Progressive Political News

Israel’s “genocidal offensive” puts at risk the very basis of international humanitarian law, they said.

Israel’s genocide in Gaza is the “most profound crisis” globally since World War II, UN experts have warned, adding that impunity for Israel as it has killed tens of thousands — if not hundreds of thousands — of Palestinians endangers the very structure of international humanitarian rights.
On Friday, the group of 37 UN experts, including UN Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese, said that Israel’s openly “genocidal offensive” has destroyed Gaza in just one year as the world has looked on and failed to intervene.
“The world faces the most profound crisis since the end of World War II. The atrocities which the world witnessed in World War II resulted in a collective determination to say ‘Never Again’ and to create the United Nations to achieve that goal,” the experts said in a statement marking the anniversary of the start of the genocide.
“However, one year since the 7 October attack by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups against Israel, the world has seen a brutal escalation of violence, resulting in genocidal attacks, ethnic cleansing and collective punishment of Palestinians, which risks breaking down the international multilateral system,” they went on.
The experts noted the “genocidal statements” made by Israeli leaders shortly after the October 7 attack that served, in essence, as a warning of the massacres to come. They also condemned world leaders for failing to uphold international humanitarian law and stop the slaughter, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now threatening to inflict upon civilians in Lebanon.

“One year later, the promise by Israeli leaders to destroy Gaza has been fulfilled. The Strip is now a wasteland of rubble and human remains, where survivors — men and women, children and the elderly — struggle to hold on to life amid deprivation and disease,” they said. “Nearly all those surviving are displaced, trapped in ever-shrinking parts of the tiny territory, corralled into crowded camps and shelters with nowhere to flee. Constant bombing has turned humanitarian zones into killing fields.”
In recent days, Israeli forces have been carrying out a brutal campaign that appears to be aimed at achieving the total ethnic cleansing of north Gaza. This week, Israeli forces ordered the evacuation of roughly 400,000 people left in the region, which has faced some of the harshest conditions throughout the past year.
Despite ordering evacuations, the Israeli military is preventing many Palestinians from leaving the area, and has been bombing shelters and targeting families trying to flee south. At the same time, Israeli forces are enforcing an aid blockade on north Gaza so intense that the World Food Programme has said that it no longer has food “in any form” to distribute to those in need.
“As many states continue to ignore their international obligations and Palestinians continue to be slaughtered, the international order is breaking down,” said Albanese on social media. “We will miss it when it is no longer there, not even as a veneer of the world we could have had, and the global community we could have been.”
Other global figures have warned about the breakdown of international order spurred by the U.S. and Israel’s flouting of humanitarian law. Last month, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres cautioned the General Assembly that the world has entered a frightening “age of impunity” in which governments can “lay waste to whole societies” without consequence.
“The level of impunity in the world is politically indefensible and morally intolerable,” Guterres said.

One of the largest and most visible contingents marching outside the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago this past August was the “U.S. Out of the Philippines.” Its participants included Malaya Movement, Chicago Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines (CCHRP), AnakBayan Chicago, and AnakBayan at UIC. The contingent was calling for the end of U.S. militarism in the Philippines, the largest recipient of United States military aid in the Asia-Pacific region.
In recent years, the U.S. military has increased its presence in the Philippines, with the addition of new bases, building on the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement and a 2023 commitment of $82 million of infrastructure investments in these new sites. As recently as July 2024, the U.S. promised $500 million in military aid to the Philippines in its bid to challenge China.
While this aid has provided financial support for the country’s military operations and infrastructure development of the U.S. military bases in the Philippines, it has also included the sales of weaponry such as firearms, assault weapons, combat shotguns, missiles, rockets, bombs and mines, among other kinds of weaponry. As activists and critics of the continued U.S. military presence in the Philippines have repeatedly decried, this kind of military aid has also helped advance the ongoing military operations that have led to the suppression of political dissent and social movements in the Philippines.
As Secretary General Cristina Palabay of Karapatan, a coalition of civil society organizations working on human rights issues, noted last month in response to the increased military aid from the U.S., “The so-called aid and overall increase in security and military budgets indicate a shift toward warmongering that will worsen the Philippines’ already dire human rights situation.” Palabay was referred to the extrajudicial killings, bombings, arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, abductions and illegal arrests that continue to proliferate under the Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos regime and are widely documented by various global monitoring bodies.
As of October 2024, there have been over 800 documented extrajudicial killings as part of the Marcos administration’s continued support of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs” campaign. Press freedom continues to be restricted, and journalists continue to be killed or attacked for their critiques of the Philippine state, as documented in a 2023 Human Rights Watch report. Activist and social justice organizations including labor unions and Indigenous communities like the Lumad continue to be subject to “red tagging,” which the Philippine Supreme Court has finally recognized as a set of activities that include “threats and intimidation to discourage ‘subversive’ activities.”

