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starvation
Why the World Must Not Look Away From Gaza
The Israeli prime minister has made it explicitly clear that he has no intention of following any peace road map, planning instead for the permanent incremental takeover of Gaza.
Jun 12, 2026
Gaza requires urgent international attention.
What is happening in the besieged and devastated strip at the moment by far exceeds an unfolding humanitarian disaster; it is a calculated geopolitical reshaping. Israel is actively executing a plan to permanently occupy the vast majority of Gaza, with consequences that require little elaboration considering what we already know about the ongoing genocide.
Currently, much of the international debate centers on a single official: Bulgarian diplomat Nickolay Mladenov. The former United Nations special coordinator has been designated by the United States as the executive director of the Trump administration’s newly established ‘Board of Peace’—an international council founded to oversee the implementation of Washington's 20-point Gaza road map.
The issue, however, is much bigger than a single Washington-backed bureaucrat. A growing number of Palestinians and political analysts accuse Mladenov of manufacturing the very conditions that continue to obstruct progress on the agreement’s transition to its second phase.
With nearly the entire population of Gaza living in sub-standard tents and surviving on the meager rations permitted through Israeli checkpoints, it is the highest form of immorality to demand political concessions in exchange for basic sustenance.
Under the framework, the official transition to this second phase—which President Donald Trump and the Board of Peace declared to have begun in January 2026—demands sweeping, one-sided Palestinian concessions, most notably the total disarmament of armed factions.
This demand is a recipe for the failure of the entire project, especially given that Israel has completely failed to implement the most basic requirements of the agreement's first phase. It has refused to halt its routine military incursions, has failed to withdraw its forces to the originally mandated "Yellow Line" demarcation, and continues to deny entry permits to the technocratic committee slated to assume civil governance of the Strip.
Mladenov's insistence on Palestinian disarmament before the agreement can advance—without a single guarantee of Israeli compliance—conveniently flips the narrative. It cynically reframes systematic starvation and the blockade of medical and construction supplies as a Palestinian failure to honor commitments.
In reality, Mladenov holds no real cards; he is merely a cog in a larger machinery controlled by Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister has made it explicitly clear that he has no intention of following any peace road map, planning instead for the permanent incremental takeover of Gaza.
Speaking at a conference in an occupied West Bank settlement on May 28, Netanyahu explained his strategy with total clarity, abandoning all diplomatic doublespeak: "We are currently squeezing Hamas; we now control 60% of the territory of the strip—you know this. We were at 50, we moved to 60. My directive is to move to..." he said, pausing as an audience member shouted "100!"
Netanyahu smiled and responded: "Let's go step by step. First of all, 70. Let's start with that. We're pressing them from all sides, we'll deal with the remnants."
This is the actual blueprint of the Israeli government, declared openly to domestic audiences. The admission was so brazen that even US Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed frustration at Netanyahu's candor. Testifying before Congress on June 2, Rubio remarked, “We have a plan—it doesn’t call for that,” referring to further Israeli territorial expansion.
Yet, Rubio quickly reverted to Washington's standard line: “And at the end of the day, we understand that what we want, and I think what the Israelis would ultimately want, is a Gaza that is governed by a non-Hamas entity.”
While the immediate priority for Palestinians is not governance but lifesaving food, clean water, medicine, and basic survival, Netanyahu and Rubio view the entire crisis through a political lens. The US-Israeli plan is predicated on achieving, through diplomatic strangulation and engineered famine, what they failed to fully achieve through military might.
A rare, decisive answer came from United Nations spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric, who summed up the UN position plainly: “One hundred percent of Gaza should be for the Palestinian people." The problem, however, is that the UN’s rhetoric is backed by no real enforcement mechanisms.
The international community has walked directly into a trap, outsourcing the future of the Gaza Strip to the Trump administration and its Board of Peace. Even the designated technocratic committee has been rendered entirely irrelevant, excluded from a decision-making process left solely to diplomats beholden to the White House.
The situation on the ground remains catastrophic. Since the fragile, heavily compromised ceasefire took effect on October 10, regular Israeli violations and airstrikes have killed nearly 1,000 Palestinians and wounded thousands more—the vast majority women and children. When added to the horrific toll of the initial two years of war, the official number of Palestinians killed has surpassed 73,000, with over 173,000 injured.
Furthermore, credible epidemiological studies and medical journals have concluded that the true death toll is vastly higher.
With nearly the entire population of Gaza living in sub-standard tents and surviving on the meager rations permitted through Israeli checkpoints, it is the highest form of immorality to demand political concessions in exchange for basic sustenance.
Netanyahu's "step-by-step" annexation does not hinge on what Palestinian factions decide to do; his expansionist timeline is shaped independently of Palestinian compliance.
Arab, Muslim, and allied nations must fundamentally shift their diplomatic strategy. They must firmly insist on completely delinking humanitarian aid from the future governance or demilitarization of the Gaza Strip.
Starvation cannot be tolerated as political leverage for war criminals. Netanyahu is emboldened by a history of international impunity, speaking openly of expanding his military footprint regardless of the consequences of such action.
The international community must remind Israel’s government that the survival of millions of Palestinians cannot be held hostage to the political ambitions of an extremist coalition.
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Trump’s Cuba Strategy Is Economic Genocide
In an interview, scholar Danny Shaw discusses President Donald Trump’s policy of strangling Cuba and offers an anatomy of the impact of the economic embargo on its people after having witnessed firsthand the existing conditions on the island.
Jun 10, 2026
Cuba has been under a US trade embargo since the Eisenhower administration, although it was President John F. Kennedy who implemented a comprehensive embargo on all trade with Cuba. And while every subsequent administration has tried since to cause pain and suffering to the Cuban people for its support of a revolutionary government, it is the Trump administration that has made the collapse of the communist regime on the island a top priority by expanding sanctions against the island, blocking fuel deliveries, and threatening Cuba with military action.
Cuba is indeed on the brink and unlikely to survive since the inhumane and criminal actions of the second Trump administration have plunged the island into a deep humanitarian crisis.
In the interview that follows, Danny Shaw discusses President Donald Trump’s policy of strangling Cuba and offers an anatomy of the impact of the economic embargo on its people after having witnessed firsthand the existing conditions on the island. Danny Shaw is a scholar of Latin American and Caribbean studies and a longtime supporter of the Cuban revolution. He recently traveled across Cuba, where he documented for The Grayzone the harrowing conditions following the Trump administration's imposition of an energy blockade.
C. J. Polychroniou: US President Donald Trump has revived the Monroe Doctrine with a series of forceful actions in the Western Hemisphere, such as the attack on Venezuela, which resulted in the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and conducting military strikes against fishing boats in the Caribbean. It may not be totally clear what’s driving the Trump administration’s gunboat diplomacy, but Cuba, which has endured perhaps the longest economic embargo in modern history, is next on the wannabe dictator’s hit list.
Danny, can you talk about the policy methods the second Trump administration has used in order to further isolate Cuba and, in the process, strangle its economy and its people?
