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Every era has its bad guy, its high profile criminal who flames into public view through media circuses and tabloid headlines. In the 1930's, there was Al Capone brought down by the taxman. In the 40's, Willie Sutton was a big bad guy who once said he robbed banks because "that's where the money is." In the 1950's the Mafia seized our attention while here in New York, we had George Metetsky, the mad bomber. In the 60's, well you know the saying, "If you can remember that era, you weren't there..."
Many of these larger than life gangsters were anti-social outlaws robbing banks and the like. Now the banks are robbing us. Until he is outdone, we now have a new poster boy for Wall Street excess and larceny: the bland personage of Bernard Madoff, the consummate Wall Street insider, philanthropist and pillar of the financial community. He has now been credited in this credit crisis for the biggest theft in history.
Madoff seems to have won the gold medal for absconding with the most gold. His take: $50 billion and counting. It was, he admitted, all a Ponzi scheme. He was a reverse Robin Hood: he took from the rich and enriched himself in a life style festooned with many houses, boats and stays at $5,000 a night hotels.
The Notice
Go to The Madoff.com site today and there is this notice that thousands of investors are reading while holding back tears and outrage.
On December 15, 2008, the Honorable Louis L. Stanton, a Federal Judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, appointed Irving Picard as Trustee for the liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff Investments Securities LLC ("BMIS") pursuant to the Securities Investor Protection Act ("SIPA") as set forth in the attached order.
Mr. Picard supersedes Lee S. Richards, the previously appointed Receiver for BMIS and all claims by customers of BMIS will be processed by Mr. Picard as SIPA Trustee. Customers and claimants should refer to the website of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation for information about the processing of claims. SIPC.ORG
Mr. Richards continues to serve as Receiver for Madoff Securities International Ltd. pursuant to the attached order. The Trustee Irving Picard has engaged Lazard Freres & Co. LLC to assist in the sale of the trading operations of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC.
Should you have further questions, please contact the Trustee at the following number: 888-727-8695.
In short: Good Luck at Getting Any Of Your Money Back.
Whistleblower Rebuffed
Of course this dry legalistic language doesn't tell the whole story, the story of the failure of the Regulators to act, or about the submission to the SEC on November 7, 2005 of a 19-page detailed document.
This document was written by financial expert Harry Markopolos and sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission with a request for deep confidentiality. He exposed the the man now being called "Made-off." The title of his report: "The World's Biggest Hedge Fund is a Fraud." It projected scenarios including this one:
"(Very Likely) in bold, "Madoff Securities is the World's largest Ponzi Scheme" He believed that "this would be another black eye for the brokerage industry."
Bingo!
Victims We Can Relate To
That black eye punch was never thrown. Instead, it was three years before Madoff went down. He continued to operate his con game, defrauding customers worldwide. At the same time, the 'celebrity' investors he ripped off (like Steven Speilberg) later became "sympathetic victims" - as opposed to subprime home borrowers who were often demonized as schemers and told they were naive and should have known better. A CNBC "documentary" showcased a parade of wealthy Madoff victims.
Bernie was a high flyer, a part of a clubby and incestuous elite world of golf clubs, resorts, and philanthropy with tax benefits.. He was a leader of the Wall Street world, at one point the Chairman of NASDAQ. Universities invited him to lecture on how markets work. He was admired, considered a role model, a genius. His firm handled l0% of all Stock Exchange trades.
His niece married an SEC regulator. Mary Schapiro, Barack Obama's pick to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), previously appointed one of his sons to a regulatory body that oversees American securities firms. Madoff himself said he had often visited the SEC where he complained of over regulation.
Bernie was in until he was out!
Soon he was wearing an electronic bracelet and under house arrest, a further sign of privileged treatment by the way. Imagine what secrets he could spill. Already the NY Times is reporting that this theft problem went much deeper with all the Wall Street firms posting phony profit reports and then giving themselves juicy bonuses. A financial blogger wrote that the Times was still obscuring the story because the practice constitutes nothing less than looting, a word they never use.
