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"The White House under Bush/Cheney can unconstitutionally ignite wars, lie to the people about the reasons, produce millions of casualties and untold destruction of innocent peoples' homelands, get re-elected and later retire with huge speech fees without being chased by the "sheriffs."(Photo: DonkeyHotey/Flickr/cc)
One of the first times I used the phrase "institutional insanity" was in 1973 to describe the behavior of scientist Dixy Lee Ray, chairperson of the presumed regulatory agency, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). I pointed out that her personal and academic roles were quite normal. But her running of the AEC--pressing for 1,000 nuclear plants in the U.S. by the year 2000 (there are 99 reactors left in operation now), and going easy on a deadly, taxpayer subsidized technology that was privately uninsurable, lacked a place to put its lethal radioactive wastes, a national security risk, replete with vast cost over-runs, immunities and impunities shielding culpable officials and executives, should a meltdown occur and take out a city or region (all to boil water to produce steam to make electricity)--was a case study in "institutional insanity."
Both the AEC and its successor, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), captured by the atomic energy industry, operate this way to this day, no matter the near misses, the spills, growing corporate welfare outlays, and the inadequate maintenance of aging nuclear power plants.
Our moral and ethical codes and our civil and criminal laws were originally designed to hold individuals accountable. The kings of yore operated under a divine right of being above the laws.
With the rise and proliferation of ever more multi-tiered governmental and corporate bureaucracies, methods of immunity, impunity and secrecy were built into these structures to shield them from moral/ethical codes and laws. Increasingly, we are ruled by no-fault big corporations and their no-fault toady governments.
Some comparisons are in order. If your neighbor entrusted you with her savings and paid you a fee for doing so, you then purchased stocks for her account while you're selling them for your account, deceiving the cheated neighbor in the process, would you escape the law? That is just some of what the Wall Street Barons did on a massive scale about ten years ago. No one was prosecuted and sent to jail for this corporate crime wave.
Suppose you hired a security person for your defense who, at the same time, wasted your money and couldn't account for your payments because his books were unauditable. Would you keep doing business with him? Wouldn't you demand an audit? Well on a hugely larger scale, this is the Pentagon contracting system and your tax dollars. Why not demand that the defense department stop violating federal law, as it has since 1992, and provide Congress with auditable information so that its accounting arm, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) can audit the notoriously porous Pentagon books.
Suppose the head of your neighborhood association kept sugar coating problems, kept lying to you, kept describing conditions that weren't so and kept doing things that would enrich himself in conflict with his duties. Would you keep supporting him in that position? Probably not. Well, that is your President, day after day.
What if your neighbor kept dumping polluted water and solid waste pollutants on your lawn and all around your house? Would you demand that your town or city stop this contamination, or sit quietly and accept this abuse because you don't believe in regulation? Well, Trump's EPA wrecker, Scott Pruitt, is busily going weakening environmental protections and even taking away environmental crimes investigators and forcing them to be his personal security guard.
Let's say your farmers' market vendors sensed that you were very dependent on the food they provide and they proceeded to triple the prices, it's not difficult to predict your reactions. Yet that is what the drug companies have done with many of your important medicines over the past 10 years. Yet where are the outraged demands for the government to have the power to negotiate volume discounts, facilitate generics, restrain prices for drugs rooted in your taxpayer funded research by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and allow imported competition from Canada?
You get into a bus or cab and the driver regularly cheats you into paying several times more than you should pay and then covers it up. When you find out about it, all hell breaks loose next time you confront him. What about Wells Fargo bank--they knowingly created unauthorized, false credit card and auto insurance accounts, wrongly billing customers millions of times. Imagine: no criminal prosecutions yet, no wholesale resignation of the well-paid Board of Directors, and very few customers are leaving the bank. Wells Fargo keeps reporting great profits while hassling victims into settlements. What's one takeaway? The bigger the crook, the bigger is our surrender. Too big to fail or jail!
The neighbor in charge of the rural, communal drinking water well knows it's being contaminated by a party that was his previous employer and expects to be hired back by his old boss. Your children as well as their parents are at risk. Well, welcome to Trump's deregulations of food, drug, auto pollution, and workplace investor safety. They've come from the industries' payroll and expect to come back with a big raise.