Danny Shaw: On January 29, the Trump administration—the true spokesman of the billionaire class with global reach, as we’ve seen from Caracas to Tehran—took actions to completely shut down the Cuban economy. Threatening any country that sold oil to Cuba or continued to trade with them tightened the screws on an already long-existing, illegal, unilateral Economic War. Washington and their right-wing minions across the hemisphere also went after Cuban medical missions from Honduras to Jamaica, which brought much-needed foreign reserves for Cuba and most importantly afforded medical attention throughout the Americas and the world to marginalized populations. Ecuador and Costa Rica kicked out the Cuban embassies. The Trump administration has made it clear to the world: Any attempt to support the Cuban government will be severely criminalized. Concretely, this means Cuba is more isolated and desperate than it has ever been.
The US method of stoking “hunger” and “desperation” has completely crushed this fascinating, historical experiment in resistance and a people’s government.
We must see Trump’s energy blockade in the context of an economic blockade which has left Cuba on life support since 1991, the year the Soviet Union and the Socialist Block countries fell. Overnight, these measures cut Cubans’ average caloric intake in half. Periodically, under both Democratic and Republican presidencies, the US government has taken a scalpel to the Cuban economy. With a Gazaesque strategy of surgical precision, the State Department has cut off remittances, wiped out tourism, and penalized any foreign company that did business with Cuba. January 29 was yet another inflection point of what has truthfully been an ongoing “special period” and is now proving to be a death sentence for many Cuban families. Now the FBI and Homeland Security are going after those of us who have brought humanitarian aid to Cuba.
Every word I share, including my quotation of hungry and dispirited Cubans, has to be seen within the context of a 67-year-old war on a country that has sought to be sovereign from empire. As an ethnographer, an international affairs analyst for Cuban and Venezuelan television since 2014, and someone building fluency in Cuban Spanish for over three decades, I have had a lot of intimate contact with Cubans, their opinions, and their struggles. We have to go back to the original State Department memorandum as laid out by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Lester Mallory on April 6, 1960:
..it follows that every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. If such a policy is adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”
I quoted the ruling class’s thinking at length because that is precisely what has been happening in Cuba now since at least 1991. The US method of stoking “hunger” and “desperation” has completely crushed this fascinating, historical experiment in resistance and a people’s government. What I witnessed in Cuba in February, March, and April of this year was apocalyptic.
C. J. Polychroniou: The Trump administration forced a leadership change in Venezuela, but it is debatable whether there has also been a regime change. However, the plan for Cuba seems to be regime change even though its government is not doing anything to threaten the United States. Why is Trump after regime change in Cuba and to what end? Whose interests is he really serving?
Danny Shaw: Trump is the ultimate distraction. Like all billionaire bubble boys, there are no consequences for his lies, threats, and general clownishness. But behind the bombastic, arrogant billionaire are the true global power brokers, a small group of 2,800 billionaires who seek to preside over humanity’s destiny. They use Trump as their spokesman to carry out a fascist global agenda that was thought to be impossible prior to 2016 when he first came into power.
The War on Cuba and all states who represent any type of resistance—China, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Palestine, Russia etc.—is designed to convince us again and again of “the end of history.” The idea that cowing to the billionaires and soon-to-be trillionaires is inevitable.
The corporate media has long presented “Cuba” as a “failed socialist state.” This serves the empire’s ideological interests. They can showcase this “miserable island,” stripped of all contexts, and show this horrible place on CNN and Fox hemorrhaging their own people. Millions of Cubans are dying and migrating. Even before this crisis, the most extreme ever, the Cuban population shrank by 1.4 million between 2020 and 2024. The capitalist media can then propagandistically contrast this reality with a mirage of extreme abundance and excess that they parade in front of our faces through their ideological apparatuses. Think social media, Hollywood, the mainstream media etc.
We are all focused on US drones, bombs, and boots on the ground, but the invasion has already arrived.
The other interest the US has in Cuba is of course economic. The Cuban state has been the ultimate arbiter of questions of foreign trade and investment and an obstacle to unfettered penetration by private capital. Trump, his business partners, and cronies will cash in on land grabs, mineral deals, and the buying of shorefront hotels. Cuba has long had a big tourist economy that they can cash in on.
So these are some of their motivations. But I think your question is an interesting one that I have sat with for decades.
Truthfully, the Empire would only have to blow and the Cuban government would fall. In terms of being able to provide for and defend the Cuban people, the Cuban government fell long ago, arguably in 1991.
Private property is now ascendant in Cuba and has been arguably since 1991. Whatever leadership that is there now, though they put out daily patriotic statements, is not the leadership of Fidel, Che, and Camilo that we in the Western left came to love and defend since 1959. What I have seen over the past 31 years was a people left to fend for themselves. The ethos and general mindset in Cuba is not “Patria o Muerte” and “Venceremos,” (“Homeland or Death” and “We Shall Overcome”), the historic slogans of the Revolution; it is the “Law of the Jungle” and “Every Man For Himself.”
While leftist tourists maintain a glorified, outdated image of this museum of socialism, another mentality already reigns over Cuba, especially among the two generations born into the special period. For example, in the province of Sancti Spiritus I stayed with a family that was relatively stable. The father was a retired track coach and the mother a retired physical therapist. The son plays professional basketball in Brazil and, at 6 feet 9 inches, is one of the tallest Cubans in the country. They have given a plate of food to two elderly neighbors, Sonia and Francisco, for years now. They can no longer afford to do so as they can barely feed themselves and their immediate family. Sonia and Francisco are now hungry and malnourished. They will soon die, two more anonymous victims of this macabre US foreign policy. But who will record their deaths? Who will know their names? The local officials will just record that they died of old age.
And this happens everyday now in Cuba. Generalized hunger has become mass malnutrition, and everyday that passes there is more death. Many Cubans say there is already starvation in the most historically neglected areas like Guantanamo and Las Tunas.
So I think being able to point a finger and enact laws in Florida about "commemorating the victims of communism” serves the billionaires' interests. This begins to explain why they have sadistically sought to cause so much suffering in Cuba.
C. J. Polychroniou: As you already pointed out, you were recently in Cuba and traveled throughout the island. Describe the actual conditions that you encountered.
Danny Shaw: Let me take you deeper into the class contradictions that have long been surfacing in Cuba.
One of the first things a visitor to Cuba will notice is that as the people are dehydrated and starved, the private sector is growing. It is important to clarify that Marco Rubio, Trump, and the architects of the intensification of the economic war on Cuba are at the same time bolstering the private sector. So the owners of private businesses, the MIPYMES, are allowed to import gas, generators, food, etc. It is the Cuban masses that are completely cut off, as an emerging business sector continues to consolidate its economic power on the island functioning as Miami and Washington’s beachheads. But to access these private shops one has to have dollars, or big stacks of Cuban pesos. The 99% of Cubans have neither. The private MYPIMES also have more quality food, but they are private peninsulas of privilege, or Little Miamis, that very few Cubans can afford.
