Remember the Palestinian Doctors Killed by Israel / by Vijay Prashad

_{^{Dr. Adnan Al-Barsh giving an interview | NewsClick}}

_{Reposted from NewsClick}

In the first week of June 2024, the Palestine office of the World Health Organization (WHO) released figures about the atrocious attacks on health care facilities and workers in Gaza since October 7, 2023. Thus far, according to the WHO, the Israelis have attacked 464 health care facilities, killed 727 health care workers, injured 933 health care workers, and damaged or destroyed 113 ambulances. “Health care,” the WHO’s Palestine office argues, “is not a target.” And yet, during the past seven months, health care workers have faced relentless attacks by the Israeli military. Each of the stories about the deaths is heartbreaking, the names of the dead are too long to list in any article (although a group called Healthcare Workers for Palestine did read the names of their dead colleagues as a protest against this war). But some of the stories are worth reflecting on because they tell us about the commitment of the workers and the great loss to humanity from their murder.

Dr. Iyad Rantisi, who was 53 years old, ran the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, which lies in the northern part of Gaza. There are many Rantisis in Gaza, but they are not native to that part of Palestine. Like many Palestinians who live in Gaza, they have roots in other parts of Palestine from which they had been expelled in the Nakba of 1948; the Rantisis come from the village of Rantis, northwest of Ramallah.

On November 11, 2023, during the Israeli military assault inside northern Gaza, Dr. Rantisi was taken into custody at an Israeli military checkpoint when he tried to leave northern Gaza for the south, following the orders of the Israeli military. Since then, his family had not heard anything about his whereabouts. Now, months later, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that he was taken to the Shikma Investigation Center of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), which is inside the Ashkelon Prison. Dr. Rantisi was tortured and then killed six days into his detention. His family was not informed of this until the Haaretz report. Then, Dr. Rantisi’s daughter Dima wrote of the death of her father, a social media post that she paired with photographs of him in medical scrubs performing surgery on a patient.

Dr. Adnan Al-Barsh, also 53, trained in Romania before he returned home to Gaza to head the orthopedic department at Al-Shifa Hospital. He has a reputation of being a very loved doctor, whose office was crowded with his diplomas (from Jordan, from Palestine, from the United Kingdom). When the Israeli military attacked al-Shifa, Dr. Al-Barsh was forced to leave his post, but he did not leave his work. He first went to Kamal Adwan Hospital, where Dr. Rantisi worked, and then to Al-Awda Hospital in the area east of the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, which was also attacked several times by the Israelis. On December 18, 2023, the Israeli military raided Al-Awda and took Dr. Al-Barsh and other hospital personnel into custody. Included among those arrested was the manager of the hospital and another very popular doctor, Dr. Ahmed Muhanna. On October 15, 2023, Dr. Muhanna made a video—which went viral—in which he pleaded to the world for help and for an immediate ceasefire. It is now reported that on April 19, 2024, Dr. Al-Barsh was killed by the Israelis in Ofer Prison. Tlaleng Mofokeng, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, said, “Dr. Adnan’s case raises serious concerns that he died following torture at the hands of Israeli authorities.”

Dr. Hammam Alloh, age 36, was killed when an Israeli missile struck his home near his ward in Al-Shifa Hospital on November 12, 2023. Trained in Yemen and Jordan, Dr. Alloh was Gaza’s only nephrologist, a kidney specialist. Concerned about his patients who were on dialysis, particularly with the lack of electricity and the constant attacks, Dr. Alloh—who was known as “The Legend” during his residency in Jordan—refused to leave the hospital. On October 31, Dr. Alloh was asked why he did not abandon his post and go to southern Gaza. “If I go,” he replied calmly, “who would treat my patients? We are not animals. We have the right to receive proper health care. You think I went to medical school and for my postgraduate degrees for a total of 14 years so I think only about my life and not my patients?” This was the caliber of Dr. Alloh. Less than two weeks later, when he left his post to have a rest at home with his parents, his wife (pregnant with a child), and his two children, the Israelis struck his home. He died alongside his father.

At the International Court of Justice in January 2024, the Irish lawyer Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh made the closing arguments for South Africa’s claim of genocide against Israel. In the course of her statement, Ní Ghrálaigh showed an image of a whiteboard with the following written on it: “Whoever stays until the end will tell the story. We did what we could. Remember us.” These lines had been written by 38-year-old Dr. Mahmoud Abu Najaila, who worked as a physician for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) at Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza. On November 21, 2023, the Israeli military bombed the third and fourth floors of the hospital, where Dr. Najaila worked with Dr. Ahmad Al-Sahar and Dr. Ziad Al-Tatari. All three of them were killed.