This same U.S. military aid also enables the detrimental effects that military bases have had on the Philippine economy and the gender violence enacted by U.S. military troops. The Visiting Forces Agreement that was signed in 1998 not only provided the U.S. with the ability to send U.S. military personnel to the Philippines and conduct joint military exercises known as “Balikatan,” but it also maintained that all U.S. military personnel remain under the jurisdiction of U.S. criminal courts, effectively granting them impunity.
As such, in the case of two high-profile cases of gender violence committed by U.S. military personnel — one resulting in the death of a trans woman, Jennifer Laude, and the rape of a Filipina cis woman, “Nicole” — both were acquitted or pardoned in the U.S. court system. As scholars like Victoria Reyes have noted, military bases often become “global borderlands” that threaten Philippines’ sovereignty. Other scholars have also presented the “military base itself as a cultural artifact of colonial dominance” with working and living conditions that subject Filipino women to low-wage labor and sexual harassment and violence, while creating a “rest and recreation” landscape for U.S. military personnel.
So, what does all this mean amid a highly contentious U.S. presidential campaign? What are the issues that this very diverse group of communities want their elected leader to champion?
In the swing state of Nevada, where Filipinos comprise the majority of Asian American voters, the Harris campaign is actively running ads that “engage with Filipino American voters as they gather to celebrate the richness of Filipino food and culture” in celebration of October as Filipino American History month. Surely our communities and histories represent more than just food and entertainment!
We must work toward reframing the understanding of the “Filipino American community” as one that is not monolithic. Our lives and concerns are better addressed through the lens of social justice. We ought to foreground how our histories of struggle and triumph point to the need to dismantle the ideologies of capitalism, white supremacy and imperialism that are engines of the inequalities our communities face. As the conveners of the Filipino American Agenda 2024 explained, the issues that are important to consider for this upcoming election include “economic justice and worker rights,” “addressing the housing crisis,” the “right to affordable and relevant education,” “immigration rights,” and “health and wellness,” to name a few.
In 2023, 62 percent of the total U.S. federal discretionary budget went toward U.S. militarism, while only 7, 6, and 5 percent went toward housing, health care and education, respectively. In terms of comprehensive immigration reform, which is another issue of concern for Filipinos, we should know that in 2023, of the $51 billion that went to Homeland Security, half of that was funneled into detentions and deportations instead of programs that address pathways to citizenship and redress visa issues that lead Filipinos to be exploited by unscrupulous labor recruiters and employers.
Anyone who wants to champion the interests of Filipino Americans must chart a direction away from the expansion of the U.S. supply of arms, both in the Philippines and globally. In our own organizing to advance these demands, we must see U.S. militarism through a wider lens, given that this same vehicle is not only supporting an authoritarian regime in the Philippines, but also an ongoing genocide in Gaza and devastation in Lebanon, while failing to address our needs at home.
In her statement at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Harris put forth an agenda that supports “Israel’s right to self-defense” while acknowledging the “suffering” of the Palestinian people. The U.S. cannot have it both ways: The military aid the U.S. is supplying to Israel is a key culprit in the suffering of the Palestinian people. As I previously argued, we need to “understand the ineligibility of Israel’s articulation of self-defense as a legitimating defense of their continued occupation and siege of Palestinians. Israel has weaponized international law in ways that allow it to create the conditions for manipulating existing laws, including humanitarian laws, to justify their incursions in the occupied territories.”
Numerous scholars and activists have called on us to reject this logic and legacy, and instead, join and strengthen the Palestinian solidarity movement by building power in various sectors — workplaces, campuses and community organizations. To build power is not only to point to these confounding logics that allow for the weaponization of war, literally and metaphorically, to go on, but also to intervene in the misplaced silence that results from us not speaking out in support of Palestine for fear of being dubbed “antisemitic.” It is about building a collective voice guided by a moral compass that calls on us, in fact, commands us, to take a principled stance. As scholar Nadine Naber painfully expressed, “There are no silent vigils during genocide.”
At this moment of heightened divisiveness in electoral rhetoric, it is especially imperative for us to identify the issues that connect us with other communities. Just last month, the U.S. committed another $8.7 billion in U.S. aid to Israel in support of its military operations. In just one year, since October 7, 2023, U.S. aid to Israel totaled $12.5 billion in taxpayer money. Currently, the same U.S. military machine that is arming an authoritarian regime in the Philippines is also arming Israel. It is the same machine that is helping to displace Palestinians as well as Indigenous Lumad communities in the Philippines. It is the same machine that is enabling the repression of dissenting voices against authoritarian regimes around the world.
Thus, when Filipino activists cry out “U.S. Out of the Philippines,” they are calling for not just the end of neocolonial relations in the Asia Pacific, but also the severing of all U.S. military ties — including those that are aiding and abetting the genocide in Gaza and the escalating death toll in Lebanon.