Four days after the guerrillas took power in Havana on January 1 1959, Fidel Castro asked a crowd of tens of thousands in Camaguey, “How can we call this our homeland, if the homeland gives us nothing?” Today, the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of that generation of Cubans circulate this heroic speech that grew out of their anti-imperialist and anti-dictatorship struggle and ask, “Why are we being shut out of our own country?”
Collectively, right now, Cuban children have less access to toys and food than what I have seen across Haiti since I first went there in 1998. Some of my friends in Cuba have asked me if there is any way for them to escape to Haiti. Haitian medical students I knew in Santiago and other Haitians were forced to flee Cuba and return to their besieged homeland because of how bad Cuba is. When Haiti is a reference for relative abundance, that is the ultimate indicator of how blockaded and dire Cuba is.
My responsibility is not to parrot Cuban government speeches and positions as the left does here in the West, but to give a voice to a population captured in a looming Economic Genocide, trapped between two bureaucracies,
Agricultural products cannot get from the countryside into the city. Every day there is more hunger, malnutrition, and encroaching starvation. The Cuban people say they have no voice. The most vulnerable, the elderly, children and prisoners, are already dying. There is a stark sense of generalized hopelessness. There are no functioning means of transportation. Yet as one waits for buses that never arrive, imported cars from Miami speed down the highways. The people say those are rich Cubans or government officials. The people do not trust their government and see them as a central ingredient in the genocidal campaign they are facing.
Let’s break down the math of starvation, CJ. Because we are all focused on US drones, bombs, and boots on the ground, but the invasion has already arrived. What will play out in the upcoming days and months is the consolidation of the umpteenth US intervention in the affairs of the people of the Caribbean, South America, and the world. And it will continue to exterminate a lot of lives. When Cubans say that today Cuba is the equivalent of Gaza without bombs, they are not exaggerating.
A liter of gasoline in Cuba costs more than 6,000 pesos ($10 US dollars), meaning a gallon of gas costs $40. The average Cubans’ salary or pension is 2,400 pesos ($4 dollars) monthly. A bottle of Turkish sunflower oil to cook costs 1,500 ($2.50), a pound of rice costs 350 ($0.60), and the electricity bill, regardless of whether there is any, is 400-500 pesos (less than $1 per month), meaning that alone consumes a Cuban’s money for the month.
In Cuba, no matter how much money you have in the bank, you can only take out $2 or $3 dollars. That is why you see long lines across Cuba of retirees and heads of family waiting all day in front of banks, trying to get their money out. Cuba is a country of lines, long lines.
Infant mortality rates have increased by 148% in Cuba. Center for Economic and Policy Research’s director of international policy Alexander Main: explains: “The Trump policy of 'maximum pressure' on Cuba has killed a lot of babies… it’s highly likely that more babies are dying now, and at an even higher rate than last year as a result of the current US fuel blockade targeting Cuba.”
Many families have to get up in the middle of the night because that is the only time they have access to a few hours of electricity. Measures of insomnia, depression, and all mental health indicators are skyrocketing. US terrorism comes in many different forms.
By the time we publish, the hyperinflation and devaluation of the Cuban peso will be even more extreme. Everyday, the peso is worth a fraction less than the dollar, damaging Cubans’ earning power even more. What Cubans have whispered to me since 1995 is that if they film their reality or try to speak out against the economic disparities, the authorities will arrest them immediately.
What if you have children? How do you feed them? Cuban families are weary of having children because they cannot feed them. The War on Cuba is a Demographic War, a War of Depopulation. From the perspective of capital, Cuba’s population is excessive and expendable, especially old people who are generally more loyal to the revolution because they can remember what it once was prior to 1991. Similar to Palestine and Haiti, masses of people can be displaced and exterminated. Why would capital care? And why would a Western public care, if they have never heard one positive word about these “sh^thole countries,” to quote the ever-eloquent Trump again.
Religion, alcohol and drug addiction all find a foothold among a population who cannot see beyond this bleak material reality. All of the ingredients for an Economic Genocide are in place. Cubans I met and hung out with in Las Tunas, Holguin, or Granma were not worried about imperialist drones or bombs. They said the bombs of thirst and hunger have long been their number one enemy. Colonial death comes in many different forms.
C. J. Polychroniou: Cuban government officials have said that the country will fight to death in the event of a US invasion. But is it realistic to expect a starving nation fight back in the event of a full-scale invasion of the island by the world’s most powerful and advanced military?
Danny Shaw: Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodriguez, himself explained: “It seems that the US government has chosen a dangerous path, a path that could lead to unimaginable consequences, to humanitarian catastrophe, to a genocide.” He then says what every leader has to say but it is tough to take seriously: "Cuba will exercise its right for its legitimate defense to the very last consequences with massive, mass support of the people." These militant government statements are out of touch with mass sentiment.
Observing our movement of activists, Marxists, the left, or whatever we call ourselves, we pretend like it is 1959 or 1989 and Fidel and well-trained, honest revolutionaries are still at the helm of the state. If we cannot honestly reflect on this question of leadership, the Cuban state and the masses, aren’t we complicit in the ongoing strangling and starvation of today’s mambisado (the masses who fought for Cuba’s independence against Spain)? Do we judge a revolution by the objective and subjective conditions the people confront, or by the latest interview or speech of Diaz-Canel? Have any of these activists who defend Cuba ever gotten outside of the Hotel Nacional and outside of the government-guided tours? If we mischaracterize the objective and subjective conditions in Cuba, aren't we complicit in our own way in the war on Cuba, which Cubans say comes from both an internal and external blockade?
Capitalism is the accumulation of misery in one pole, and luxury in the other.
To think Cuba can resist in any way is ridiculous. How can a half-starved, unarmed people resist the largest military with the largest budget, $1.5 trillion, in the history of the world? Cubans overwhelmingly told me they are so sick of “resolving," “surviving," and “resisting." Besides some elderly veterans of the heroic war of liberation in Angola and that generation of fighters, I met almost no Cubans with any enthusiasm for the idea of fighting back against the United States. There’s a complete state of demoralization across Cuba. Hyperbolic leftist comparisons to “People’s War” in Vietnam under the direction of Ho Chi Minh and General Nygun Vo Giap are goofy and dishonest. Cubans see their government and police as complicit in everything that is happening. Why would they die for a process they long stopped believing in? The Western “left movement” is clueless about the objective and subjective conditions in Cuba because we uncritically take our cues from the Cuban government. The private sector could not be ascendant in Cuba if there was not collusion with high-level officials. The Cuban masses perceive that government officials are saying one thing publicly but behind the scenes are looking out for themselves. And if you listen to the statements on CNN by this generation of Castros, that is exactly what they say. They praise capitalism and position themselves to adapt to the inevitable reconquering of the island.