On her LinkedIn page, Reem Abu Lebdeh, a physiotherapist who was an associate trustee on the board of MSF’s UK branch, wrote, “Such a devastating loss for the medical community and humanity.” These doctors, whom she knew, she said, “were true embodiments of selfless service and humanitarian dedication, tirelessly saving lives in the most urgent conditions.” Then a few weeks later, sometime in December, the Israelis attacked a residential area in Khan Younis and killed Reem Abu Lebdeh, whose own messages of solidarity now sit on the web like Dr. Najaila’s whiteboard note: Remember us.

_{This article was produced by Globetrotter.}

_{Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of US Power.}

Nancy Morejón: Cuban poet on the revolution and the role of the artist / by Peoples Dispatch

_^flickr.com

_{Reposted from People’s Dispatch}

Cuabn poet Nancy Morejón talks about how the revolution in Cuba paved the way for cultural emancipation as well as why the voices in support for Palestine must be louder.

Cuban poet Nancy Morejón discusses the triumph of the revolution, the US blockade against Cuba, and the genocide in Gaza, and shares some of her revolutionary poetry, translated into English

_{Nancy Morejón (b. 1944, Havana) is a beloved elder poet, essayist, journalist, and translator. The first Afro-Cuban allowed to seek a degree in Cuba, she quickly rose to national prominence as Poet Laureate, president of the Writers’ Union, member of the Academia Cubana de la Lengua, and senior adviser for Casa de las Américas and Teatro Nacional de Cuba.}

War Cuts the Heart Out of Humankind /

_{^{Israeli Merkava tank in a Gaza Street January 2024. Photo: Wikimedia Commons}}

As Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza rages on, historian Vijay Prashad reflects on the multi-dimensional impact of war on people and society

_{Reposted from NewsClick}

In the apartment of my friends in Baghdad (Iraq), they tell me about how each of them had been impacted by the ugliness of the 2003 US-imposed illegal war on their country. Yusuf and Anisa are both members of the Federation of Journalists of Iraq and both have experience as “stringers” for Western media companies that came to Baghdad amid the war. When I first went to their apartment for dinner in the well-positioned Waziriyah neighborhood, I was struck by the fact that Anisa—whom I had known as a secular person—wore a veil on her face. “I wear this scarf,” Anisa said to me later in the evening, “to hide the scar on my jaw and neck, the scar made by a bullet wound from a US soldier who panicked after an IED [improvised explosive device] went off beside his patrol.”

Earlier in the day, Yusuf had taken me around New Baghdad City, where in 2007 an Apache helicopter had killed almost twenty civilians and injured two children. Among the dead were two journalists who worked for Reuters, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen. “This is where they were killed,” Yusuf tells me as he points to the square. “And this is where Saleh [Matasher Tomal] parked his minivan to rescue Saeed, who had not yet died. And this is where the Apache shot at the minivan, grievously injuring Saleh’s children, Sajad and Duah.” I was interested in this place because the entire incident was captured on film by the US military and released by Wikileaks as “Collateral Murder.” Julian Assange is in prison largely because he led the team that released this video (he has now received the right to challenge in a UK court his extradition to the United States). The video presented direct evidence of a horrific war crime.

“No one in our neighborhood has been untouched by the violence. We are a society that has been traumatized,” Anisa said to me in the evening. “Take my neighbor for instance. She lost her mother in a bombing and her husband is blind because of another bombing.” The stories fill my notebook. They are endless. Every society that has experienced the kind of warfare faced by the Iraqis, and now by the Palestinians, is deeply scarred. It is hard to recover from such violence.

My poisoned land

I am walking near the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Vietnam. My friends who are showing me the area point to the fields that surround it and say that this land has been so poisoned by the United States dropping Agent Orange that they do not think food can be produced here for generations. The US dropped at least 74 million liters of chemicals, mostly Agent Orange, on Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, with the focus for many years being this supply line that ran from the north to the south. The spray of these chemicals struck the bodies of at least five million Vietnamese and mutilated the land.