There are just a few contrasts between individual and institutional crimes and wrongdoing and our different responses toward them. Facebook, Google and Equifax can misuse your personal information to your perceived disadvantage and they repeatedly get away with it.
The White House under Bush/Cheney can unconstitutionally ignite wars, lie to the people about the reasons, produce millions of casualties and untold destruction of innocent peoples' homelands, get re-elected and later retire with huge speech fees without being chased by the "sheriffs."
It is doubtful whether you would allow your hamlet's political leaders to get away with such violent assaults, even if they wanted to do so.
If our moral/ethical/legal codes cannot reach up to the tops of these institutions on behalf of wronged, injured individuals and communities and societies, we'll get what we've been getting, which is worse and worse immunities/impunities with each passing decade.
Isn't this a fault/no fault paradox worth thinking about?
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One of the first times I used the phrase "institutional insanity" was in 1973 to describe the behavior of scientist Dixy Lee Ray, chairperson of the presumed regulatory agency, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). I pointed out that her personal and academic roles were quite normal. But her running of the AEC--pressing for 1,000 nuclear plants in the U.S. by the year 2000 (there are 99 reactors left in operation now), and going easy on a deadly, taxpayer subsidized technology that was privately uninsurable, lacked a place to put its lethal radioactive wastes, a national security risk, replete with vast cost over-runs, immunities and impunities shielding culpable officials and executives, should a meltdown occur and take out a city or region (all to boil water to produce steam to make electricity)--was a case study in "institutional insanity."
Both the AEC and its successor, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), captured by the atomic energy industry, operate this way to this day, no matter the near misses, the spills, growing corporate welfare outlays, and the inadequate maintenance of aging nuclear power plants.
Our moral and ethical codes and our civil and criminal laws were originally designed to hold individuals accountable. The kings of yore operated under a divine right of being above the laws.
With the rise and proliferation of ever more multi-tiered governmental and corporate bureaucracies, methods of immunity, impunity and secrecy were built into these structures to shield them from moral/ethical codes and laws. Increasingly, we are ruled by no-fault big corporations and their no-fault toady governments.
Some comparisons are in order. If your neighbor entrusted you with her savings and paid you a fee for doing so, you then purchased stocks for her account while you're selling them for your account, deceiving the cheated neighbor in the process, would you escape the law? That is just some of what the Wall Street Barons did on a massive scale about ten years ago. No one was prosecuted and sent to jail for this corporate crime wave.
Suppose you hired a security person for your defense who, at the same time, wasted your money and couldn't account for your payments because his books were unauditable. Would you keep doing business with him? Wouldn't you demand an audit? Well on a hugely larger scale, this is the Pentagon contracting system and your tax dollars. Why not demand that the defense department stop violating federal law, as it has since 1992, and provide Congress with auditable information so that its accounting arm, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) can audit the notoriously porous Pentagon books.
Suppose the head of your neighborhood association kept sugar coating problems, kept lying to you, kept describing conditions that weren't so and kept doing things that would enrich himself in conflict with his duties. Would you keep supporting him in that position? Probably not. Well, that is your President, day after day.
What if your neighbor kept dumping polluted water and solid waste pollutants on your lawn and all around your house? Would you demand that your town or city stop this contamination, or sit quietly and accept this abuse because you don't believe in regulation? Well, Trump's EPA wrecker, Scott Pruitt, is busily going weakening environmental protections and even taking away environmental crimes investigators and forcing them to be his personal security guard.
Let's say your farmers' market vendors sensed that you were very dependent on the food they provide and they proceeded to triple the prices, it's not difficult to predict your reactions. Yet that is what the drug companies have done with many of your important medicines over the past 10 years. Yet where are the outraged demands for the government to have the power to negotiate volume discounts, facilitate generics, restrain prices for drugs rooted in your taxpayer funded research by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and allow imported competition from Canada?