Cuban officialdom and their leftist counterparts have engaged in what we can call “high politics.” Spanish researcher of communes in Venezuela, Cira Pascual Marquina, explains that we often base our conclusion on “institutional declarations, negotiations, geopolitical responses—while overlooking the dense fabric of everyday political practice that sustains the process.” Look at the Venezuela General Vladimir Padrino and all of his rhetoric before January 3 about a “people's war” in Venezuela that would resist any efforts by the Trump administration. What resistance has there been in Venezuela? Today, six months after the US
occupation of Venezuela, Padrino is an agricultural minister.
All of these triumphant-sounding speeches mask the reality of the Cuban masses, and arguably do more damage than good. As a supporter of the Cuban Revolution, I waited years if not decades to say some of these things publicly. Because again, I am with David, not Goliath. But scholars and supporters of Cuba need to be vocal about the whole truth. My responsibility is not to parrot Cuban government speeches and positions as the left does here in the West, but to give a voice to a population captured in a looming Economic Genocide, trapped between two bureaucracies. Here is an essay by a Cuban student in Ireland which brilliantly captures how the Cuban people feel they are stuck between two competing rhetorics, which both ignore their interests.
C. J. Polychroniou: US imperialism never went away but has gone totally berserk under the second Trump administration. Can the beast be reformed?
Danny Shaw: In Cuba, the closest place to get Cuban food is Miami.
It’s surreal. After navigating dehydration and hunger across Cuba for one month, I returned, like other activists and friends of Cuba, to be detained and interrogated by the FBI in Miami. When I was released, after my third detention and interrogation in less than two years, I walked through an airport full of every last type of food and consumer good. Capitalism is the accumulation of misery in one pole, and luxury in the other. The Donroe Doctrine means US imperialism cuts off any attempt by China, Russia, Iran, etc., at building multipolarity in the hemisphere and recolonizes any bad example or “maroon state" that has escaped their hegemony. There is no reforming US imperialism. Only the unity of oppressed peoples as expressed through multipolar projects like the BRICS+ nations could ever defeat empire. That is the only hope right now for defeating this beast which will continue to starve, bomb, and genocide resistant populations until a knife is plunged into its neck.
Like the War on Haiti, first through the use of paramilitary gangs beginning in 2018, and now through Erik Prince and his private security companies to displace the once resistant population of Port-au-Prince and Latibonit (another department or province of Haiti), this constitutes the latest and most intense chapter of war on the Cuban people. Cubans are dying in silence as US government officials talk about bringing “freedom” to Cuba and Cuban government officials give speeches about Cuba’s “historic resistance.” What I have lived and witnessed in Cuba since 1995 constitutes an ongoing Economic Genocide against a defenseless, muzzled population.
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Trump Now 'Boasting of a War Crime' as Cuba Suffers Under Oil Blockade
"Cuba isn’t failing, it’s being suffocated," said one anti-war group.
Feb 17, 2026
US President Donald Trump's latest comments on his government's blockade on Cuba Monday evening amounted to "boasting of a war crime," one journalist said after the president told the press that the Caribbean island is a "failed nation" weeks after Trump himself cut off Cuba's main source of energy and threatened countries with tariffs if they provided the government with oil.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump listed some of the impacts of the blockade the White House imposed after invading Venezuela last month and pushing for control of its oil supply.
"They don't even have jet fuel to get their airplanes to take off. They're clogging up their runway. We're talking to Cuba right now... and they should absolutely make a deal, because it's really a humanitarian threat," said the president. "There's an embargo, there's no oil, there's no money, there's no anything."
Trump: Cuba and us are talking. In the meantime, there's an embargo. There's no oil. There's no money. There's no anything.
Reporter: If a deal isn't made, would you consider an operation like the one in Venezuela?
Trump: I don't want to answer that. pic.twitter.com/9bVhDtfqWV
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 17, 2026
Carlos F. de Cossio, Cuba's deputy minister of foreign affairs, pointed out that it has been "frequent for US officials and diplomats to claim that US aggression is not responsible for difficulties in Cuba," as the trade embargo maintained by the US for more than six decades has impeded medications, food, and other humanitarian assistance from reaching Cubans.
It seems those officials "don't listen to their president," said de Cossio.
Trump commented on the impact of his ramped-up blockade as Al Jazeera and Reuters reported that just 44 of Havana's 106 sanitation trucks have been able to operate in recent weeks due to the fuel shortage, leading waste to pile up on the Cuban capital's streets and raising fears of public health risks.
The lack of fuel has also caused blackouts in cities and rural areas, and one diplomat told The Guardian on Sunday that "it's a matter of weeks" before the blockade could cause extreme shortages of water and food.
While appearing to express concern for the Cuban public, Trump described how he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio "are overseeing a siege on Cuba... with no discernible foreign policy objective other than sadism," said Emma Vigeland of Majority Report.
"This is not an embargo. The US has had an embargo on Cuba for over 60 years, and it has failed" to force a regime change, said Vigeland.
The anti-war group Code Pink added: "If Cuba is a 'failed nation' then why has the U.S. spent 66 years trying and failing to destroy it?"
"Cuba isn’t failing, it’s being suffocated," said the group.
Trump repeated his demand that Cuban officials "make a deal," but Cuban officials have said they are open to coming to an agreement with the US. Meanwhile, Drop Site News reported last week that Rubio has been falsely claiming negotiations are taking place in an apparent bid to ultimately force regime change through other means.
One reporter asked the president Monday evening whether he would consider "an operation like the one in Venezuela," where US forces last month abducted President Nicolás Maduro and his wife and killed dozens of people, including many Cuban soldiers and guards.
Trump did not confirm or deny whether he would take military action in Cuba, but issued a veiled threat: "It wouldn't be a very tough operation, as you can figure."
Also on Monday, over 100 Cuban artists signed on to a call for "international solidarity" against the blockade.
"The empire says that Cuba represents a threat to its national security, which is ridiculous and implausible. It has imposed an oil blockade, resulting in the paralysis of hospitals, schools, industries, and transportation. They try to prevent our doctors from saving lives; they try to paralyze our free and universal education system, to plunge us into famine, into a lack of energy to guarantee access to drinking water and cooking food; in short, they aim to slowly and bloodily extinguish a country," reads the open letter.
"Cuba resists and will resist this inhumane aggression, but it counts on the active solidarity of all honest, humanist, and good-willed men and women of the world," it continues. "It is about preventing a genocidal act and saving a heroic people whose only 'crime and threat' has been to defend their sovereignty."
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Winter in Gaza
The most urgent task, to end genocide, requires truthful coverage about Israel’s war crimes.
Nov 12, 2025
On Saturday, 8 November, 2025, Dan Perry wrote in The Jerusalem Post about Israel's projected lifting of the media blockade on Gaza. Perry laments that Israeli censorship has left all reporting of the atrocity in the hands of Palestinians, who refuse to be silent. To date, Israel has assassinated over 240 Palestinian journalists.
Perry writes, "The High Court ruled last week that the government must consider allowing foreign journalists into Gaza but also granted a one-month extension due to the still-unclear situation in the Strip." He asserts that Israel had and has no motive for excluding foreign journalists save concern for their own protection.