A Vietnamese journalist Trân Tô Nga published Ma terre empoisonnée (My poisoned land) in 2016 as a way to call attention to the atrocity that has continued to impact Vietnam over four decades after the US lost the war. In her book, Trân Tô Nga describes how as a journalist in 1966 she was sprayed by a US Air Force Fairchild C-123 with a strange chemical. She wiped it off and went ahead through the jungle, inhaling the poisons dropped from the sky. When her daughter was born two years later, she died in infancy from the impact of Agent Orange on Trân Tô Nga. “The people from that village over there,” my guides tell me, naming the village, “birth children with severe defects generation after generation.”

Gaza

These memories come back in the context of Gaza. The focus is often on the dead and of the destruction of the landscape. But there are other enduring parts of modern warfare that are hard to calculate. There is the immense sound of war, the noise of bombardment and of cries, the noises that go deep into the consciousness of young children and mark them for their entire lives. There are children in Gaza, for example, who were born in 2006 and are now eighteen, who have seen wars at their birth in 2006, then in 2008-09, 2012, 2014, 2021, and now, 2023-24. The gaps between these major bombardments have been punctuated by smaller bombardments, as noisy and as deadly.

Then there is the dust. Modern construction uses a range of toxic materials. Indeed, in 1982, the World Health Organization recognized a phenomenon called “sick building syndrome,” which is when a person falls ill due to the toxic material used to construct modern buildings. Imagine that a 2,000-pound MK84 bomb lands on a building and imagine the toxic dust that flies about and lingers both in the air and on the ground. This is precisely what the children of Gaza are now breathing as the Israelis drop hundreds of these deadly bombs on residential neighborhoods. There is now over 37 million tons of debris in Gaza, large sections of it filled with toxic substances.

Every war zone remains dangerous years after ceasefires. In the case of this war on Gaza, even a cessation of hostilities will not end the violence. In early November 2023, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor estimated that the Israelis had dropped 25,000 tons of explosives on Gaza, which is the equivalent of two nuclear bombs (although, as they pointed out, Hiroshima sits on 900 square meters of land, whereas Gaza’s total square meters are 360). By the end of April 2024, Israel had dropped over 75,000 tons of bombs on Gaza, which would be the equivalent of six nuclear bombs. The United Nations estimates that it would take 14 years to clear the unexploded ordnance in Gaza. That means until 2038 people will be dying due to this Israeli bombardment.

On the mantle of the modest living room in the apartment of Anisa and Yusuf, there is a small Palestinian flag. Next to it is a small piece of shrapnel that struck and destroyed Yusuf’s left eye. There is nothing else on the mantle.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Elites in the global north are scared to talk about Palestine / by Vijay Prashad

_{^{Columbia student encampment for Gaza | Photo: Wyatt Souers}}

While people across the world have been taking bold action in support of Palestine, the global north ruling class has used all tools at its disposal to support Israel’s genocide and criminalize solidarity

_{Reposted from People’s Dispatch}

Israeli bombs continue to fall on Gaza, killing Palestinian civilians with abandon. Al Jazeera published a story about the destruction of 24 hospitals in Gaza, each of them bombed mercilessly by the Israeli military. Half of the 35,000 Palestinians killed by Israel were children, their bodies littering the overwhelmed morgues and mosques of Gaza. The former United Nations assistant secretary-general for human rights Andrew Gilmour told BBC Newsnight that the Palestinians are experiencing “collective punishment” and that what we are seeing in Gaza is “probably the highest kill rate of any military, killing anybody, since the Rwandan genocide of 1994.” Meanwhile, in the West Bank section of Palestine, Human Rights Watch shows that the Israeli military has participated in the displacement of Palestinians from 20 communities and has uprooted at least seven communities since October 2023. These are established facts.

Yet, these facts—according to a leaked memorandum—cannot be spoken about in the “newspaper of record” in the United States, the New York Times. Journalists at the paper were asked to avoid the terms “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” and “occupied territory.” Indeed, over the past six months, newspapers and television shows in the United States have generally written about the genocidal violence using passive voice: bombs fell, people died. Even on social media, where the terrain is often less controlled, the ax fell on key phrases; for instance, despite his professions of commitment to free speech, Elon Musk said that terms such as “decolonization” and phrases such as “from the river to the sea” would be banned on X.

