Human Rights
Bethlehem University Announcement and fundraiser in honor of nomination to
Nobel Peace Prize of Prof. Qumsiyeh
https://www.bethlehem.edu/2025/01/15/prof-qumsiyeh-nominated-for-2025-nobel-peace-prize/
“This (Gaza) is the moral issue of our time; this is the Holocaust of our
time, this is the Trail of Tears of our time, this is the Middle Passage of
our time.” Max Blumenthal
“Silence in the face of Evil is itself evil” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German
anti-Nazi dissident
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit
atrocities.” Voltaire
As a hudna (ceasefire) will start Sunday, the occupation regime intensified
its killings of Palestinians including 150 civilians in the last 30 hours
(including six journalists). Despite corporate media being Zionized, even
The first official reference to Gaza becoming increasingly uninhabitable was made by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 2012, when the population of the Gaza Strip was estimated at 1.8 million inhabitants.
The intention of the report, "The Gaza Strip: The Economic Situation and the Prospects for Development," was not merely to prophesize, but to warn that if the world continued to stand idle in the face of the ongoing blockade on Gaza, a humanitarian catastrophe was imminent.
Yet, little was done, though the UN continued with its countdown, increasing the frequency and urgency of its warnings, especially following major wars.
It’s been three days since Luigi Mangione’s manifesto was discovered in his backpack explaining why he assassinated the CEO of United HealthCare.
In Mangione’s manifesto, he said that he was not the “most qualified person to lay out the full argument” against our for-profit healthcare industry. Apparently, to Mangione, one of those qualified people — is me. In his manifesto, he references how I’ve “illuminated the corruption and greed,” implying folks should go to my work to understand the complexity — and the power-hungry abuse — within our current system.
It’s not often that my work gets a killer five-star review from an actual killer. And thus, my phone has been ringing off the hook which is bad news because my phone doesn’t have a hook. Emails are pouring in. Text messages. Requests from many in the media. The messages all sound something like this:
“Luigi mentioned you in his manifesto. That people should listen to you. Will you come on our show, or talk to our reporter and tell them that you condemn murder!?”
The story of the Israeli war on Gaza can be epitomized in the story of the Israeli war on Beit Lahia, a small Palestinian town in the northern part of the Strip.
When Israel launched its ground operations in Gaza, Beit Lahia was already largely destroyed due to many days of relentless Israeli bombardment which killed thousands.
Still, the border Gaza town resisted, leading to a hermetic Israeli siege, which was never lifted, even when the Israeli military redeployed out of much of northern Gaza in January 2024.
Beit Lahia is largely an isolated town, a short distance away from the fence separating besieged Gaza from Israel. It is surrounded mostly by agricultural areas that make it nearly impossible to defend.
Yet, a year of grisly Israeli war and genocide in Gaza did not end the fighting there. To the contrary, 2024 has ended where it started, with intense fighting on all fronts in Gaza, with Beit Lahia, a town that was supposedly 'conquered' earlier, still leading the fight.
Just so we’re all clear, it is a fully established fact that the IDF is directly, deliberately killing civilians in Gaza. There was a time in the early days of the genocide when this could be disputed, but that is no longer true. The facts are in and the case is closed. It’s happening.
Following a ten-day siege, the Palestinian Authority began, on December 14, a violent raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank.
The PA security forces used similar tactics as used by the Israeli occupation forces in their routine attacks on the area.
The camp, which is a mere half a square kilometer in size, hosts an ever-growing population of 24 thousand refugees, mostly the descendants of Palestinians ethnically cleansed by Zionist militias during the great catastrophe, or Nakba, of 1948.
It’s now Joe Biden’s decision whether Leonard Peltier lives or dies.
Biden can choose to be Leonard’s liberator…or his executioner. There is no middle ground. The outgoing president can never escape personal responsibility.