You get into a bus or cab and the driver regularly cheats you into paying several times more than you should pay and then covers it up. When you find out about it, all hell breaks loose next time you confront him. What about Wells Fargo bank--they knowingly created unauthorized, false credit card and auto insurance accounts, wrongly billing customers millions of times. Imagine: no criminal prosecutions yet, no wholesale resignation of the well-paid Board of Directors, and very few customers are leaving the bank. Wells Fargo keeps reporting great profits while hassling victims into settlements. What's one takeaway? The bigger the crook, the bigger is our surrender. Too big to fail or jail!
The neighbor in charge of the rural, communal drinking water well knows it's being contaminated by a party that was his previous employer and expects to be hired back by his old boss. Your children as well as their parents are at risk. Well, welcome to Trump's deregulations of food, drug, auto pollution, and workplace investor safety. They've come from the industries' payroll and expect to come back with a big raise.
There are just a few contrasts between individual and institutional crimes and wrongdoing and our different responses toward them. Facebook, Google and Equifax can misuse your personal information to your perceived disadvantage and they repeatedly get away with it.
The White House under Bush/Cheney can unconstitutionally ignite wars, lie to the people about the reasons, produce millions of casualties and untold destruction of innocent peoples' homelands, get re-elected and later retire with huge speech fees without being chased by the "sheriffs."
It is doubtful whether you would allow your hamlet's political leaders to get away with such violent assaults, even if they wanted to do so.
If our moral/ethical/legal codes cannot reach up to the tops of these institutions on behalf of wronged, injured individuals and communities and societies, we'll get what we've been getting, which is worse and worse immunities/impunities with each passing decade.
Isn't this a fault/no fault paradox worth thinking about?
One of the first times I used the phrase "institutional insanity" was in 1973 to describe the behavior of scientist Dixy Lee Ray, chairperson of the presumed regulatory agency, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). I pointed out that her personal and academic roles were quite normal. But her running of the AEC--pressing for 1,000 nuclear plants in the U.S. by the year 2000 (there are 99 reactors left in operation now), and going easy on a deadly, taxpayer subsidized technology that was privately uninsurable, lacked a place to put its lethal radioactive wastes, a national security risk, replete with vast cost over-runs, immunities and impunities shielding culpable officials and executives, should a meltdown occur and take out a city or region (all to boil water to produce steam to make electricity)--was a case study in "institutional insanity."
Both the AEC and its successor, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), captured by the atomic energy industry, operate this way to this day, no matter the near misses, the spills, growing corporate welfare outlays, and the inadequate maintenance of aging nuclear power plants.
Our moral and ethical codes and our civil and criminal laws were originally designed to hold individuals accountable. The kings of yore operated under a divine right of being above the laws.
With the rise and proliferation of ever more multi-tiered governmental and corporate bureaucracies, methods of immunity, impunity and secrecy were built into these structures to shield them from moral/ethical codes and laws. Increasingly, we are ruled by no-fault big corporations and their no-fault toady governments.
Some comparisons are in order. If your neighbor entrusted you with her savings and paid you a fee for doing so, you then purchased stocks for her account while you're selling them for your account, deceiving the cheated neighbor in the process, would you escape the law? That is just some of what the Wall Street Barons did on a massive scale about ten years ago. No one was prosecuted and sent to jail for this corporate crime wave.
Suppose you hired a security person for your defense who, at the same time, wasted your money and couldn't account for your payments because his books were unauditable. Would you keep doing business with him? Wouldn't you demand an audit? Well on a hugely larger scale, this is the Pentagon contracting system and your tax dollars. Why not demand that the defense department stop violating federal law, as it has since 1992, and provide Congress with auditable information so that its accounting arm, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) can audit the notoriously porous Pentagon books.
Suppose the head of your neighborhood association kept sugar coating problems, kept lying to you, kept describing conditions that weren't so and kept doing things that would enrich himself in conflict with his duties. Would you keep supporting him in that position? Probably not. Well, that is your President, day after day.
What if your neighbor kept dumping polluted water and solid waste pollutants on your lawn and all around your house? Would you demand that your town or city stop this contamination, or sit quietly and accept this abuse because you don't believe in regulation? Well, Trump's EPA wrecker, Scott Pruitt, is busily going weakening environmental protections and even taking away environmental crimes investigators and forcing them to be his personal security guard.