He makes two appeals. First, the duplicitous demand that Israel should use the one-month reprieve to cover up the evidence of atrocities: "Soon, journalists and photographers will enter Gaza… They will find terrible sights. Hence, Israel’s urgent task: to document retrospectively, to finally prepare explanations, to show… that Hamas operated from hospitals, schools, and refugee camps." In other words, bury the truth with the bodies.
Secondly, that since in this conflict Israel did absolutely nothing that it could have wished to hide, it should learn not to impose absolute media blackouts so likely to arouse suspicion.
Our own hearts cannot escape the howling winter unless we take, far more seriously, the hell of winter and despair to which we continue to subject Palestinians living in Gaza.
I sense a cold, hard winter within the souls of people in league with Dan Perry’s perspective.
Now, a cold, hard winter approaches Gaza. What do Palestinians in Gaza face, as temperatures drop and winter storms arrive
Turkish news agency Anadolu Ajansi reports: "Palestinians in the Gaza Strip continue to endure hunger under a new starvation policy engineered by Israel, which allows only non-essential goods to enter the enclave while blocking essential food and medical supplies… shelves stacked with non-essential consumer goods disguise a suffocating humanitarian crisis deliberately engineered by Israel to starve Palestinians.”
“I haven’t found eggs, chicken, or cheese since food supplies started entering the Gaza Strip,” Aya Abu Qamar, a mother of three from Gaza City, told Anadolu. “All I see are chocolate, snacks, and instant coffee. These aren’t our daily needs,” she added. “We’re looking for something to keep our children alive.”
On November 5, 2025 the Norwegian Refugee Council sounded this alarm about Israeli restrictions cruelly holding back winter supplies. NRC's director for the region, Angelita Caredda, insists, “More than three weeks into the ceasefire, Gaza should be receiving a surge of shelter materials, but only a fraction of what is needed has entered."
The report states:
Millions of shelter and non-food items are stuck in Jordan, Egypt, and Israel awaiting approvals, leaving around 260,000 Palestinian families, equal to nearly 1.5 million people, exposed to worsening conditions. Since the ceasefire took effect on 10 October, Israeli authorities have rejected twenty-three requests from nine aid agencies to bring in urgently needed shelter supplies such as tents, sealing and framing kits, bedding, kitchen sets, and blankets, amounting to nearly 4,000 pallets. Humanitarian organisations warn that the window to scale up winterisation assistance is closing rapidly.
The report notes how, despite the ceasefire, Israel has continued its mechanized slaughter and its choke hold on aid.
In Israel's +972 Magazine, Muhammad Shehada reports: "With the so-called ‘Yellow Line,’ Israel has divided the Strip in two: West Gaza, encompassing 42 percent of the enclave, where Hamas remains in control and over 2 million people are crammed in; and East Gaza, encompassing 58 percent of the territory, which has been fully depopulated of civilians and is controlled by the Israeli army and four proxy gangs." This last, a reference to four Israel Defense Forces-backed militias put forward by Israel as Hamas' legitimate replacement.
If ever tallied, the number of corpses buried under Gaza’s flattened buildings may raise the death toll of this genocide into six figures.
The United Nations estimates that the amount of rubble in Gaza could build 13 Giza pyramids.
"The sheer scale of the challenge is staggering," writes Paul Adams for the BBC: "The UN estimates the cost of damage at £53bn ($70bn). Almost 300,000 houses and apartments have been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN's satellite centre Unosat…The Gaza Strip is littered with 60 million tonnes of rubble, mixed in with dangerous unexploded bombs and dead bodies."
No one knows how many corpses are rotting beneath the rubble. These mountains of rubble loom over Israelis working, in advance of global journalism's return, to create their counternarratives, but also over surviving Gazans who, amid unrelenting misery, struggle to provide for their surviving loved ones.
Living in close, unhygienic quarters; sleeping without bedding under torn plastic sheeting; and having scarce access to water, thousands of people are in dire need of supplies to help winterize their living space and spare themselves the dread that their children or they themselves could die of hypothermia. The easiest and most obvious solution to their predicament stands enticingly near: the homes held by their genocidal oppressors.
In affluent countries, observers like Dan Perry may tremble for Israel's reputation, eager to rush in and conceal Israel's crimes, clothing them in self-righteous justifications. These are of course our crimes as well.
Our own hearts cannot escape the howling winter unless we take, far more seriously, the hell of winter and despair to which we continue to subject Palestinians living in Gaza.
There is no peace in Gaza. May there be no peace for us until we fix that.
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ICJ Rejects Israeli Claims About UNRWA and Orders Officials to Provide More Aid to Gaza
"Yet another Israeli government lie—slavishly repeated by Western media—collapses," said one policy expert.
Oct 22, 2025
The commissioner-general of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees said Wednesday that he welcomed an "unambiguous ruling by the International Court of Justice" affirming that the organization has not been infiltrated by Hamas, as Israel and its allies have persistently claimed, and that Israeli officials must cooperate with the UN to ensure Palestinians receive sufficient aid after nearly two years of starvation policy.
In an advisory opinion, the ICJ ruled 10-1 that as the occupying power in the West Bank and Gaza, Israel is responsible for providing aid to Palestinians and allowing the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to operate in Gaza.
Israel has sought to ban UNRWA from Gaza since January 2024, when it alleged without evidence that a small number of staffers at the agency had participated in a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in October 2023.
Multiple investigations found that Israel had not provided supporting evidence of the allegations, and the ICJ on Wednesday said that the country had “not substantiated its allegations that a significant number of UNRWA employees were members of Hamas.”
With the advisory opinion, said Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, "yet another Israeli government lie—slavishly repeated by Western media—collapses."
ICJ President Yuji Iwasawa said in the ruling, which is not legally binding, that Israel's first obligation is to "ensure that the population of the occupied Palestinian territory has the essential supplies of daily life, including food, water, clothing, bedding, shelter, fuel, medical supplies, and services."
The court also ordered Israel to "agree to and facilitate by all means at its disposal relief schemes on behalf of the population of the occupied Palestinian territory so long as that population is inadequately supplied, as has been the case in the Gaza Strip."
UNRWA has said it has roughly 6,000 aid trucks that are ready to enter Gaza.
"With huge amounts of food and other lifesaving supplies on standby in Egypt and Jordan, UNRWA has the resources and expertise to immediately scale up the humanitarian response in Gaza and help alleviate the suffering of the civilian population," said Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the agency.
Israel began blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza following the Hamas-led attack in 2023, and intensified the blockade from March-May this year after breaking a ceasefire that began in January. More than 450 Palestinians have starved to death, and experts have warned that the many of the effects of starvation on those who have survived, especially children, may be irreversible. A famine was declared in August by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a UN-backed group.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the ICJ opinion "comes at a moment in which we are doing everything we can to boost our humanitarian aid in Gaza. So the impact of this decision is decisive in order for us to be able to do it to the level that is necessary for the tragic situation in which the people of Gaza still is.”
