4 h. ago New Zealand MP ejected from Parliament again over Gaza comments

Chlöe Swarbrick has been booted twice in two days

Politics

4 h. ago Israel is wiping out Gaza’s journalists – and it’s no longer even hiding it | Jodi Ginsberg

The laws of war are clear: journalists are civilians. To target them deliberately in war is to commit a war crimeIsrael always boasted that it was the only country in the region to support press freedom. That boast rang hollow even before the current war. Now, it’s not even pretending. On Sunday, Israel openly and brazenly killed six journalists as they were sheltering in a tent that housed reporters and media workers.Israel accuses one of those journalists – Al Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif – of being a terrorist. It has not said what crime it believes the others have committed that would justify killing them. The laws of war are clear: journalists are civilians. To target them deliberately in war is to commit a war crime. Continue reading...

Politics

5 h. ago New Zealand lawmaker who called opponents spineless over Gaza is ejected from Parliament a 2nd time

A New Zealand lawmaker was ejected from Parliament for a second day Wednesday after refusing to apologize for calling her opponents spineless

Politics

22 h. ago On Gaza’s killing fields, journalism faces its darkest hour – but that won’t stop us reporting | Asef Hamidi

Israel’s actions are an assault not only on individual reporters but on the entire global public’s right to know the truthAsef Hamidi is the director of news, Al Jazeera ChannelAs the world witnesses the horrors unfolding in Gaza, a related tragedy continues with chilling regularity: the systematic targeting and killing of journalists. Just as the Gaza journalistic community thought matters could not get any worse, Benjamin Netanyahu’s brutal occupying forces carried out yet another cold-blooded murder on Sunday, this time of the Al Jazeera journalists Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qraiqea, along with videographers Ibrahim Thaher, Mohammed Nofal and their colleagues. They were sheltering in a media tent near al-Shifa hospital, and were killed by a direct strike.The Israeli war machine, accelerating its stated goal of occupying Gaza, showed no restraint in targeting journalists, in violation of international conventions. So far in this war it has killed 238 of us. The war on Gaza has b...

Events

45 h. ago Ben Jennings on the killing of journalists in Gaza – cartoon

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Events

48 h. ago ‘If these words reach you Israel has succeeded in killing me’: the last words of a journalist killed in Gaza

Anas al-Sharif, an Al Jazeera reporter, was killed by an Israeli airstrike on Sunday night. This is the message he had prepared for his family, and his call for the world not to forget Gaza• Report: Funeral held for five journalists killed in strikeThe following statement was posthumously published on Anas al-Sharif’s X account, after an attack on a tent for journalists near al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Seven people in total were killed including al-Sharif, the Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh, and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa, according to Al Jazeera.This is my will and my final message. If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Events

56 h. ago Netanyahu’s Gaza City outrage fulfils his messianic fantasy of a Greater Israel. The world must stop him | Nimer Sultany

Ignore suggestions that further occupation would be temporary. Act now! This outrageous landgrab is ethnic cleansing in plain sightIt is hard to describe in words the pain of witnessing your people being destroyed for more than 670 days. It is even more unfathomable to contemplate another Israeli escalation, after witnessing so much suffering and so many crimes committed against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. How can this be allowed in full view of the world for so long? Will the world stand by?Israel’s security cabinet declared this escalation when it approved a plan to “fully occupy” the Gaza Strip and attack concentrations of population, starting with Gaza City itself. The consequences of this newest military onslaught are foreseeable and predictable. In May 2024, Israel attacked Rafah despite international warnings and in defiance of an international court of justice order – Rafah no longer exists. In November and December 2024, Israel attacked the northern towns of B...

Politics

4 d. ago Joe Biden is complicit in Gaza’s starvation. Blood is on his hands | Mohamad Bazzi

At several points during his presidency, Biden could have stopped starvation from spreading in Gaza. He didn’t do thatIn March 2024, the global authority on food security warned that Palestinians were experiencing “catastrophic levels of hunger”, and famine was imminent in northern Gaza as Israel continued its siege of the territory. That report was one of the most direct warnings from the UN and international relief groups, which had been raising alarms about the potential for widespread starvation in Gaza since December 2023.Joe Biden was in the White House at the time, and his administration not only failed to heed those repeated warnings, but it worked to undermine UN agencies and humanitarian groups that tried to focus attention on Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza. Today, Donald Trump and his administration are deeply complicit in the human-made famine unfolding in Gaza, but it’s important to remember that US complicity predates Trump – and it’s another sta...