Unfortunately, Madoff was not unique, not alone, and shrewder than the people who trusted him to make earn a good return. One financial analyst said that some of his investors assumed he was doing something illegal - perhaps insider trading - which is why they wanted him to manage their money. They thought they would make more money that way without taking normal risks.
Funds of Funds
Subprime speculators targeted low and middle-income people. Madoff marketed to the wealthy. Editor Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post explained that he specialized in "funds of funds" hedge funds:
"These are hedge funds that raise money from pension funds, university endowments and wealthy individuals and, for a fee of 1.5 percent a year, invest it in other hedge funds, which charge even higher fees. In return for paying double fees, these middlemen claim to offer investors access to the best hedge funds, which can be selective about whose money they accept. They also offer the peace of mind that goes with knowing that the funds have been thoroughly checked out.
Now it turns out that some of these funds of funds had parked billions of dollars of their clients' money with Madoff without asking how he could so consistently produce returns in up market or down, or demanding to know why his books were audited by a three-person firm that nobody ever heard of operating out of a broom closet on Long Island.
It doesn't take a PhD in finance to see the pattern here: Accounting firms and rating agencies are too easily compromised by the fact that they are chosen and paid by the management of the companies whose books they are auditing and securities they are rating. There are simply too many built-in conflicts of interest.
And Madoff took advantage of them. As a result he had a license to steal, and steal he did.
"Disintermediated" Investors
James Hedges IV of LJH Global Investments, says those that went with Madoff chose faith over evidence. "You've got people who were disintermediated [i.e., didn't have a professional representative], or unsophisticated, or went in through a personal relationship. That's what a con man is - a confidence man is somebody that engenders a relationship and then subsequently lures somebody into doing something that they shouldn't do."
In the aftermath, the small gesture speaks volumes. A friend was staking out Madoff's former offices for a major news organization. No one would talk to her including investors who could be seen through the window on their cellphones moaning about losses.. They looked grim. Some were wiped out. When they left the building, some hid their faces, perhaps in shame, like criminals photographed on "perp walks." A philanthropy expert said the consequences will be "Catastrophic." An Israeli newspaper said many Jewish organizations will be hurt, some irreparably.
The anthropologist Lionel Tiger writes in Forbes about how incidents like this undermine all respect for the business world: "The invisible hand lurches between clenched fist and begging palm, and the new Greenwich Mean Time is in Connecticut. Suddenly, the only thing taken for granted is a government grant."
You could never make this up even though Wall Street history is replete with earlier versions of this Sultan of Sleaze. Around the world, it is not just the supercrook Bernie Madoff who is seen as the guilty party but the whole American system of free market finance. There will be a reckoning.
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Every era has its bad guy, its high profile criminal who flames into public view through media circuses and tabloid headlines. In the 1930's, there was Al Capone brought down by the taxman. In the 40's, Willie Sutton was a big bad guy who once said he robbed banks because "that's where the money is." In the 1950's the Mafia seized our attention while here in New York, we had George Metetsky, the mad bomber. In the 60's, well you know the saying, "If you can remember that era, you weren't there..."
Many of these larger than life gangsters were anti-social outlaws robbing banks and the like. Now the banks are robbing us. Until he is outdone, we now have a new poster boy for Wall Street excess and larceny: the bland personage of Bernard Madoff, the consummate Wall Street insider, philanthropist and pillar of the financial community. He has now been credited in this credit crisis for the biggest theft in history.
Madoff seems to have won the gold medal for absconding with the most gold. His take: $50 billion and counting. It was, he admitted, all a Ponzi scheme. He was a reverse Robin Hood: he took from the rich and enriched himself in a life style festooned with many houses, boats and stays at $5,000 a night hotels.
The Notice
Go to The Madoff.com site today and there is this notice that thousands of investors are reading while holding back tears and outrage.
On December 15, 2008, the Honorable Louis L. Stanton, a Federal Judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, appointed Irving Picard as Trustee for the liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff Investments Securities LLC ("BMIS") pursuant to the Securities Investor Protection Act ("SIPA") as set forth in the attached order.
