Attention to the Unseen

Sophie Hurwitz writes: Dr. Feroze Sidhwa has volunteered as a trauma surgeon in Ukraine, Haiti, Burkina Faso, and Ghana. But when he went to Gaza in March and April of this year, it changed him. Sidhwa had never seen so much horror in his life. “There’s nothing like Gaza right now,” he said. “Almost 100 percent of Gaza’s population is homeless and displaced…does that sound like a place where people are going to survive?” With international journalists banned from Gaza…

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+972 Magazine reports: For over two weeks, the Israeli military has been waging one the most brutal and destructive campaigns of the war in northern Gaza. Residents of Jabalia, Beit Lahiya, and Beit Hanoun are living through an unrelenting siege that has stripped them of food, water, and any illusion of safety. Survivors describe a nightmare beyond comprehension: airstrikes and shelling so incessant that their bodies haven’t stopped trembling. The Israeli military operation, which began during the early hours of…

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Rena Netjes and Sophie Fullerton report: Israel’s escalating war in Lebanon has displaced more than 1.2 million people across the country in recent weeks. Those displaced are not only Lebanese civilians but also an estimated 250,000 Syrian refugees who have fled back into neighboring Syria since Israel’s bombing campaign began last month. Some 1.5 million Syrian refugees living precariously in Lebanon for more than a decade, after fleeing civil war in their own country, have faced the threat of detention…

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CNN reports: The Biden administration sent a letter to the Israeli government demanding it act to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza within the next 30 days or risk violating US laws governing foreign military assistance, suggesting US military aid could be in jeopardy. The Sunday letter, jointly written by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, is addressed to Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant and Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer. It marks…

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CNN reports: No food has entered northern Gaza since the start of October, putting 1 million people at risk of going hungry, the World Food Programme told CNN on Friday. In August, approximately 700 hundred aid trucks entered northern Gaza. In September, only 400 aid trucks entered, after commercial operations ceased at the Allenby Crossing on the border between the occupied West Bank and Jordan, the WFP added. No food trucks have entered northern Gaza in October, the WFP told…

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Middle East Eye reports: Several MPs have urged the UK government to take firm action against Israel after it launched a major military offensive in northern parts of Gaza and ordered the forced mass displacement of nearly 400,000 Palestinians living there. For six consecutive days, Israeli forces have pummelled the Jabalia refugee camp with air strikes and artillery shelling, despite ordering residents to leave their homes and head south to the Mawasi “humanitarian zone”. At least 120 Palestinians are known…

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The New York Times reports: For more than a year, as Israeli bombs pounded northern Gaza around Mariam Awwad’s home, she and her family of 11 have refused to leave. Their resolve did not change even after the Israeli military dropped leaflets over the town of Jabaliya on Sunday, ordering Palestinians in northern Gaza to evacuate to the south. The military was renewing an offensive on the north, saying it was going after Hamas fighters. “We refuse to flee only…

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New Lines Magazine reports: Dawood remembers the disgust in the eyes of the Turkish security guards in the deportation center where he was held last year. “I felt like humanity had died,” said the soft-spoken Syrian man in his 30s, who is identified by a pseudonym to protect his safety. “They just kept shouting: ‘You are like animals! We’re tired of you. If you are a man, go back to Syria and fight!’” The humiliation hit hard for Dawood, who…

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Razia Iqbal writes: History has a striking capacity to intrude on the present day, as it does when I meet Rashid Khalidi. The Palestinian American professor’s retirement from his position as the Edward Said chair of modern Arab history at Columbia University was imminent, and that morning he has received alarming news: a gang of extremist Israeli settlers had stormed a house on Silsila Road in Jerusalem, a property that had been in his family’s possession since the time of…

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