Let's say your farmers' market vendors sensed that you were very dependent on the food they provide and they proceeded to triple the prices, it's not difficult to predict your reactions. Yet that is what the drug companies have done with many of your important medicines over the past 10 years. Yet where are the outraged demands for the government to have the power to negotiate volume discounts, facilitate generics, restrain prices for drugs rooted in your taxpayer funded research by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and allow imported competition from Canada?
You get into a bus or cab and the driver regularly cheats you into paying several times more than you should pay and then covers it up. When you find out about it, all hell breaks loose next time you confront him. What about Wells Fargo bank--they knowingly created unauthorized, false credit card and auto insurance accounts, wrongly billing customers millions of times. Imagine: no criminal prosecutions yet, no wholesale resignation of the well-paid Board of Directors, and very few customers are leaving the bank. Wells Fargo keeps reporting great profits while hassling victims into settlements. What's one takeaway? The bigger the crook, the bigger is our surrender. Too big to fail or jail!
The neighbor in charge of the rural, communal drinking water well knows it's being contaminated by a party that was his previous employer and expects to be hired back by his old boss. Your children as well as their parents are at risk. Well, welcome to Trump's deregulations of food, drug, auto pollution, and workplace investor safety. They've come from the industries' payroll and expect to come back with a big raise.
There are just a few contrasts between individual and institutional crimes and wrongdoing and our different responses toward them. Facebook, Google and Equifax can misuse your personal information to your perceived disadvantage and they repeatedly get away with it.
The White House under Bush/Cheney can unconstitutionally ignite wars, lie to the people about the reasons, produce millions of casualties and untold destruction of innocent peoples' homelands, get re-elected and later retire with huge speech fees without being chased by the "sheriffs."
It is doubtful whether you would allow your hamlet's political leaders to get away with such violent assaults, even if they wanted to do so.
If our moral/ethical/legal codes cannot reach up to the tops of these institutions on behalf of wronged, injured individuals and communities and societies, we'll get what we've been getting, which is worse and worse immunities/impunities with each passing decade.
Isn't this a fault/no fault paradox worth thinking about?
"If implemented, the plans would amount to transferring people from one war-ravaged land at risk of famine to another," the Associated Press said.
Israel has reportedly discussed pushing the Palestinian population of Gaza to another war zone in South Sudan.
The Associated Press reported Tuesday that Israeli leaders had been engaged in talks with the African nation and that an Israeli delegation would soon visit the country to look into the possibility of setting up "makeshift camps" for Palestinians to be herded into.
"It's unclear how far the talks have advanced, but if implemented, the plans would amount to transferring people from one war-ravaged land at risk of famine to another," the AP said.
Like Gaza, South Sudan is in the midst of a massive humanitarian crisis caused by an ongoing violence and instability. In June, Human Rights Watch reported that more than half of South Sudan's population, 7.7 million people, faced acute food insecurity. The nation is also home to one of the world's largest refugee crises, with more than 2 million people internally displaced.
On Wednesday, the South Sudanese foreign ministry said it "firmly refutes" the reports that it discussed the transfer of Palestinians with Israel, adding that they are "baseless and do not reflect the official position or policy."
However, six sources that spoke to the AP—including the founder of a U.S.-based lobbying firm and the leader of a South Sudanese civil society group, as well as four who maintained anonymity—said the government briefed them on the talks.
Sharren Haskel, Israel's deputy foreign minister, also arrived in South Sudan on Tuesday to hold a series of talks with the president and other government officials.
While the content of these talks is unclear for the moment, the Israeli government is quite open about its goal of seeking the permanent transfer of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to other countries.
In addition to South Sudan, it has been reported that Israeli officials have also approached Sudan, Somalia, and the breakaway state of Somaliland, all of which have suffered from chronic war, poverty, and instability.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview with the Israeli TV station i24 that "the right thing to do, even according to the laws of war as I know them, is to allow the population to leave, and then you go in with all your might against the enemy who remains there."
Though Netanyahu has described this as "voluntary migration," Israeli officials have in the past indicated that their goal is to make conditions in Gaza so intolerable that its people see no choice but to leave.