Mr. Picard supersedes Lee S. Richards, the previously appointed Receiver for BMIS and all claims by customers of BMIS will be processed by Mr. Picard as SIPA Trustee. Customers and claimants should refer to the website of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation for information about the processing of claims. SIPC.ORG
Mr. Richards continues to serve as Receiver for Madoff Securities International Ltd. pursuant to the attached order. The Trustee Irving Picard has engaged Lazard Freres & Co. LLC to assist in the sale of the trading operations of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC.
Should you have further questions, please contact the Trustee at the following number: 888-727-8695.
In short: Good Luck at Getting Any Of Your Money Back.
Whistleblower Rebuffed
Of course this dry legalistic language doesn't tell the whole story, the story of the failure of the Regulators to act, or about the submission to the SEC on November 7, 2005 of a 19-page detailed document.
This document was written by financial expert Harry Markopolos and sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission with a request for deep confidentiality. He exposed the the man now being called "Made-off." The title of his report: "The World's Biggest Hedge Fund is a Fraud." It projected scenarios including this one:
"(Very Likely) in bold, "Madoff Securities is the World's largest Ponzi Scheme" He believed that "this would be another black eye for the brokerage industry."
Bingo!
Victims We Can Relate To
That black eye punch was never thrown. Instead, it was three years before Madoff went down. He continued to operate his con game, defrauding customers worldwide. At the same time, the 'celebrity' investors he ripped off (like Steven Speilberg) later became "sympathetic victims" - as opposed to subprime home borrowers who were often demonized as schemers and told they were naive and should have known better. A CNBC "documentary" showcased a parade of wealthy Madoff victims.
Bernie was a high flyer, a part of a clubby and incestuous elite world of golf clubs, resorts, and philanthropy with tax benefits.. He was a leader of the Wall Street world, at one point the Chairman of NASDAQ. Universities invited him to lecture on how markets work. He was admired, considered a role model, a genius. His firm handled l0% of all Stock Exchange trades.
His niece married an SEC regulator. Mary Schapiro, Barack Obama's pick to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), previously appointed one of his sons to a regulatory body that oversees American securities firms. Madoff himself said he had often visited the SEC where he complained of over regulation.
Bernie was in until he was out!
Soon he was wearing an electronic bracelet and under house arrest, a further sign of privileged treatment by the way. Imagine what secrets he could spill. Already the NY Times is reporting that this theft problem went much deeper with all the Wall Street firms posting phony profit reports and then giving themselves juicy bonuses. A financial blogger wrote that the Times was still obscuring the story because the practice constitutes nothing less than looting, a word they never use.
Unfortunately, Madoff was not unique, not alone, and shrewder than the people who trusted him to make earn a good return. One financial analyst said that some of his investors assumed he was doing something illegal - perhaps insider trading - which is why they wanted him to manage their money. They thought they would make more money that way without taking normal risks.
Funds of Funds
Subprime speculators targeted low and middle-income people. Madoff marketed to the wealthy. Editor Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post explained that he specialized in "funds of funds" hedge funds:
"These are hedge funds that raise money from pension funds, university endowments and wealthy individuals and, for a fee of 1.5 percent a year, invest it in other hedge funds, which charge even higher fees. In return for paying double fees, these middlemen claim to offer investors access to the best hedge funds, which can be selective about whose money they accept. They also offer the peace of mind that goes with knowing that the funds have been thoroughly checked out.
Now it turns out that some of these funds of funds had parked billions of dollars of their clients' money with Madoff without asking how he could so consistently produce returns in up market or down, or demanding to know why his books were audited by a three-person firm that nobody ever heard of operating out of a broom closet on Long Island.
It doesn't take a PhD in finance to see the pattern here: Accounting firms and rating agencies are too easily compromised by the fact that they are chosen and paid by the management of the companies whose books they are auditing and securities they are rating. There are simply too many built-in conflicts of interest.
And Madoff took advantage of them. As a result he had a license to steal, and steal he did.