The group is running misleading ads about the amendment, which will be put to a referendum vote this November.

The owners of the NFL football team from Kansas City, Missouri, have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to an anti-abortion political action committee that has run misleading advertisements about an abortion ballot initiative set to be voted on in November.
Unity Hunt is the business entity that controls the estate of Lamar Hunt, the founder of the NFL team that was first known as the Dallas Texans and later moved to Kansas City in the 1960s, where it took on the racist moniker of “the Chiefs.” The business donated $300,000 in September to Leadership for America PAC, which is currently running radio advertisements opposed to Missouri’s ballot initiative.
The contribution from Unity Hunt makes the business one of the biggest contributors to that PAC.
The ads from Leadership for America PAC deride the ballot measure as being a “cleverly-worded” ploy to convince voters that the abortion measure is limited in scope to only allowing the procedure up to fetal viability, deceptively suggesting that it actually contains “loopholes that allow for abortions through all nine months of pregnancy.”
“Abortion proponents…want abortion [to be] as common as the morning after pill,” the ad purports.

In truth, the measure’s proponents have been forthcoming about what the measure would entail.
The amendment would establish an unlimited right to abortion up to fetal viability — generally regarded as between 22-25 weeks of pregnancy — and would allow the state to regulate the procedure after that point. A person could still obtain an abortion after that period, however, if their health was threatened due to their pregnancy.
Some abortion rights opponents — including GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump — have wrongly stated that abortion measures like Missouri’s proposal would lead to selective abortions up to nine months of pregnancy. Trump and his anti-abortion allies have also falsely claimed that such provisions allow post-birth infanticide, which is illegal in every state, and which no abortion rights measure being considered or currently implemented would allow.
The Missouri measure would undo the state’s current abortion ban, which forbids the procedure except to save the life of a pregnant person (a standard that, in practice, is oftentimes not allowed, as doctors fear being prosecuted by the state due to the ambiguous language of such exceptions).
Leadership for America PAC has so far spent just over $32,000 on the radio ads, but the contribution from Unity Hunt means they can do much more political spending in the coming weeks. The PAC has also moved some of its funds to other groups opposing the abortion rights measure, including donating $100,000 to the main opposition group in Missouri called Vote “No” on 3, and another $100,000 to Missouri Leadership Fund, which gave $100,000 six days later to Vote “No” on 3 as well.
Spending from groups in favor of passing the abortion rights measure has far outpaced spending from those that are against it, however. Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, for example, the lead organization in favor of passing the amendment proposal, spent more than $7.3 million through June, and purchased $8.7 million in television advertisements at the start of September.
Polling in the state shows that a majority of residents support the measure. In a St. Louis University/YouGov poll published in late August, 52 percent of respondents said they favored the amendment’s passage, while only 34 percent said they were opposed.
Abortion rights will be on the minds of millions of voters this fall. In total, there are 11 statewide ballot measures relating to abortion across 10 different states up for consideration. With the exception of Nebraska, which has two competing measures (one seeking to expand abortion rights, the other to curtail them), all of the proposals would protect or expand access to the procedure within their boundaries.

On Thursday, U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote a social media post declaring, “Yes, they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.” Greene’s outlandish claim about climate engineering came as communities in six states grappled with the devastation of Hurricane Helene, which has killed at least 230 people. Despite widespread ridicule, Greene doubled down on Saturday, suggesting that lasers can be used to manipulate weather patterns. Greene is no stranger to conspiracies, including claims about lasers causing climate catastrophes. This time, her wild assertions come amid a surge of misinformation about the aftermath of Helene.
Social media and right-wing message boards have been inundated with claims that scientists used a program called HAARP (High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program) to direct Helene’s path. HAARP is a scientific study of the earth’s atmosphere run by the University of Alaska Fairbanks, but the program has long been the subject of conspiracy theories, including claims that it employs secret weather control weapons to cause earthquakes. Some conspiracy theorists now argue that HAARP was used to devastate red states and Republican districts in advance of the upcoming presidential election. Others insist the storm was manufactured to allow corporations to exploit lithium deposits in North Carolina. When paired with ongoing misinformation about federal officials refusing to deploy emergency services in southern states, these conspiracies feed into fascistic myths about “white genocide” and eco-fascist narratives.
Given that speculation about HAARP tends to spike in the aftermath of disasters, it’s likely these rumors will escalate further this week, especially with Hurricane Milton — a category 5 storm — expected to make landfall in Florida on Wednesday.
I recently discussed these developments with Shane Burley, author of Fascism Today, Why We Fight, and co-author of Safety through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism. Burley explained, “Conspiracy theories about the control of the weather do what all conspiracy theories do: they validate real fears and trauma while redirecting righteous anger away from systemic causes and onto either a mirage or a marginalized community.” Burley emphasized that these theories shield bad actors and systems that are actually contributing to the harms people are experiencing. “By focusing on ‘climate control,’ you no longer have to address the real climate collapse or the economic and political systems that are responsible. Instead, you can drum up the kind of terror necessary for the public to support incredibly despotic ‘solutions’ to the consequences of climate change.”
“While the idea that the government, or the Rothschilds, are controlling the weather is pretty outlandish, it’s not entirely separate from the broader climate denial and conspiracy theories the right has relied on for years,” Burley said. “They have created this infrastructure of falsehood to undermine the scientific consensus.”

