Joe Biden is complicit in Gaza’s starvation. Blood is on his hands
At several points during his presidency, Biden could have stopped starvation from spreading in Gaza, if his administration had listened to warnings from the UN and aid groups and used them as an impetus to limit unconditional US military support for Israel. Biden’s record is not only shocking for the multiple missed opportunities he had to change course, but for his callousness toward the suffering of Palestinians.
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In February 2024, Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, warned of the speed and scale of Israel’s mass starvation campaign. “We have never seen a civilian population made to go so hungry so quickly and so completely,” he told the Guardian, echoing reports by UN agencies and humanitarian groups showing that Israel was deliberately blocking foodand other aid from entering Gaza, and using starvation as a weapon – a war crime under international law.
With such detailed warnings, the Biden administration and Israel’s other western supporters could not claim that they didn’t know the severity of hunger in Gaza, and the extent of Israel’s policy of intentionally starvingPalestinians. As the alarms of imminent famine intensified in the spring of 2024, Biden could have acted by pressuring the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to allow more food into Gaza and enforcing US laws which ban weapons shipments to US allies that obstruct humanitarian aid.
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Read more at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/09/biden-complicit-gaza-starvation
‘A deadly scheme’: Palestinians face indiscriminate gunfire at food sites
A Guardian investigation analysing visual evidence, bullets, medical data and patterns of injuries from two hospitals, as well as interviews with medical organisations and surgeons, across approximately 50 days of food distribution, appears to show a sustained Israeli pattern of firing on Palestinians seeking food.
According to the UN, at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed since 27 May while seeking food, with 859 killed in the vicinity of GHF sites and 514 along the routes of food convoys.
I spent decades at Columbia. I’m withdrawing my fall course due to its deal with Trump
The university’s draconian policies and new definition of antisemitism make much teaching impossible
Dear Acting President Shipman,
I am writing you an open letter since you have seen fit to communicate the recent decisions of the board of trustees and the administration in a similar fashion.
These decisions, taken in close collaboration with the Trump administration, have made it impossible for me to teach modern Middle East history, the field of my scholarship and teaching for more than 50 years, 23 of them at Columbia. Although I have retired, I was scheduled to teach a large lecture course on this topic in the fall as a “special lecturer”, but I cannot do so under the conditions Columbia has accepted by capitulating to the Trump administration in June.
Read the full letter at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/01/columbia-historian-rashid-khalidi-open-letter
A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians
Revealed: The Israeli military undertook an ambitious project to store a giant trove of Palestinians’ phone calls on Microsoft’s servers in Europe
According to three Unit 8200 sources, the cloud-based storage platform has facilitated the preparation of deadly airstrikes and has shaped military operations in Gaza and the West Bank.
Thanks to the control it exerts over Palestinian telecommunications infrastructure, Israel has long intercepted phone calls in the occupied territories. But the indiscriminate new system allows intelligence officers to play back the content of cellular calls made by Palestinians, capturing the conversations of a much larger pool of ordinary civilians.
Read more at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/06/microsoft-israeli-military-palestinian-phone-calls-cloud
And at: https://www.972mag.com/microsoft-8200-intelligence-surveillance-cloud-azure/
Mamdani’s criticism of Israel and support for Palestinians attracted voters, new poll shows
Among voters who supported Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic mayoral primary, 62% said his support for Palestinian rights swayed their decision
Read more at: https://forward.com/fast-forward/758857/poll-mamdani-israel-gaza-palestinians-democrats/