"Disintermediated" Investors
James Hedges IV of LJH Global Investments, says those that went with Madoff chose faith over evidence. "You've got people who were disintermediated [i.e., didn't have a professional representative], or unsophisticated, or went in through a personal relationship. That's what a con man is - a confidence man is somebody that engenders a relationship and then subsequently lures somebody into doing something that they shouldn't do."
In the aftermath, the small gesture speaks volumes. A friend was staking out Madoff's former offices for a major news organization. No one would talk to her including investors who could be seen through the window on their cellphones moaning about losses.. They looked grim. Some were wiped out. When they left the building, some hid their faces, perhaps in shame, like criminals photographed on "perp walks." A philanthropy expert said the consequences will be "Catastrophic." An Israeli newspaper said many Jewish organizations will be hurt, some irreparably.
The anthropologist Lionel Tiger writes in Forbes about how incidents like this undermine all respect for the business world: "The invisible hand lurches between clenched fist and begging palm, and the new Greenwich Mean Time is in Connecticut. Suddenly, the only thing taken for granted is a government grant."
You could never make this up even though Wall Street history is replete with earlier versions of this Sultan of Sleaze. Around the world, it is not just the supercrook Bernie Madoff who is seen as the guilty party but the whole American system of free market finance. There will be a reckoning.
Every era has its bad guy, its high profile criminal who flames into public view through media circuses and tabloid headlines. In the 1930's, there was Al Capone brought down by the taxman. In the 40's, Willie Sutton was a big bad guy who once said he robbed banks because "that's where the money is." In the 1950's the Mafia seized our attention while here in New York, we had George Metetsky, the mad bomber. In the 60's, well you know the saying, "If you can remember that era, you weren't there..."
Many of these larger than life gangsters were anti-social outlaws robbing banks and the like. Now the banks are robbing us. Until he is outdone, we now have a new poster boy for Wall Street excess and larceny: the bland personage of Bernard Madoff, the consummate Wall Street insider, philanthropist and pillar of the financial community. He has now been credited in this credit crisis for the biggest theft in history.
Madoff seems to have won the gold medal for absconding with the most gold. His take: $50 billion and counting. It was, he admitted, all a Ponzi scheme. He was a reverse Robin Hood: he took from the rich and enriched himself in a life style festooned with many houses, boats and stays at $5,000 a night hotels.
The Notice
Go to The Madoff.com site today and there is this notice that thousands of investors are reading while holding back tears and outrage.
On December 15, 2008, the Honorable Louis L. Stanton, a Federal Judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, appointed Irving Picard as Trustee for the liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff Investments Securities LLC ("BMIS") pursuant to the Securities Investor Protection Act ("SIPA") as set forth in the attached order.
Mr. Picard supersedes Lee S. Richards, the previously appointed Receiver for BMIS and all claims by customers of BMIS will be processed by Mr. Picard as SIPA Trustee. Customers and claimants should refer to the website of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation for information about the processing of claims. SIPC.ORG
Mr. Richards continues to serve as Receiver for Madoff Securities International Ltd. pursuant to the attached order. The Trustee Irving Picard has engaged Lazard Freres & Co. LLC to assist in the sale of the trading operations of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC.
Should you have further questions, please contact the Trustee at the following number: 888-727-8695.
In short: Good Luck at Getting Any Of Your Money Back.
Whistleblower Rebuffed
Of course this dry legalistic language doesn't tell the whole story, the story of the failure of the Regulators to act, or about the submission to the SEC on November 7, 2005 of a 19-page detailed document.
This document was written by financial expert Harry Markopolos and sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission with a request for deep confidentiality. He exposed the the man now being called "Made-off." The title of his report: "The World's Biggest Hedge Fund is a Fraud." It projected scenarios including this one:
"(Very Likely) in bold, "Madoff Securities is the World's largest Ponzi Scheme" He believed that "this would be another black eye for the brokerage industry."
Bingo!
