for the abundance of food he had on his island, but I would not dream of taking his place there, because he certainly would not accept coming to the hell of Gaza.
All types of fuel have been unavailable for almost half a year. I have had no choice in these months other than feeding our house furniture to the fire in order to feed our children. Yet I did not succeed in filling their stomachs or quelling their hunger, because in our house we have lots of mouths and few mouthfuls. Despite all of that I did not give up, but insisted on wrestling with the hunger monster: I planted my nail in his neck, and harnessed all the power I had to budge him away from my children.
I threw almost every flammable thing I had into the mouth of the fire. I burned our bed, sofas, chairs, tables, frames of the doors, and also burned some of our clothes and curtains. What pained me the most was carrying my books to the altar. I burned all the books of my home library: hundreds of valuable books on history, anthropology, philosophy, geography, religion, literature, and memoirs were incinerated.
I felt heavy sadness and bitter nostalgia as I tore each page from each book and gave them to the cooking fire. I had special memories with each one. Sometimes I cried when it came to tearing books stamped with dedications by fellow writers. My tears fell like showers of rain as I tore up books dedicated to me by my closest friend, the apostolic poet Saleem Al-Nafar.
Our horizons have become dark and melancholy, the smell of death has become the air we breathe, and blood has become the dew of our mornings.
Food is rare and more expensive each day. Thus I have wandered for many days and hours to find the black market's vendors, until I become dizzy and fall down in exhaustion from this waste of calories. Finally I get back to our house with a few handfuls of grain, or at best a kilogram of wheat flour. We eat one humble meal per day. My wife and I compete in depriving ourselves of the most food. What we save from our sole meal we give to our children as a second meal, which is often dinner.
When I cook for my family, I don't cook familiar dishes, but invent new ones by mixing anything with anything else, because we have so few ingredients. Our food lacks many nutrients, whether vitamins, minerals, or fats, and perhaps the most deficient thing is protein. My knowledge of wild herbs led me to the purslane plant. Although it was rare this year, I searched for it patiently, and fed it to my children. I believe it replenished their bodies with some minerals and vitamins.
The shelves of Gaza's pharmacies are almost empty: There are no more food supplements such as an iron-rich syrup to treat our children's malnutrition, nor any milk formula to feed our newborn daughter, nor any medications. We cook with an iron skillet because it imparts some iron into the food. If your anemic child gets sick, you will be the real patient, because you will visit lots of pharmacies and come away with empty hands.
We are getting terribly thin. I have stopped sitting on hard surfaces, because my pelvic bones rub against them. I get depressed when I look at my children during their sleeping, because their legs and arms are becoming increasingly skinny. Our clothes are loose on our shrunken bodies. My trousers have started falling down off my body, so I tie them to my waist with a rope.
There is another enemy stalking our family: the vile mosquitoes that creep in through our house windows, which were shattered by bombing. Since my children have severe anemia, it hurts me to see a mosquito bite one of them. So I spend two-thirds of each night making patrols around them. I chase their buzzing enemies, and as I kill a mosquito and see blood spurting out of it, I pray that the source of this blood is not my children's arteries.
Getting water these days is like giving birth from the flank. It is more scarce or wholly unavailable each day, far from our home, and heavy to carry. I walk long distances to get it. It does not quench your thirst, nor is it suitable for household use. It is polluted and salty because it comes only from ancient wells: it clearly damages our teeth, and over time may be harming our kidneys. The scarcity of water is accompanied by a scarcity of hygiene materials, so we can bathe only rarely; therefore, my children's hair is not clean, and a painful rash never clears from their skin.
The fire over which I cook harms my body a lot. It fills my lungs with thick black smoke, paints me with soot, turns my eyes bleary red, and causes me a lot of burns: Just breaking the wood of our belongings cuts my hands. Tears often accompany my sitting by these fires, sometimes due to the smoke and heat, and other times because of pain and sorrow.
It is not just our bodies that have withered and wearied, but also our souls. We have endured more suffering and psychological pain than mountains could bear. Atrocities we experience drive us to the brink of madness. We encounter fear, anxiety, depression, nightmares, and hopelessness. Our horizons have become dark and melancholy, the smell of death has become the air we breathe, and blood has become the dew of our mornings. We have reached a stage where we envy the dead for their death, and wish we could lie beside them in their graves.
We have survived until now by a miracle: perhaps it is our resilience, but I cannot guarantee it to last forever. So we crave salvation as we hunger for our only meager meal every 24 hours. We hope for a salvation like that of Claude Lévi-Strauss, who was fortunate enough to escape the jaws of Nazis and Vichy France. We need the luck of Strauss.
You can read more about Muhammad, his family, and his experiences over the past five years at jackdempseywriter.wordpress.com and on around 60 podcast programs on Palestinian subjects at the YouTube channel 37Dionysos.
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