As it has with numerous other rulings by the ICJ, Israel immediately rejected the decision and claimed it was politically motivated. The US State Department also dismissed the ruling, saying it "unfairly bashe[d] Israel" and repeated the debunked allegations of UNRWA's "deep entanglement with and material support for Hamas terrorism."
Step Vaessen of Al Jazeera reported that "even if Israel ignores [the advisory opinion], as it’s done time and time again, all the UN countries are obliged to follow up on this court’s advice."
The ICJ is also considering a genocide case against Israel, brought by South Africa.
In September, a commission of independent experts at the UN said Western countries including the US must stop providing military aid to Israel as it found the country was carrying out a genocide in Gaza, citing several of the attacks that have killed more than 68,000 Palestinians since October 2023 and public statements made by Israeli officials demonstrating their intent to wipe out Gaza's population of 2.1 million people.
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We Must Call It What It Is: A Genocide in Gaza
For too long, our elected officials have hidden behind euphemisms like “tragedy” or “conflict.” But history will not remember their silence kindly.
Oct 07, 2025
Over the past two years, Gaza has been turned into rubble and starvation by one of the most relentless bombing campaigns in modern history. This is not a conflict. It is not a “war between two sides.” It is genocide—the deliberate destruction of a people, carried out in full view of the world.
More than 66,000 Palestinians have been confirmed killed, most of them women and children. But that number only scratches the surface. Humanitarian agencies estimate that over 680,000 people may have died—buried under collapsed buildings, starved to death, or left to suffer without medicine or clean water as Israel continues to blockade aid. The death toll grows daily as people die unseen beneath the rubble.
I speak not only as an advocate for justice, but as someone personally scarred by this horror. Over 200 members of my own family have been killed in this genocide. Their lives ended in the same way as tens of thousands of others—bombed in their homes, trapped without food, or killed while trying to flee. These were teachers, children, and parents. They were human beings who deserved to live in peace.
Across the world, millions are refusing to look away. From Amsterdam to Istanbul, from New York to Johannesburg, protesters are filling the streets to call this what it is: genocide. Even many who once hesitated to use that word now recognize it as the only accurate description.
The question now is not whether this is genocide. The question is: what will we do about it?
This genocide has extended beyond Gaza’s borders. In the West Bank, Israeli incursions continue—raids, home demolitions, mass arrests, and settler violence, all designed to displace Palestinians from their homeland.
Meanwhile, Gaza is being starved. Thousands are dying for lack of food, water, and medicine. Hospitals have been reduced to ashes, and more than 560 aid workers and medical personnel have been killed. This is not an accident—it is strategy. Starvation and disease have become weapons of war.
It is clear: Israel’s campaign can only have been made possible by US weapons and funding. Every bomb dropped on Gaza carries the imprint “Made in America.” Every home destroyed is a reminder that the US continues to arm and defend a government committing crimes against humanity. This does not serve America’s interests. It only increases anger and resentment toward our country.
There can be no moral ambiguity left. The bombing must stop—permanently. Israel must end its incursions into the West Bank and allow full humanitarian access for rebuilding Gaza. Palestinians have the right to live freely and safely on their own land.
For too long, our elected officials have hidden behind euphemisms like “tragedy” or “conflict.” But history will not remember their silence kindly. It will remember who stood by as a people were starved and buried alive—and who had the courage to speak.
The United States cannot continue to claim moral leadership while enabling genocide. Every day that our government sends weapons to Israel, it deepens our complicity.
The question now is not whether this is genocide. The question is: what will we do about it?
For many, the response has been philanthropy; protesting; and participation in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement—all vital and powerful tools for change. But if we want lasting impact, we must also build political power.
That is why CAIR Action was created: to turn outrage into organization, and compassion into change. Through our educational campaigns, voter guides, endorsements, and candidate amplification, we are helping communities of conscience identify and elect leaders who will stand up against genocide and vote for peace and justice.
We are organizing to shape the next generation of politicians—leaders who will not shrink from truth, who will end U. complicity, and who will fight for human rights everywhere.
Our humanity—and our democracy—depend on it.
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Attack on Flotilla Shows How Far Israel Will Go to Keep 'Deliberately Starving' Gaza: Amnesty
“By continuing to actively block vital aid to a population against whom Israel is committing genocide, including by inflicting famine, Israel is once again demonstrating its utter contempt for the legally binding orders of the International Court of Justice," says Amnesty International's secretary-general Agnès Callamard.
Oct 02, 2025
Amid international outrage and protest over the interdiction and detention of humanitarians aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla by Israeli military forces, Amnesty International on Thursday said the effort to block the approximately 40 vessels bound to Gaza with life-saving aid shows just how far the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will go to keep "deliberately starving" innocent Palestinians in the besieged enclave.
“Israel’s forceful interception of the Global Sumud Flotilla vessels and detention of its crew off the coast of Gaza is a brazen assault against solidarity activists carrying out an entirely peaceful humanitarian mission," said Amnesty's secretary-general Agnès Callamard in a statement. "This seizure comes after weeks of threats and incitement by Israeli officials against the flotilla and its participants and after several attempts to sabotage some of its ships."
“By continuing to actively block vital aid to a population against whom Israel is committing genocide, including by inflicting famine, Israel is once again demonstrating its utter contempt for the legally binding orders of the International Court of Justice and its own obligations as the occupying power to ensure Palestinians in Gaza have access to sufficient food and lifesaving humanitarian assistance.
Protests erupted in cities across Europe, the Middle East, and worldwide on Wednesday night after news of the interdiction spread. Though not unexpected, the military assault on the nonviolent flotilla occurred in international waters, eliciting accusations of piracy and lawlessness on the high seas by the Israeli military and its civilian leadership.
In a Thursday morning statement, the group detailed what happened to their flotilla and reminded people worldwide of their purpose:
At approximately 10:00 PM EEST on October 1st, the IOF launched their assault on the Global Sumud Flotilla.
The world bore witness as unarmed civilians carrying humanitarian aid were subjected to intimidation and interception in the final hours of their peaceful mission to Gaza.
As the sun rises, the actions taken under the cover of darkness could not be more clear: they are the desperate maneuvers of an oppressor.
Our spirits are not broken and our resolve is only strengthened.
"This interception is not just about blocking aid," said Callamard. "It is a calculated act of intimidation intended to punish and silence critics of Israel’s genocide and its unlawful blockade on Gaza. The incitement and threats that preceded it are also a shameless attempt to demonize peaceful solidarity initiatives seeking to end Israel’s genocide and the cruel blockade it has imposed on Gaza since 2007 and significantly tightened since October 2023."
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on Wednesday announced that a documented 151 children have now died in Gaza of starvation imposed on them by Israel's blockade of humanitarian aid amid constant bombardment and evacuation orders which have displaced individuals and families without relent.
UNICEF stressed, according to the UN News Centre, "that Gaza’s malnutrition crisis has reached catastrophic levels with the entire child population under five—more than 320,000 children—at risk of acute malnutrition."