Victims We Can Relate To
That black eye punch was never thrown. Instead, it was three years before Madoff went down. He continued to operate his con game, defrauding customers worldwide. At the same time, the 'celebrity' investors he ripped off (like Steven Speilberg) later became "sympathetic victims" - as opposed to subprime home borrowers who were often demonized as schemers and told they were naive and should have known better. A CNBC "documentary" showcased a parade of wealthy Madoff victims.
Bernie was a high flyer, a part of a clubby and incestuous elite world of golf clubs, resorts, and philanthropy with tax benefits.. He was a leader of the Wall Street world, at one point the Chairman of NASDAQ. Universities invited him to lecture on how markets work. He was admired, considered a role model, a genius. His firm handled l0% of all Stock Exchange trades.
His niece married an SEC regulator. Mary Schapiro, Barack Obama's pick to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), previously appointed one of his sons to a regulatory body that oversees American securities firms. Madoff himself said he had often visited the SEC where he complained of over regulation.
Bernie was in until he was out!
Soon he was wearing an electronic bracelet and under house arrest, a further sign of privileged treatment by the way. Imagine what secrets he could spill. Already the NY Times is reporting that this theft problem went much deeper with all the Wall Street firms posting phony profit reports and then giving themselves juicy bonuses. A financial blogger wrote that the Times was still obscuring the story because the practice constitutes nothing less than looting, a word they never use.
Unfortunately, Madoff was not unique, not alone, and shrewder than the people who trusted him to make earn a good return. One financial analyst said that some of his investors assumed he was doing something illegal - perhaps insider trading - which is why they wanted him to manage their money. They thought they would make more money that way without taking normal risks.
Funds of Funds
Subprime speculators targeted low and middle-income people. Madoff marketed to the wealthy. Editor Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post explained that he specialized in "funds of funds" hedge funds:
"These are hedge funds that raise money from pension funds, university endowments and wealthy individuals and, for a fee of 1.5 percent a year, invest it in other hedge funds, which charge even higher fees. In return for paying double fees, these middlemen claim to offer investors access to the best hedge funds, which can be selective about whose money they accept. They also offer the peace of mind that goes with knowing that the funds have been thoroughly checked out.
Now it turns out that some of these funds of funds had parked billions of dollars of their clients' money with Madoff without asking how he could so consistently produce returns in up market or down, or demanding to know why his books were audited by a three-person firm that nobody ever heard of operating out of a broom closet on Long Island.
It doesn't take a PhD in finance to see the pattern here: Accounting firms and rating agencies are too easily compromised by the fact that they are chosen and paid by the management of the companies whose books they are auditing and securities they are rating. There are simply too many built-in conflicts of interest.
And Madoff took advantage of them. As a result he had a license to steal, and steal he did.
"Disintermediated" Investors
James Hedges IV of LJH Global Investments, says those that went with Madoff chose faith over evidence. "You've got people who were disintermediated [i.e., didn't have a professional representative], or unsophisticated, or went in through a personal relationship. That's what a con man is - a confidence man is somebody that engenders a relationship and then subsequently lures somebody into doing something that they shouldn't do."
In the aftermath, the small gesture speaks volumes. A friend was staking out Madoff's former offices for a major news organization. No one would talk to her including investors who could be seen through the window on their cellphones moaning about losses.. They looked grim. Some were wiped out. When they left the building, some hid their faces, perhaps in shame, like criminals photographed on "perp walks." A philanthropy expert said the consequences will be "Catastrophic." An Israeli newspaper said many Jewish organizations will be hurt, some irreparably.
The anthropologist Lionel Tiger writes in Forbes about how incidents like this undermine all respect for the business world: "The invisible hand lurches between clenched fist and begging palm, and the new Greenwich Mean Time is in Connecticut. Suddenly, the only thing taken for granted is a government grant."
You could never make this up even though Wall Street history is replete with earlier versions of this Sultan of Sleaze. Around the world, it is not just the supercrook Bernie Madoff who is seen as the guilty party but the whole American system of free market finance. There will be a reckoning.
A senior official at the global rights group implored members of the international community to "uphold their moral and legal obligations to bring an end to Israel's ongoing genocide."