Politics

4 d. ago The Guardian view on Israel’s Gaza takeover plan: a destructive act that must be stopped | Editorial

Benjamin Netanyahu has embarked on an operation that guarantees fresh miseries and will solve absolutely nothingIsrael’s planned takeover of Gaza would be an act of destructive futility. It would solve absolutely nothing. It will merely pile fresh military, humanitarian and political problems on to the mounds of those already created in the conflict. It will make every human agony worse, not better. Governments around the world must do whatever they can – the US above all – to stop it.There is still time. The plan announced on Friday is for an operation to take military control of Gaza City, home to a million displaced Palestinians. They will be forcibly evacuated, yet again, to the southern Gaza Strip over the coming weeks. Aid distribution is certain to be a secondary consideration, logistically challenging and woefully inadequate for a population where malnutrition is already severe. The threat to life in Gaza, including to the remaining Israeli hostages captured on 7 Octobe...

Politics

5 d. ago When will we finally admit: the Gaza death toll is higher than we’ve been told | Arwa Mahdawi

We have no idea how many people have been killed in Gaza but I would bet my own life that the number is far higher than the 60,000 number the media usesHow many people have been killed by Israel in Gaza since 7 October 2023?It’s an almost impossible question to answer but, as the likes of the New York Times publish atrocity-minimizing op-eds that argue Israel hasn’t killed all that many people really – certainly not as many people as it could kill if it wanted to with all the big-boy bombs US taxpayers have helped fund – it’s an increasingly important issue to grapple with. “The first question the anti-Israel genocide chorus needs to answer is: Why isn’t the death count higher?” Brett Stephens asked in his recent New York Times op-ed. Here’s the thing, Brett. It almost certainly is.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

Events

5 d. ago John Swinney's 'completely unacceptable' comment over Gaza City occupation plan under Benjamin Netanyahu

John Swinney and Sir Keir Starmer have both spoken out about the decisions taken by Israel’s war cabinet under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Events

7 d. ago We published a photo of a malnourished child in Gaza. It made an impact globally – and created controversy | Elisabeth Ribbans

Initially, we did not know that Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq had cerebral palsy. But his medical details do not diminish his suffering, or that of other children in GazaBetween April and mid-July this year, more than 20,000 children in Gaza were admitted to hospital for treatment for acute malnutrition, 3,000 of whom were severely malnourished, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a global initiative whose members include UN agencies such as the World Health Organization, World Food Programme and Unicef, as well as NGOs and research institutes.Over this period, and in the weeks since, the Guardian has published many images of hungry children, among them at least 20 shown in an emaciated condition. (It does so working to an editorial code that gives special protection to children, publishing on matters that may intrude into their welfare only when there is a strong public interest to do so.) But one photograph, which appeared on the homepage of ...

Culture

9 d. ago Sydney’s huge Gaza protest shows there’s now no stopping the tide of public opinion | Sarah Malik

The Harbour Bridge march felt different. The whole city turned up, not just students and activists but grandmothers and parents with prams. I felt like I was in the majorityFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastThe rain couldn’t stop us. At least 100,000 people took over the CBD and marched across Sydney’s Harbour Bridge to protest Israel’s continued genocide in Gaza. And it felt like a collective wave of energy, hope and determination against institutional and governmental intransigence, denial, obfuscation and enabling that has so many of us feeling despairing, disgusted and disquieted.Why aren’t they listening? How is this horror continuing unabated with impunity? Why won’t Australia impose sanctions and call for arms embargos against Israel’s senseless murder of civilians, unleashed by some of the most methodical and lethal autonomous weaponry on Earth and AI machines directing bombs, as claimed by intell...

Events

1 week ago I saw many atrocities as a senior aid official in Gaza. Now Israeli authorities are trying to silence us

Devastated hospitals, mass graves, bodies eaten by dogs in the street. After speaking out, I discovered my visa will not be renewedJonathan Whittall is head of office at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the occupied Palestinian territory. He writes here in a personal capacityGaza has been held under water for 22 months, allowed to gasp for air only when Israeli authorities have succumbed to political pressure from those with more leverage than international law itself. After months of relentless bombardment, forced displacement and deprivation, the impact of Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza’s people has never been more devastating.I have been part of coordinating humanitarian efforts in Gaza since October 2023. Whatever lifesaving aid has entered since then has been the exception, not the rule. More than a year after the international court of justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent acts of genocide – ...