Finance minister and war cabinet member Bezalel Smotrich, who has openly discussed the objective of forcing 2 million Palestinians out to make way for Israeli settlers, said in May: "Within a few months, we will be able to declare that we have won. Gaza will be totally destroyed."
Speaking of its people, he said: "They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places."
Contrary to Netanyahu's assertion, international bodies, governments, and human rights groups have denounced the so-called "voluntary migration" plan as a policy of forcible transfer that is illegal under international law.
"To impose inhumane conditions of life to push Palestinians out of Gaza would amount to the war crime of unlawful transfer or deportation," said Amnesty International in May.
Israeli human rights organizations, led by the group Gisha, explained in June in a letter to Israel's Defense Minister, Israel Katz, that there is no such thing as "voluntary migration" under the circumstances that the Israeli war campaign has imposed.
"Genuine 'consent' under these conditions simply does not exist," the groups said. "Therefore, the decision in question constitutes explicit planning for mass transfer of civilians and ethnic cleansing, while violating international law, amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity."
The plan to permanently remove Palestinians from the Gaza Strip has received the backing of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has said he wants to turn the strip into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
The U.S. State Department currently advises travelers not to visit Sudan or Somaliland due to the risk of armed conflict, civil unrest, crime, terrorism, and kidnapping. However, the United States has reportedly been involved in talks pushing these countries to take in the Palestinians forced out by Israel.
After Israel announced its plans to fully "conquer" Gaza, U.N. official Miroslav Jenča said during an emergency Security Council session on Sunday that the occupation push is "yet another dangerous escalation of the conflict."
"If these plans are implemented," he said, "they will likely trigger another calamity in Gaza, reverberating across the region and causing further forced displacement, killings, and destruction—compounding the unbearable suffering of the population."
Under Kennedy's leadership, Defend Public Health charged, the federal government "is now leading the spread of misinformation."
A grassroots public health organization on Wednesday took a preemptive hatchet to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s upcoming "Make America Health Again" report, whose release was delayed this week.
Health advocacy organization Defend Public Health said that it felt comfortable trashing the yet-to-be-released Kennedy report given that his previous report released earlier this year "fundamentally mischaracterized or ignored key issues in U.S. public health."
Instead, the group decided to release its own plan called "Improving the Health of Americans Together," which includes measures to ensure food safety, to improve Americans' ability to find times to exercise, and to ensure access to vaccines. The report also promotes expanding access to healthcare while taking a shot at the massive budget package passed by Republicans last month that cut an estimated $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade.
"In 2023, 28% of Americans had to delay or forgo medical or dental care due to cost, a number that will increase thanks to the recent reconciliation bill," the organization said. "Health coverage should be expanded, not reduced, and the U.S. should move toward a system that covers all."
Defend Public Health's report also directly condemns Kennedy's leadership as head of the Health and Human Services Department (HHS), as it labels him "an entirely destructive force and a major source of misinformation" who "must be removed from office." Under Kennedy's leadership, Defend Public Health charged, the federal government "is now leading the spread of misinformation."
Elizabeth Jacobs, an epidemiologist at the University of Arizona and a founding member of Defend Public Health, explained her organization's rationale for getting out in front of Kennedy's report.
"Public health can't wait, so we felt it was important not to let RFK Jr. set an agenda based on distortions and distractions," she said. "Tens of thousands of scientists, healthcare providers, and public health practitioners would love to be part of a real agenda to improve the health of Americans, but RFK Jr. keeps showing he has no clue how to do it."
She then added that "you can't build a public health agenda on pseudoscience while ignoring fundamental problems like poverty and other social determinants of health" and said her organization has "put together strategies that could truly help children and adults stay healthier, and that's the conversation Americans need to be having, not Kennedy's fake 'MAHA.'"
Kennedy has been drawing the ire of public health experts since his confirmation as HHS secretary. The Washington Post reported this week that Kennedy angered employees of the Centers for Disease Control after he continued to criticize their response to the novel coronavirus pandemic even after a gunman opened fire on the agency's headquarters late last week.