Amnesty International on Monday published new testimonies of Palestinians suffering from Israel's "systemic and intentional" campaign of starvation in the Gaza Strip, where hundreds of people—including more than 100 children—have died of malnutrition over 682 days of US-backed genocide.
Israel "is carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation in the occupied Gaza Strip, systematically destroying the health, well-being, and social fabric of Palestinian life," Amnesty said in an introduction to the testimonies of starved and forcibly displaced civilians in the embattled enclave.
Amnesty said that the victims' accounts underscore the group's "repeated findings that the deadly combination of hunger and disease is not an unfortunate byproduct of Israel's military operations."
"It is the intended outcome of plans and policies that Israel has designed and implemented, over the past 22 months, to deliberately inflict on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction—which is part and parcel of Israel's ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza," the group added. The statement used language found in the treaty under which the International Court of Justice is currently determining whether Israel is committing the crime of genocide.
Among the 19 Palestinians interviewed by Amnesty are Hadeel, a 28-year-old pregnant mother of two, who said, "I fear miscarriage, but I also think about my baby: I panic just thinking about the potential impact of my own hunger on the baby's health, its weight, whether it will have [birth defects], and even if the baby is born healthy, what life awaits it, amidst displacement, bombs, tents."
Aziza, age 75, told Amnesty: "I feel like I have become a burden on my family. When we were displaced, they had to push me on a wheelchair. With toilet queues extremely long in the camp where we stay, I need adult diapers, which are extremely expensive. I need medication for diabetes, blood pressure, and a heart condition, and have had to take medicine which has expired."
Nahed, who is 66 yearsc old, said that "people I knew were almost unrecognizable" due to the effects of famine, and that "the experience of hunger and war has changed Gaza completely."
Adding that the desperate scramble for food "has denied people their humanity," Nahed described what she saw at an aid distribution site. Thousands of Palestinians have been killed or wounded while seeking aid, including more than 850 people slain at or near sites run by the US-based Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) whistleblowers have said they were ordered to fire live bullets and artillery shells into crowds of desperate aid-seekers, even when they posed no security threat.
"I had to go there because I have nobody to look after me," Nahed explained. "I saw with my own eyes people carrying bags of flour stained with the blood of those who had just been shot."
One emergency doctor at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City—which has endured multiple IDF attacks, including the alleged execution of children in and around the facility—told Amnesty that many patients would be leading "reasonable lives" were it not for the "combination of starvation, destruction, and depletion of the healthcare system, unsanitary conditions, and multiple displacements under inhumane conditions."
Referring to Israel's imminent US-backed reoccupation of Gaza and plan to ethnically cleanse 1 million Palestinians from in and around Gaza City, Erika Guevara Rosas—Amnesty's senior director of research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns—said Monday that "as Israeli authorities threaten to launch a full-scale ground invasion of Gaza City, the testimonies we have collected are far more than accounts of suffering, they are a searing indictment of an international system that has granted Israel a license to torment Palestinians with near-total impunity for decades."
Such impunity was implicit in a recording broadcast on an Israeli news channel Sunday in which former IDF Gen. Aharon Haliva said that for every Israeli killed during the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, "50 Palestinians must die," and "it doesn't matter" if "they are children."
Guevara Rosas continued:
To even begin reversing the devastating consequences of Israel's inhumane policies and actions, which have made mass starvation a grim reality in Gaza, there must be an immediate, unconditional lifting of the blockade and a sustained ceasefire. The impact of Israel's blockade and its ongoing genocide on civilians, particularly on children, people with disabilities, those with chronic illnesses, older people, and pregnant and breastfeeding women is catastrophic and cannot be undone by simply increasing the number of aid trucks or restoring performative, ineffective, and dangerous airdrops of aid.
"In the face of the horrors Israel is inflicting on the Palestinian population in Gaza, the international community, particularly Israel's allies... must uphold their moral and legal obligations to bring an end to Israel's ongoing genocide," Guevara Rosas added. "States must urgently suspend all arms transfers, adopt targeted sanctions, and terminate any engagement with Israeli entities when this contributes to Israel's genocide against Palestinians in Gaza."