Silence on the college campuses

At the University of Southern California (USC), Asna Tabassum, a South Asian American, was to deliver an address on campus to 65,000 people as the valedictorian of the class of 2024. Involved in the conversation around the Israeli war against the Palestinians, Tabassum was targeted by pro-Israeli activists who claimed to feel threatened. On the basis of this feeling of endangerment, whose source the university refused to disclose, USC decided to cancel her speech. In a thoughtful response, Tabassum—who majored in biomedical engineering and history (with a minor in resistance to genocide)—implored her classmates “to think outside the box—to work towards a world where cries of equality and human dignity are not manipulated to be expressions of hatred. I challenge us to respond to ideological discomfort with dialogue and learning, not bigotry and censorship.” Tabassum is 21 years old. The USC provost who canceled her speech, Andrew Guzman, is 56 years old. His reasons for shutting her down are less mature than her plea for dialogue.

College students across the United States have been trying desperately to raise awareness about what is happening in Gaza and have sought to get their campuses to divest from companies with investments in Israel and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Early protests were tolerated, but then US politicians got involved with congressional hearings and rash comments about these students being funded by the Chinese and Russians. College administrators, afraid of their donors and of political pressure, buckled and began to censor the students from one end of the country (Columbia University) to the other (Pomona College). College presidents invited local police departments onto their campuses, allowed them to arrest the students, and suspended them from their colleges. But the mood is undeniable. Student unions across the country—from Rutgers to Davis—voted to force their administrations to divest from Israel.

What’s repugnant?

On April 12, 2024, the Berlin police closed a Palestine conference that brought together people from across Germany to listen to a range of speakers, including from other parts of Europe and from Palestine. At the airport, the police detained and then deported the British-Palestinian doctor, Ghassan Abu Sitta, who had volunteered in Gaza and had witnessed the genocidal war firsthand. The former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis was to give an online speech at the conference. He was not only prevented from giving that speech, but also was issued a betätigungsverbot—or a ban from any political activity in Germany (ban from entry into Germany and a ban from doing an online event). This, Varoufakis said, is essentially the “death knell of the prospects of democracy in the Federal Republic of Germany.”

A few days before the conference in Berlin, Professor Jodi Dean published an essay on the Verso Blog called “Palestine Speaks for Everyone.” The essay is rooted in the simple, and unobjectionable, idea that oppressed people have the right to fight for their emancipation. This is the basis of the International Declaration of Human Rights, also cited frequently by Varoufakis. The day after the Palestine conference was shut down in Berlin, Jodi Dean’s employer, President Mark Gearan of Hobart and William Smith Colleges in the United States, published a statement announcing that Professor Dean cannot teach the rest of her classes this term. Gearan wrote that not only was he in “complete disagreement” with Dean, but he also found her comments to be “repugnant.” It is interesting that since October, Gearan has only released a public statement condemning Hamas, but nothing about the horrendous genocidal violence against the Palestinians.

What did Jodi Dean write that was so “repugnant”? Gearan focused on the word “exhilarating,” which Dean used to describe her reaction to paragliders that went beyond the Israeli occupation fence around Gaza. She did not actually celebrate the attacks of October 7, but merely used the paragliders as a metaphor to consider the politics of hope and liberation from a Palestinian standpoint (citing the last poem of Refaat Alareer, killed by Israel on December 6, 2023, with its meditation on kites to highlight the idea of soaring above oppression). Gearan did not want a dialogue about the occupation or about the genocide. Like the editors and publishers of the New York Times, like the German government, and like other US college presidents, Gearan wanted to curtail conversation. Tabassum’s plea for “dialogue and learning” was muzzled; too scared to actually talk about Palestine, people like Gearan prefer “bigotry and censorship.”

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Censored Palestinian artist on the art of the working class / by People’s Dispatch

_{^{The Kafr Qasem Massacre of 1956, Killing Inside the Village, the Easa Family | via People’s World}}

Palestinian artist Samia Halaby spoke to Peoples Dispatch about censorship, abstract art, the genocide in Gaza and more

_{Reposted from People’s Dispatch}

Palestinian artist Samia Halaby had her alma mater cancel her planned exhibit back in February, over her outspoken support for Palestine. In an interview with Peoples Dispatch, Halaby discusses the revolutionary and working class nature of abstract art, often presented as an apolitical art form.