Politics

3 w. ago From Gaza to Ukraine, peace always seems just out of reach – and the reason isn’t only political | Simon Tisdall

Murdering and massacring innocents is indefensible. So why on earth is it allowed to continue? The answer is moral relativismThe quest for peace in major conflicts has rarely been so desperate and so seemingly futile. In Gaza, talk of ceasefires, truces and pauses typically ends in tears. In Ukraine, the war is now well into its fourth year with no end in sight, despite Donald Trump’s new 50-day deadline. Syria burns anew. Sudan’s horrors never cease. Last year, state-based conflicts reached a peak – 61 across 36 countries. It was the highest recorded total since 1946. This year could be worse.The sheer scale and depravity of war crimes and other conflict-zone atrocities is extraordinary. The deliberate, illegal targeting and terrorising of civilians, the killing, maiming and abduction of children, and the use of starvation, sexual violence, torture and forced displacement as weapons of war have grown almost routine. Israel’s killing last week of children queueing for water in Gaza ...

Politics

3 w. ago In Gaza I saw the suffering of children and the heroism of health workers trying to save them | Thienminh Dinh

If our leaders allow this massacre to pass without consequence or condemnation, it will reveal a disturbing truth about what the world is willing to acceptGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastHeroism is no longer an abstract concept to me – it looks like Ali, who once spotted a quadcopter circling Al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza, where he’d dropped me off less than an hour earlier. When the first airstrike slammed into the building, Ali ran: not away from danger but towards it, risking his own safety for mine. That morning, as subsequent strikes rattled the walls around us and as I phoned my sister (“Tell Mum and Dad I love them heaps – just in case”), Ali remained by my side.Seldom in history have healthcare workers been called upon to risk their lives simply by reporting for duty. Continue reading...

Society

3 w. ago Could Trump be persuaded to save Palestinians in Gaza? | Kenneth Roth

It seems paradoxical to look to Trump to save Palestinians, yet no recent US president has been better placed to stop IsraelIt seems paradoxical to look to Donald Trump to save the Palestinians, yet no recent American president has been better placed to insist that the Israeli government stop its extraordinary repression and brutality. Trump so far has largely given Israel carte blanche to continue its genocide in Gaza, but Benjamin Netanyahu would be remiss to count on the fickle and self-serving American president. And there may be a way to turn Trump around.Most US presidents have stuck with the Israeli government regardless of its atrocities because the political fallout of deviating was too high. Any pressure on Israel would be sure to trigger outrage from Christian evangelicals (Israel’s largest group of supporters in the US) and the conservative segment of American Jews represented by the lobbying group Aipac. Continue reading...

Politics

4 w. ago The Guardian view on the children of Gaza: when 17,000 die, it’s more than a mistake | Editorial

Israel’s military blamed the deaths of six Palestinian children on Sunday on a technical error. But a staggering toll continues to mountOn Sunday, an Israeli strike killed six Palestinian children – and four adults – as they queued for water in a refugee camp. The deaths of children may be the most terrible part of any war. It is not only the suffering of the innocent and powerless, and the unimaginable pain of surviving parents – as dreadful as those are – but the knowledge of lives ended when they had barely begun, of futures that should have stretched long into the distance severed in an instant.As shocking as Sunday’s deaths were, they are commonplace in Gaza: a classroom-worth of children have been killed each day since the war began. What marked them out was that so many deaths happened at once and publicly; and that Israel’s military felt obliged to acknowledge its responsibility – though without any great contrition. It claimed that a “technical error with the munition” caus...

Events

4 w. ago The BBC has alienated everyone with its Gaza coverage. After this latest failure, who will be left to defend it? | Owen Jones

The decision to take Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone off iPlayer was not necessary – and has opened it up to further accusations of biasFor a genocide to occur, everything that people think is wrong has to first be turned on its head. There have been endless examples of this gruesome phenomenon in the past 21 months; Monday’s report on the BBC’s scrapped documentary about the plight of children in Gaza is just the latest instance.Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone was a rare example of the unbearable experiences of Palestinians being properly investigated by Britain’s public broadcaster. But within the media, this documentary has become a bigger scandal than the suffering of Palestinian children.Owen Jones is a Guardian columnistDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Events

4 w. ago In Gaza, we know why Israel wants to herd us all into one camp – our lives are bargaining chips | Nour Abo Aisha

We’ve fled the attacks again and again. Now Israel plans to force us into the ruins of Rafah in order to increase pressure on HamasAfter 21 months of war, the Israeli minister of defence, Israel Katz, has proposed a new initiative to force all Palestinians in Gaza into a camp on the ruins of Rafah.I lived west of Gaza city, just five minutes away from the beach. I used to see the waves from the roof of our house. The area was marvellous, with luxury architecture, hotels and tourist resorts.Nour Abo Aisha is a freelance writer based in Gaza Continue reading...

Politics