The new Amnesty report came as the Gaza Health Ministry said the Palestinian death toll from Israel's 22-month annihilation and siege of the strip topped 62,000—mostly women and children—although experts say the actual toll is likely far higher. The ministry also said Monday that at least 263 people, including 112 children, have starved to death since October 2023.
Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder and forced starvation—deny Gazans are starving. However, even as staunch a supporter as US Vice President JD Vance has acknowledged that "little kids... are clearly starving to death" in Gaza.
"This goes far beyond 'wrong side of history,'" said journalist Ryan Grim.
The US State Department announced Saturday that it would halt the issuing of visas to children from Gaza in urgent need of medical care.
The decision came after a frenzied campaign by the racist online provocateur and close Trump confidante Laura Loomer, who raged over the weekend about the arrival of badly injured Palestinian children in Houston and San Francisco earlier this month.
The arrival of these children had been arranged by the US nonprofit group HEAL Palestine, which has helped at least 63 children "receive lifesaving surgeries, prosthetics, and rehabilitative care in the US."
In what she claimed was an "exclusive" report, Loomer—who has described herself as a "Proud Islamophobe," and as "pro-white nationalism"—shared a video posted by HEAL Palestine of children on crutches and wheelchairs arriving with their families at a US airport.
She falsely claimed that the children's shouts of joy were "jihadi chants" and that they were "doing the HAMAS terror whistle" and referred to the children as "Islamic invaders from an Islamic terror hot zone."
Loomer tagged Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the State Department in another post: "How did Palestinians get Visas under the Trump administration to get into the United States? Did @StateDept approve this? How did they get out of Gaza? Is @SecRubio aware of this?"
The day after Loomer's tirade began, the State Department announced that "all visitor visas for individuals from Gaza are being stopped while we conduct a full and thorough review of the process and procedures used to issue a small number of temporary medical-humanitarian visas in recent days."
HEAL Palestine issued a statement Sunday saying it was "distressed" by the State Department's decision. Contrary to claims by Loomer that the children would become "like leeches on welfare," HEAL clarified that the children in the country were here "on temporary visas for essential medical treatment not available at home."
"After their treatment is complete," the organization said, "the children and any accompanying family members return to the Middle East."
Rhana Natour, the director and producer of All That Remains—a documentary for Al Jazeera's Fault Lines on a 13-year-old Palestinian girl who traveled to the US to receive treatment after losing her leg in an Israeli airstrike—told Drop Site News that the humanitarian visas canceled by the State Department are granted "exclusively to burned and disabled children and their parents."
(Video: Al Jazeera English)
Loomer took credit for the department's cancellation of the visas, thanking Rubio and calling it "fantastic news."
"Hopefully, all GAZANS will be added to President Trump's travel ban," Loomer wrote. "There are doctors in other countries. The US is not the world's hospital!"
In response, the X account for Drop Site, which has frequently highlighted the work of HEAL Palestine, responded to Loomer, saying that "Your taxes aren't funding the care for these Palestinian children," and that their treatment was being funded entirely through private support from donors.
"The only role of US tax dollars in the picture," Drop Site said, "is the costly review the State Department will now be forced to conduct because of a deranged racist's ravings to block children from lifesaving treatment."
Loomer later suggested that the wounded Palestinian children were being treated "for free," at the expense of US taxpayers, while "US Veterans are homeless on the street, unable to get healthcare."
Journalist Ryan Grim, Drop Site's co-founder, responded: "Trump slashed Medicaid, slashed the [Department of Veterans Affairs], slashed [Affordable Care Act] exchange subsidies, and increased the military budget to over a trillion dollars but Loomer wants people to think that the reason they don't have healthcare is that a Palestinian child got treated thanks to donations from people heartbroken at what Israel is doing to children."
"The trillion dollars being spent to blow the arms and legs off of children is the problem," Grim continued. "Not the children themselves."
In July, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported that since October 2023, at least 17,000 children have been killed and 33,000 injured across Gaza, many of them attacked by Israeli forces "as they [lined] up for lifesaving humanitarian aid."