_{Censored Palestinian artist}

_{Peoples Dispatch, formerly The Dawn News, is an international media project with the mission of bringing to you voices from people’s movements and organizations across the globe. Since its establishment three years ago, it has sought to ensure that the coverage of news from around the world is not restricted to the rhetoric of politicians and the fortunes of big companies but encompasses the richness and diversity of mobilizations from around the world.}

Peter Mertens: “Netanyahu is the Pinochet of this generation” / by Peoples Dispatch

_{^{Peter Mertens speaking at a Palestine solidarity rally | via People’s Dispatch}}

_{_{Reposted from People’s Dispatch}}

On February 29, 2024, a day after the “Flour Massacre”, wherein Israeli forces massacred over 100 people in the south of Gaza City waiting for food aid, Peter Mertens, the General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Belgium gave a speech in parliament calling for greater action to stop Israel’s genocide.

Below is the transcript of this speech.

Normally, Rafah has barely 165,000 inhabitants but now 1.4 million people have been driven together there. For months they said it would be safe in the south, and now everyone is crammed in those unspeakable conditions. Now Netanyahu threatens to bomb Rafah too.

It’s unbelievable. There are no words for it.

People have been driven out of their homes, expelled from their land, city after city, zone after zone. The north and center of Gaza have been bombed, barely anything remains standing.

They have made 100,000 victims, 30,000 of whom are dead.
13,000 children have been killed, and the other children are subjected to the worst torture: famine.

They have closed the borders and attacked humanitarian convoys, and there is hardly anything left in the markets.

And once they have driven everyone south, to Rafah, and made the land uninhabitable, they now announce they will bomb Rafah.

There is only one question for this parliament: how long will we continue to stand by? What does Israel have to do to be sanctioned? Do they also have to bomb Rafah? When will our country impose sanctions on Israel? That’s the question.

Imagine being Palestinian today. Imagine being Palestinian; your land is stolen, your history is stolen, and your future is stolen.

Saleh is a Palestinian farmer in the West Bank, with an olive grove. At some point, Israeli settlers arrive and take away half of his land, just like that, because they can. This land theft has been going on for 75 years now, annexation after annexation, generation after generation.

So Saleh wonders: does international law not apply to Palestinians? Israel has been condemned countless times over the years…, but nobody acts.

Imagine being Palestinian. Then your history is stolen.

Museums, cultural centers, libraries, mosques, and churches are bombed until there is nothing left of history. Israel wants to erase Palestine’s past, to say that Palestine never existed.

Imagine being Palestinian. Then your future is stolen as well.

600,000 students can no longer go to school, 90,000 university students no longer have a university, because all educational institutions are systematically destroyed.

For this parliament, there is only one question: what are we going to do? Are we going to stand by or are we finally going to impose sanctions?

Why can’t we do to Israel what we did to Russia?

To tackle Russia, it didn’t take more than a month to take three essential measures:
(1) an economic embargo: that means no more trade allowed;
(2) a military embargo: that means no more arms deliveries allowed;
(3) and the prosecution of Putin as a war criminal before the International Criminal Court.

How long will it take before we take those three measures against Israel?

(1) International trade continues as if nothing is wrong;
(2) arms deliveries to Israel continue as if no war crimes are being committed;
(3) and Netanyahu still has not been brought before the International Criminal Court.

Today, a new generation of young people is rising up who will not leave Netanyahu alone and will haunt him in his dreams until he is convicted for what he is: a war criminal. Netanyahu is the Pinochet of this generation.

Those young people, in Palestine, in the south, and in our country, demand that our country finally acts and really imposes a military and economic embargo against Israel.

_{_{People’s Dispatch}}

All eyes are on Rafah as international pressure continues to grow on Israel / by People’s Dispatch

_{^{Projection in NYC calling on the US to stop funding Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and stop the attacks on Rafah. Photo: Wyatt Souers}}

Appeals calling on Israel to refrain from invading the southern city of Rafah seem to be falling on deaf years as airstrikes and ground bombardment continue to intensify, with the death toll in Gaza now nearing 28,500

_{Reposted from Peoples Dispatch}

srael’s genocidal war completed 130 days on February 13, as international concern and opposition to the Israeli invasion of Gaza continues to grow. Dozens of heads of state from countries across the globe, international bodies, and aid organizations, as well as the Church of England, the International Criminal Court prosecutor, Karim Khan, and many other renowned figures and institutions, have for the last two days warned Israel against invading the southern city of Rafah. International aid organizations that operate in Gaza have stated that an invasion of Rafah would be catastrophic for the more than 1 million internally displaced Palestinians who have nowhere else to go.

