To my newborn son: I am absent not out of apathy, but conviction
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- Written by Mahmoud Khalil Mahmoud Khalil
- Published: 13 May 2025 13 May 2025
Yaba Deen,* it has been two weeks since you were born, and these are my first words to you.
In the early hours of 21 April, I waited on the other end of a phone as your mother labored to bring you into this world. I listened to her pained breaths and tried to speak comforting words into her ear over the crackling line. During your first moments, I buried my face in my arms and kept my voice low so that the 70 other men sleeping in this concrete room would not see my cloudy eyes or hear my voice catch. I feel suffocated by my rage and the cruelty of a system that deprived your mother and me of sharing this experience. Why do faceless politicians have the power to strip human beings of their divine moments?
Since that morning, I have come to recognize the look in the eyes of every father in this detention center. I sit here contemplating the immensity of your birth and wonder how many more firsts will be sacrificed to the whims of the US government, which denied me even the chance of furlough to attend your birth. How is it that the same politicians who preach “family values” are the ones tearing families apart?
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Who killed Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh – and why?
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- Written by Dion Nissenbaum Dion Nissenbaum
- Published: 08 May 2025 08 May 2025
Our reporting also reveals that an initial American assessment determined that the Israeli soldier intentionally shot Shireen – and that he should have been able to tell that she was a journalist because she was wearing the blue body armor marked “press”.
A key Biden administration official familiar with the examination told us that the soldier who had killed Shireen probably could have been convicted of murder in an American courtroom. But the initial finding was rejected. Instead, the Biden administration did a 180. The US concluded that it found no reason to believe her killing was intentional and blamed it on “tragic circumstances”.
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Devastation, bombing and starvation: Israel is destroying life in Gaza
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- Written by B'tselem B'tselem
- Published: 05 May 2025 05 May 2025
For two months now, Israel has been blocking the entry of food and humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, deliberately starving over two million people, including more than one million children. On 16 April, Defense Minister Katz declared Israel would continue to block the entry of food and aid into Gaza, effectively admitting it is using starvation as a method of warfare. On 25 April, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) announced that its food warehouses in Gaza were now empty.
This deadly siege is enabled by the international community in an abdication of its responsibility to protect human lives. The Israeli government and other decision-makers continue to deliberately and openly order the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity that exacerbate the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. They must be held accountable for their actions and face justice.
On 18 March, Israel renewed its campaign of killing and destruction in Gaza. Since then, it has claimed the lives of over 2,200 Palestinians in indiscriminate bombings, shelling and gunfire. Since the start of the war, Israel has killed more than 52,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including over 1,500 medical, defense and aid personnel. The number of deaths caused by hunger, lack of drinking water and the spread of disease is unknown but expected to rise as Israel’s lethal campaign continues.
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Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha wins Pulitzer prize for commentary
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- Written by Léonie Chao-Fong Léonie Chao-Fong
- Published: 05 May 2025 05 May 2025
Renowned poet and author wins prize for series of New Yorker essays on suffering of Palestinians in Gaza
The renowned Palestinian poet and author, Mosab Abu Toha, is among this year’s Pulitzer prize winners.
Abu Toha was awarded for a series of essays in the New Yorker documenting the lives and suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, where he has lived nearly all his life.
“I have just won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary,” he wrote on X. “Let it bring hope / Let it be a tale.”
His essays portrayed the “physical and emotional carnage in Gaza that combine deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience of more than a year and a half of war with Israel”, the Pulitzer board said on Monday.
Abu Toha, 32, was detained in 2023 by Israeli forces at a checkpoint as he tried to flee his home in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza with his wife, Maram, and their three young children.
In Israeli detention, soldiers “separated me from my family, beat me, and interrogated me”, he wrote. He was able to leave and escape to the US after friends abroad applied pressure for his release.
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The Guardian view on Israel’s aid blockade of Gaza: hunger as a weapon of war
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- Written by The Guardian Editorial The Guardian Editorial
- Published: 04 May 2025 04 May 2025
Conditions are increasingly desperate. The resumption of humanitarian relief is essential to save civilian lives
As Israel and the US attack international courts, other nations – including the UK – must do all they can to defend and bolster them. They must also press harder for the immediate resumption of aid. What is shameful about this ICJ case is the need to bring it. What is shameful is that almost half the children in Gaza questioned in a study said that they wished to die. What is shameful is that so many civilians have been killed, and so many more pushed to the brink of starvation. What is shameful is that this has, indeed, been allowed to happen.
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