The UN reported Friday that "10 children were losing one or both legs every day," making Gaza "home to the largest group of child amputees in modern history."
Despite having no formal position, Loomer is one of the most influential figures in the Trump administration—reportedly having spearheaded the hiring and firing of aides for key roles, including in the National Security Council.
Loomer has said that the US is a "Judeo-Christian ethnostate" being "destroyed" by immigration, and—following the opening of Trump's immigrant detention camp "Alligator Alcatraz"—joked that the "alligators are guaranteed at least 65 million meals," a number referring to the total population of Latinos in the United States.
Following news of the State Department's decision to cancel visas for injured Palestinians, Grim wrote that it "looks like [Loomer] is also setting visa policy."
"So we want to arm Israel to the teeth, allow them to block food and medical aid from getting into Gaza, and also condemn those facing medical emergencies to death," he said. "This goes far beyond 'wrong side of history.'"
Aharon Haliva, the former head of military intelligence in Israel, said in his vengeful remarks that it "doesn't matter now if they are children."
Those who listened to the 22-minute speech given by a South African attorney as part of the country's genocide case against Israel at the United Nations' top court in January 2024 have long been well aware that Israeli officials have openly made genocidal statements about their military assault on Gaza—but a recording broadcast by an Israeli news channel on Sunday revealed what The Guardian called an "unusually direct description of collective punishment of civilians" by a high-level general.
Aharon Haliva, the general who led Israel's military intelligence operations on October 7, 2023 when Hamas led an attack on the country, was heard in a recording broadcast by Channel 12 that "for everything that happened on October 7, for every person on October 7, 50 Palestinians must die."
"The fact that there are already 50,000 dead in Gaza is necessary and required for future generations," said Haliva in comments that were made "in recent months," according to Channel 12. "It doesn't matter now if they are children."
More than 62,000 Palestinians have now been killed in Israel's airstrikes and ground assault on Gaza since October 7, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, with more than 250 people having died of malnutrition due to Israel's near-total blockade on humanitarian aid. The official death toll figures put out by officials in Gaza is believed by many to be a severe undercount.
The Israel Defense Forces' own data recently showed that only about 20,000 militants are among those who have been killed by Israeli forces—even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and both Republican and Democratic leaders in the United States, the top international funder of the IDF, continue to insist that the military is targeting Hamas.
Haliva, who stepped down from leading military intelligence in April 2024, added in his comments that Palestinians "need a Nakba every now and then to feel the price"—a reference to the forced displacement of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes, the killing of about 15,000 people, and the destruction of more than 500 Palestinian towns when the state of Israel was created in 1948.
Notably, The Guardian reported that Haliva is "widely seen as a centrist critic of the current government and its far-right ministers such as Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir," whose genocidal statements about Gaza and the West Bank have been widely reported.
When arguing South Africa's genocide case at the International Court of Justice in January 2024, attorney Tembeka Ngcukaitobi catalogued a number of statements made by Netanyahu, the IDF, and his top Israeli ministers, including:
The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, which said last month that it had determined Netanyahu's government is committing genocide in Gaza, said Haliva's remarks "are part of a long line of official statements that expose a deliberate policy of genocide."
"For 22 months, Israel has pursued a policy of systematically destroying Palestinian life in Gaza," said B'Tselem. "This is genocide. It is happening now. It must be stopped."
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor added that Haliva openly admitted "what Israel tries to deny: genocide is not a byproduct of war but the goal."
Haliva's remark about the necessity of repeating the Nakba in Gaza "reveals a clear intention: The bloodshed is not meant to stop, but to be repeated."
Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Haliva's statement "is not just evidence of genocidal rhetoric, it is a blueprint for genocidal action" that must push the US government to end its support for Israel.
"The Trump administration and the international community can no longer turn a blind eye," said Awad. "President [Donald] Trump and Congress cannot continue to claim they do not know or deny what the entire world is seeing every hour of every day. The United States must immediately halt all military aid and support to Israel and demand accountability for war crimes committed in Gaza. Silence is complicity."