Threat of war looms over Europe as NATO drill goes full-throttle / by Muhammed Shabeer

_{^{NATO military chiefs address a press conference at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, January 18, 2024. (Photo: MorningStar Online)}}

Steadfast Defender 2024, the biggest NATO drill since the end of theCold War, involving more than 90,000 military personnel from 31 member countries and Sweden is underway in Europe

_{Reposted from People’s Dispatch}

As the second year of the Ukraine war draws to a close, the stalemate continues. The much-vaunted Ukrainian counter-offensive has failed. However, Russia’s goals haven’t been met either as the US and other NATO member states continue to fill Ukraine’s coffers and restock its armory.

On top of that, NATO’s ongoing military exercise Steadfast Defender 2024 is shaking the ground in Europe reaching Russia’s land border from Norway to its maritime border with Romania. The massive drill threatens a continent-wide escalation of the conflict.

According to reports, more than 90,000 troops, 50 warships, and several squadrons of fighter jets, from 31 member countries and Sweden, are participating in the Steadfast Defender 2024 which started on January 22, making it the largest NATO exercise in Europe since the end of the Cold War.

Under the banner of the NATO exercise, with its 12,000 Bundeswehr soldiers, Germany is also flexing its muscles in the “Quadriga 2024” maneuver to increase its military presence in Scandinavia region and Eastern Europe, including the Baltic. The NATO exercise simulating a defensive operation to protect a member nation from an enemy attack, specifically a Russian attack, is scheduled to last till May 31, 2024.

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has warned that NATO’s Steadfast Defender drills are “provocative”, and could potentially lead to “tragic consequences” for Europe.

Various anti-war groups across Europe have raised their concerns over the massive NATO drill, which is likely to escalate the ongoing war in Ukraine to a major region-wide war. That too at a time when the ongoing genocidal war on Palestinians waged by Israel, with the backing of the US and its European allies, is on the verge of a similar region-wide escalation in West Asia.

On February 6, Andreas Sorenson from the Communist Party of Sweden (SKP) told Peoples Dispatch that “The participation of Sweden in the exercise Steadfast Defender 2024 is a sign of the growing involvement of Sweden in the struggle of the Euro-Atlantic bloc against its competitors, primarily in China and Russia.”

“We reject this development and maintain that Swedish soldiers have no business outside of the borders of Sweden. The path of the Swedish bourgeoisie is dangerous and puts the lives of Swedish working people, as well as the people subjected to Swedish military intervention, at risk. We struggle against this, just as we struggle against every imperialist alliance,” the SKP added.

Communists in Britain slammed the participation of 20,000 British military personnel in the NATO drill. The Communist Party of Britain (CPB) and Young Communist League (YCL-Britain) have also protested the new GBP 2.5 billion (USD 3.16 billion) aid package for Ukraine announced by prime minister Rishi Sunak at a time when more British people are using food banks than ever before.

The Trussell Trust reported a total of 2,986,203 food bank users in 2023 – a figure that includes pensioners, NHS staff, and teachers. Including the latest installment, the total amount of British aid to Ukraine has reached GBP 12 billion (USD 15.16 billion).

In January, Kate Hudson, general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), said “NATO military planners are keen to wargame a conflict with Russia and this will no doubt involve planning for the potential use of nuclear weapons. The US deployment of F-35 warplanes and new B61-12 guided nuclear bombs to Europe is in full swing and NATO’s nuclear doctrine allows for first-strike attacks.”

“With an escalating war in the Middle East and the continuing war in Ukraine, now is not the time for bellicose talk, and provocative exercises. Our government needs to take steps to bring about ceasefires in both Gaza and Ukraine, rather than escalating tension and preparing for more wars. Either of these wars could go nuclear and they have to be brought to a peaceful and just conclusion before the worst happens.”

German communist publication Unsere Zeit accused the traffic light coalition headed by Olaf Scholz makes German taxpayers the main sponsors of NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. It has been reported that “while cuts are being made in education, health, and pensions, the German government is doubling the arms gifts to Kyiv to almost eight billion euros [USD 10.10 billion] this year.”