With at least 14,383 children acutely malnourished in August, acute malnutrition among young people is up 500% from the beginning of this calendar year, all while aid groups from across the world have sounded the alarm and called for international intervention and the end of the forced starvation.
“This war must end now. Aid must be allowed into the Gaza Strip, including food and nutrition supplies. Humanitarians must be allowed to do their jobs,” said UNICEF communication manager Tess Ingram.
“The children of Gaza," she said, "are being punished by these decisions and it's killing them.”
For her part, Callamard said the attack on the peaceful humanitarian flotilla means that time for rhetoric and simple rebuke has long passed.
"The time for mere condemnation is over. States worldwide must act now and now make clear that they will no longer tolerate Israel’s systematic starvation of Palestinians in Gaza nor its targeting of unarmed civilian humanitarian efforts," she said. "The decades-long impunity for Israel’s blatant violations of international law must end, nothing can justify genocide.
Callamard demanded the "immediate and safe return of all those detained and allow unhindered access to Gaza for the other ships. They must also press Israel to lift its suffocating 18-year blockade and allow humanitarian aid to be delivered through all crossings into and throughout Gaza now."
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Why I Am Joining the People’s Hunger Strike for Gaza
I have joined the hunger strike in grief at the annihilation of Gaza, and to protest the use of my tax dollars to transform the Gaza Strip into a graveyard for its people and international law.
Sep 25, 2025
On September 25 I will begin a weeklong water-only fast as part of The People’s Hunger Strike that was launched outside the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Federal Building in Boston on September 4.
Its goals are to raise consciousness about the deliberate starvation of the people of Gaza and to pressure Massachusetts senators, whose offices are in that building, to sponsor a version of the House "Block the Bombs" bill (HR 3565) that would stop the US from sending Israel the kind of high-impact weaponry being used against civilians in the Gaza Strip in violation of international law.
The Horror of Forced Starvation
The People’s Hunger Strike is the brainchild of a Boston physician Miriam Komaromy. She had not previously been actively involved in organizing for Palestine. But “when forced starvation was imposed on the Gaza population it brought me up short,” she told me. “I said this cannot be. The reality of parents starving and watching their child starve to death—I couldn’t bear it.”
Responding to a Palestinian call urging people of conscience around the world to join a solidarity hunger strike initiated in the West Bank, Dr. Komaromy reached out to members of Boston’s Doctors against Genocide and Healthcare Workers for Palestine-Boston as well as the Boston chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. Soon they had numerous cosponsoring groups supporting the planned hunger strike, and some 35 people had pledged to undertake one-week fasts.
Many of those who joined the action were new to the issue; others had long been involved in organizing for Palestinian rights. All were affected by what Jeannie—a hunger striker whose Irish heritage taught her something about deliberately manufactured famine—described in the following way: “For almost two years, we’ve seen the images of the displaced, whose homes, schools, hospitals, water, and entire society have been bombed, as they walk through the rubble seeking food and shelter. The woman whose milk has dried up screaming with grief over her dead baby; the face of a skeletal child, crying and holding out an empty pot; a father weeping over the shrouded corpses of his entire family. These images don’t stop coming.”
The Gaza I knew
Those images and the unfolding genocide that has been meticulously documented by human rights organizations including Israeli groups, genocide scholars and, on September 16, the United Nations International Commission of Inquiry, have overwhelmed me. I have a personal relationship with the Gaza Strip going back to my first visit in 1988 as part of a human rights delegation when Israel was using “force, might, and beatings” (Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s phrase) to suppress the first Intifada, an unarmed uprising of the entire civil society.
"We have a duty to do all that we can to stop the genocide that is funded and promoted by our government.”
During the more than a dozen visits I subsequently made to Gaza as head of a foundation supporting its mental health services, I made many friends and experienced this tiny piece of land as a place of extraordinary hospitality. I saw firsthand how its population was demonized by Israel, imprisoned in what has been called an "open air prison" since 2007, and subjected to repeated sustained military bombardments well before the seismic events of October 7, 2023.
I have joined the hunger strike in grief at the annihilation of Gaza, and to protest the use of my tax dollars to transform the Gaza Strip into a graveyard for its people and international law.
Our Duty to Stop Genocide
Several people I work with in the Boston-based Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine have also joined the fast. Judy, who recently finished her week without food, says she fasted because “I am angry and heartbroken watching the people of Gaza endure forced starvation and seeing what it does to their bodies, spirit, and to their future. I joined the strike to pressure our government to stop sending Israel weapons.”
Jude, who is in treatment for cancer herself, hopes to personalize and make visible the impact of the Israeli-created famine and the long-term harm it is causing. She adds: “I can retreat from this strike at the first sign of harm. This is not true for our counterparts in Gaza who are exhausted; without food, water, medicine, or shelter; and under constant attack. We have a duty to do all that we can to stop the genocide that is funded and promoted by our government.”
Kathy hopes that the hunger strike will send a loud message to her elected representative, Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), who has not signed onto the House "Block the Bombs" bill despite “countless calls from her constituents over the last two years concerning the weapons the US has sent to Israel with Massachusetts tax dollars. The result has been the extermination of entire generational families living in Gaza, as well as the killing and maiming of massive numbers of civilians including babies, children, courageous journalists, and doctors. We want her to stand with the Congressional Progressive Caucus which has endorsed the Block the Bombs Act.”
It is too late to save the lives of more than 65,000 Palestinians, many slaughtered with US weapons and 83% of them civilians according to the Israeli army’s own data. It is too late to bring back the hundreds of children who have already died from forced starvation. But we hope that the hunger strike will amplify our message: Let Gaza Live!
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Responding to Charlie Kirk's Killing With the Wisdom of Our Inner 3 Year Old
Valuing life and understanding its profound complexity is humanity’s future. Snorting at life, laughing at life, killing it, is humanity’s suicide.
Sep 17, 2025
Charlie Kirk’s killing last week—and the aftermath of grief and political outrage—are too overwhelming to ignore, even though I couldn’t possibly have anything to say that hasn’t already been said.
The best I can do is wander into the spiritual unknown and perhaps ask an impossible question or two. The first one is this: Are words adequate for the exploration of life and death? I ask this question as a writer. To me, words are virtually magical entities. They give us the means to shape, if not the world itself, at least our comprehension of it... and thus we assume we know what’s going on around us.
For instance, here I am, sitting at my desk, looking out my window on a beautiful, blue-sky afternoon. The leaves on the tree in front of me flutter in the breeze. A woman in a red coat walks through the parking lot, which is mostly empty. Everything is calm. The time is 2:43 pm on a Tuesday. This all seems simple enough, right?
But of course this is nothing more than the surface of this moment—a real-life postcard, you might say. Putting it into words, at least in one sense, limits what I see. I see what is “known,” categorize it all as normal—and move on. If I were 3 years old, I’d still be staring at the tree, perhaps one leaf at a time. I could well be lost in its beauty and complexity.
Why is his death shocking while a 5-year-old Palestinian child’s death by bombing, or by starvation, is nothing at all? Is Kirk the only one of them who’s human?