Kennedy also got into a spat recently with international health experts. According to Reuters, Kennedy recently demanded the retraction of a Danish study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine journal that found no link between children's exposure to aluminum in vaccines and incidence of neurodevelopment disorders such as autism.
"We refuse to be silent while our colleagues are starved and shot by Israel," whose "ongoing genocide and deepening siege have effectively destroyed the entire health system in Gaza."
More than 120 doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals from around the world who have worked in Gaza since late 2023 published a letter on Wednesday expressing solidarity with their Palestinian colleagues, who "continue to endure unimaginable violence" amid Israel's 22-month U.S.-backed annihilation and siege.
"Today, we raise our voices again in full solidarity with our Palestinian colleagues in Gaza," the international medical workers wrote in the open letter first obtained by Zeteo and also published by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, which along with B'Tselem last month became the first two Israeli advocacy groups to accuse their country of genocide.
"We refuse to be silent while our colleagues are starved and shot by Israel," declared the letter's signers, who "have witnessed firsthand the scale and severity of suffering" inflicted by Israeli bombs, bullets, and blockade.
The letter continues: "Israel's ongoing genocide and deepening siege have effectively destroyed the entire health system in Gaza. The few remaining partially functioning hospitals are held together by the determination and commitment of Palestinian doctors and nurses, all of whom continue to care for patients despite the constant risk of targeting, and now starvation too."
In a historic letter, 123 doctors from around the world who've served in Gaza demand international action to stop the horrors their Palestinian colleagues & Palestinian people face.“We reject the violence of silence and supposed neutrality while our colleagues are starved and shot at by Israel.”
[image or embed]
— Prem Thakker ツ (@premthakker.bsky.social) August 13, 2025 at 8:14 AM
"Our Palestinian colleagues—doctors, nurses, and first responders—are all rapidly losing weight due to forced starvation at the hands of the Israeli government," the signers said. "Many suffer from hunger, dizziness, and fainting episodes while performing operations and triaging patients in emergency rooms. Most have been displaced into tents after being forced from their homes, and many are surviving on less than a single serving of rice a day."
"Palestinian healthcare workers have been killed in large numbers as a result of Israel's repeated and systemic attacks on the health system and health workforce," the letter notes. "Over 1,580 health workers had been killed as of May 2025."
Furthermore, "the Israeli military has abducted, unlawfully detained, abused, and tortured hundreds of Palestinian healthcare workers, holding them in abject conditions in prisons and detention camps."
"The Israeli state has repeatedly blocked patient evacuations and international medical initiatives, and has closed or obstructed critical evacuation and humanitarian routes," the letter states. "Israel continues to systematically block the entry of critical supplies—medications, surgical tools, food, and even baby formula. As a result, Palestinian health workers must try to save lives in hospitals without the most basic supplies that are readily available only a short distance away."
The letter continues:
Patients cannot heal without adequate nutrition and access to comprehensive health services. If someone survives being shot by an Israeli soldier or a blast injury from an Israeli warplane, they still have to heal from their wounds. Malnutrition is a major barrier to full recovery, leaving people susceptible to infections for which very little treatment is now available in Gaza. Put simply: Your body cannot heal when you have not eaten properly in days or sometimes weeks, as is now commonplace in Gaza. The same is true for doctors and healthcare workers, who are struggling to provide care while facing the same conditions of extreme deprivation.
"These are not logistical challenges that can be solved simply by more medical aid or more international medical delegations," the signers added. "This is an entirely man-made crisis driven by limitless cruelty and complete disregard for Palestinian life."
The medical professionals are demanding international action to:
In addition to the 123 signatories who worked in Gaza, another 159 medical professionals from around the world signed the letter in solidarity.
The new letter comes as the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—a fugitive from the International Criminal Court wanted for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes—is preparing a major offensive to fully occupy and ethnically cleanse Gaza.
Launched in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, Israel's 676-day assault and siege on Gaza has left at least 230,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Most of Gaza's more than 2 million inhabitants have also been forcibly displaced, often multiple times. At least 235 Gazans, including 106 children, have starved to death amid a growing famine.
Despite growing international outrage and condemnation of Israel's obliteration of Gaza, there is no end in sight.