_{Muhammed Shabeer writes for Peoples Dispatch, an international media organization with the mission of bringing voices from people’s movements and organizations across the globe.}

Cuba: a historic friend of the Palestinian people / by José Ernesto Novaez Guerrero

_{^{Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel hears testimony from Palestinian students studying in Cuba (Photo: Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez/X)}}

_{Reposted from People’s Dispatch}

The Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation gained new relevance on the international stage following the escalation that began on October 7. The brutality of the Israeli onslaught, practically without comparison with other previous aggressions, has exposed the cynicism of many of the great Western powers, vaunted defenders of “human rights”, but indolent in the face of the genocide that is being committed before their eyes for cold calculations of geopolitical interests.

The efforts of mainsteam media today are aimed at presenting the perpetrators as victims, demonizing the Palestinian resistance and making invisible or diminishing Israel’s actions. In this long conflict, it is fair to point out the beautiful story of solidarity between peoples, that a small Caribbean island has been writing for decades. Cuba, the “terrible and inhuman dictatorship” that the major corporate media cartels insist on depicting, has been and is one of the strongest defenders of the Palestinian people.

Fidel and the Palestinian cause

Although the Cuban Revolution from an early date showed its solidarity with the Palestinian people, the figure of Fidel, his understanding of the Arab world and the relationships he forged with the key leaders and resistance movements in that geographical area were key. Of particular relevance is his relationship with Yasser Arafat, historic leader of the Palestinian resistance.

On October 12, 1979, in his capacity as president of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), Fidel spoke emphatically about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with words that are still relevant today:

“From the bottom of our souls, we repudiate with all our strength the ruthless persecution and genocide that Nazism unleashed against the Jewish people in their time. But I cannot remember anything more similar in our contemporary history than the eviction, persecution and genocide carried out today by imperialism and Zionism against the Palestinian people.”

_{Fidel Castro with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Cuba in December 1974 (Photo: The Arafat Foundation)}

In 1982, in dialogue with the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Fidel communicated Cuba’s decision to receive 500 Palestinian children to carry out their studies in the Antillean nation. This marks the beginning of a collaboration that over the years has graduated thousands of Palestinians in medicine, engineering, and other professions that are fundamental to the development of their communities. Even today, hundreds of young Palestinians study in various Cuban universities with scholarships provided by the Cuban government.

Fidel also exposed the Palestinian situation in numerous international forums throughout his extensive political work. And once retired, he continued to closely follow the reality in the area. Proof of the indignation caused by the impunity of the Israeli genocide is a text published on August 6, 2014 in his usual opinion column in the Granma newspaper, under the title: “Palestinian Holocaust in Gaza.”

The current conflict

The violence unleashed on October 7 has taken a chilling toll on Palestinian lives. More than 25,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel, of them more than 10,000 are children, and the numbers continue to rise. Numerous international organizations have condemned the attacks on hospitals, schools, residential buildings, mosques and the illegal use of white phosphorus against civilians. In a recent letter, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres denounced that more than 80% of the population of Gaza has been displaced.

Since the beginning of this new escalation, Cuba has maintained a position consistent with its historic policy of support for the Palestinian people and a peaceful solution to the conflict. Just to mention a few actions, the island promoted and voted in favor of the resolution “The right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.” Cuba has supported, as a member of the NAM, the bloc’s position before the Executive Council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, denouncing the possible use by Israel of prohibited weapons. Cuba has also participated in the numerous international forums convened, including several extraordinary sessions of the UN General Assembly, demanding a ceasefire and vindicating the rights of the Palestinian people.

On November 17, the President of the Republic and First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, held a meeting with 144 young Palestinians studying in Cuba. In dialogue with them, he ratified the country’s firm position on the side of the Palestinian cause. On November 23, a massive solidarity march was called along the Havana malecon, where tens of thousands of Cubans expressed their solidarity and rejection not only of Israeli policy, but also of Washington’s imperialist policy in the region.

Given the new resolution approved this December 13 by an absolute majority in the UN General Assembly, the Cuban president spoke out on social networks with complete firmness:

“The genocide carried out by Israel against the Palestinian people, with the complicity of the US, must stop now. It is urgent to address the demand of this new UNGA resolution to immediately stop the barbarity in Gaza. We demand peace for Palestine.”

_{José Ernesto Novaez Guerrero}_{is a writer, journalist, and researcher from Santa Clara, Cuba. He coordinates the Cuban chapter of the Network of Intellectuals and Artists in Defense of Humanity and he works with several publications inside and outside the island.}