As I return to the news, I’m suggesting that we bring with us our inner 3 year old. The news of the Kirk assassination is given to us with simple us-vs.-them clarity. He was speaking at an event in Utah. Someone fired a rifle from several hundred feet away. He was hit in the neck. He died.
And then it turns political. Well, it does and it doesn’t. Charlie Kirk was a husband, the father of two young children. No matter where you stand in regard to his right-wing, MAGA politics, the horror of his death—the horror inflicted on his family—is explosive. "No!” screams our inner 3 year old. The nation is stunned.
But almost immediately, things turn political. US President Donald Trump and others instantaneously blame the “radical left” and let their hatred spew. Kirk is now their martyr, and they feel they have permission to make the most of his death politically that they can. Eliminate the left. I can feel the joy oozing from their hatred, which gushes like blood from a bullet wound.
All progressives can do is express shock and grief. Kirk’s murder isn’t “political.” He was a human being! And here’s where words can too easily fail us. This isn’t Side A vs. Side B. This is “We are all one” vs. “We’re great and you’re evil, and we’re comin’ for ya.”
But the divide is infinitely deeper even than that. Charlie Kirk’s murder is international news, but it’s also only one murder out of unknown thousands and thousands every day. Why is his death shocking while a 5-year-old Palestinian child’s death by bombing, or by starvation, is nothing at all? Is Kirk the only one of them who’s human?
Killing requires dehumanization. That’s the nature of war—every war. And the larger the number we kill, the easier the dehumanization becomes. Oh, they’re just “the enemy” or, ho hum, collateral damage. Any questions?
And here’s where language deeply, deeply, deeply fails us. “Left” and “right”—life and death—are simply equal opposites, at least in much of the media coverage of this. Nothing could be further from the truth: Valuing life and understanding its profound complexity is humanity’s future. Snorting at life, laughing at life, killing it, is humanity’s suicide.
Here are the words of Zohran Mamdani, New York City mayoral candidate, speaking at a Jews for Racial and Economic Justice award ceremony the day of Kirk’s killing:
Before I begin, I do want to take a moment to address the horrific political assassination that just occurred today in Utah. Charlie Kirk is dead, yet another victim of gun violence in a nation where what should be a rarity has turned into a plague. It cannot be a question of political agreement or alignment that allows us to mourn. It must be the shared notion of humanity that binds us all...
We hold a common belief in the shared dignity of every person on this planet, and the refusal to draw a line in the sand, as it so often is done, when it comes to Palestinian lives...
We know, because the United Nations tells us, that by the end of the month, millions will be facing starvation, if they are not starving already. This is not accidental. This is not due to a freak blight. This is not because the world now lacks the means to feed the hungry. It is because those decisions made by the Israeli government and by our government here continue to ensure that that is a reality. And if that does not stagger the conscience, what will?
Let me repeat these words: “the shared notion of humanity that’s behind us all.”
Our inner 3 year old knows this. How do we start embracing it politically? Humanity is a collective entity. We can’t kill our enemy without eventually killing ourselves.
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Man-Made Famine Is Starving Gaza’s Children
This is the real front line in this conflict; a child clinging to life through a sachet of RUTF, now forced to flee. But none of this is inevitable. It is a choice.
Sep 10, 2025
Gaza is in the midst of a manufactured famine. I have witnessed far too many humanitarian catastrophes, but Gaza is unique. Gazans are 100% dependent on the flow of food into their territory, and there is only one actor controlling the tap: Israel. What is occurring in Gaza right now is the systematic starvation of an entire population, and children are bearing the cruelest brunt.
My MedGlobal colleagues have ample medical expertise to treat all manner of injury and illness in Gaza. But right now they face an overwhelming wave of malnutrition, and without medicines and sachets of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) to give to their patients, there is only so much they care they can offer. Within a 72-hour window in July, my colleagues watched devastated and helpless as five children between the ages of 3 months and 4 years died due to complications directly linked to malnutrition.
At MedGlobal’s primary health clinics across Gaza, we are treating children who weigh merely 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms) at birth. Gazan mothers are so malnourished that they cannot breastfeed their infants, leaving newborns with no source of nutrition in a place where baby formula and clean water are scarce. Among pregnant and lactating women, 22% are acutely malnourished, and for teenage girls aged 15-19, that figure is a devastating 39%, condemning a generation to irreversible harm during their most critical developmental years.
This was an entirely predictable consequence of the near total blockade imposed on Gaza in March of this year. Starvation does not occur immediately, but deny food to an entire population over time and that is the only possible outcome. MedGlobal's recent report, Starved by Siege, reveals a skyrocketing of acute malnutrition among children under 5 to 16.8%, surpassing the famine threshold in just a few months. Our data show that more children died from malnutrition in July alone than in the previous six months combined.
Like this, the war has entered every Gazan household. As acute malnutrition rates have soared by 2,000% since the escalation of hostilities in 2023, health facilities are overrun with the casualties. As a MedGlobal doctor put it, “I looked at her feeding him the RUTF sachet and I realized… this is the front line. Not the rubble. Not the noise. This: a mother trying to keep her child alive with one packet of lifesaving food.”
As a neutral humanitarian organization, MedGlobal does not pick sides in a war, nor is our objective to end wars; we simply aim to preserve a measure of humanity in the midst of war. The Geneva Conventions lay out the rules for doing so, the most fundamental of which is that noncombatants are protected. As signatory to the Geneva Conventions, Israel has written these rules into its own law.
There is only one humane path forward: Respect the first rule of the Geneva Conventions and stop targeting noncombatants in this war.
Protected persons may not be targeted, and warring parties must allow and facilitate access to the basic means of survival. This includes food. While families starve inside Gaza, humanitarian aid sits in warehouses just outside, waiting for Israeli approval. The World Food Programme (WFP) has enough food ready to feed all of Gaza for three months. MedGlobal has medicine and nutrition supplies to treat over 10,000 children. This willful denial of an entire population’s access to food is a war crime.
What happened on October 7, 2023 was a horrendous and brutal crime too. How many more children will have to pay for that crime with their lives? There is only one humane path forward: Respect the first rule of the Geneva Conventions and stop targeting noncombatants in this war. More specifically, Gaza needs an immediate ceasefire, an end to the blockade, unimpeded access for humanitarian organizations, and the protection of healthcare facilities, health workers, and patients.
Yet, as I write this my colleagues are evacuating Gaza City in the midst of a full-scale invasion. Just two weeks ago, one of my colleagues was killed in the initial stages of this offensive. Our medical activities, including care for the malnourished, are being transplanted to areas further south, but many of our patients are in critical condition and will not survive the move.
This is the real front line in this conflict; a child clinging to life through a sachet of RUTF, now forced to flee. But none of this is inevitable. It is a choice.
Seventy-seven years ago, member states of the United Nations united in a shared commitment captured in the words “Never Again.” A genocide had occurred and the world said it would never again tolerate another. Are we tolerating one now?
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