In an era when climate chaos is becoming harder to deny, conspiracies allow Republicans to redirect blame. “It’s the same model they use for every structural inequity. If they admitted that deregulated capitalism leads to soaring poverty rates, lack of healthcare access, and so on, they would be called to do something about it,” Burley said. By suggesting that each incident of human suffering or climate catastrophe is caused by “a nefarious cabal” rather than systemic issues, Republicans protect the status quo. “This actually dissuades people from recognizing the very visible and obvious ‘conspiracy’ of everyday climate exploitation, lack of resources for working-class families, and infrastructural breakdown,” Burley added.
Many right-wing conspiracies, such as those about “weather control,” are rooted in antisemitic tropes. These narratives depict Jewish people as powerful global elites seeking to dominate commerce, governance, and culture. Climate control conspiracies often reference the Rothschilds — a prominent Jewish family and European banking dynasty — accusing them of manipulating the weather for financial gain. Similarly, the Great Replacement Theory argues that Jewish people are orchestrating efforts to diversify Western countries in order to disempower and “replace” white Christian populations. This supposed plot is framed as an effort to destroy Western civilization and commit “white genocide.”
The recent surge in claims about climate control invokes the Great Replacement Theory by suggesting that white Republican voters are being targeted for destruction. Accusations that red-state voters are being intentionally killed or left to die arise amidst widespread misinformation about the voting prospects of undocumented immigrants. In a recent social media post, Elon Musk falsely claimed that Democrats are fast-tracking citizenship for undocumented immigrants to increase their voter base. “If even 1 in 20 illegals become citizens per year, something that the Democrats are expediting as fast as humanly possible, that would be about 2 million new legal voters in 4 years,” Musk wrote. “The voting margin in the swing states is often less than 20 thousand votes. That means if the ‘Democratic’ Party succeeds, there will be no more swing states!!”
Trump and his allies have already filed eight lawsuits in four swing states challenging voter registration procedures over the supposed risk of undocumented people voting. As journalist Melissa Gira Grant has noted, Trump appears to be using immigrants as props in the next stage of his “Stop The Steal” theatrics. Now, this evolving conspiracy about a stolen election — which Trump has not even bothered to lose yet — has taken on another layer: white genocide via climate control and intentional neglect.
It’s important to note that these fascist narratives about the South also erase the region’s diversity. The majority of Black people and immigrants in the United States reside in the South. In North Carolina, the most disturbing, substantiated stories of abandonment in Helene’s wake are emerging from the state’s prison system, which is predominantly Black, even though the state itself is predominantly white. Even outside the carceral system, Black victims of natural disasters have historically received fewer Federal Emergency Management Agency funds than their white counterparts. Undocumented immigrants often go without any assistance due to fears of deportation. While often short-changed by the government, Black and brown community members frequently play prominent roles in mutual aid efforts, building on the survival networks that allow their communities to navigate the everyday violence of capitalism during times of catastrophe. In fascist narratives about targeted destruction and post-storm abandonment, the South’s diversity is either erased or positioned as a threat, with neighbors depicted as “replacements” lying in wait.
Scapegoats play a key role in fascist narratives. Eco-fascism, for example, shifts responsibility for the climate crisis away from the fossil fuel industry and the elites who protect its interests, and onto one of the right’s favorite targets: immigrants. “The right’s solutions only seem viable if the crisis can be blamed not on systems, but on immigrants, who are regularly scapegoated as more environmentally destructive,” Burley explained. “This is a centerpiece of the right’s vision of environmentalism or conservationism — the notion that white, Eurocentric society is uniquely more environmentally conscious.” These generalizations, of course, are divorced from reality, given that the world’s poorest populations produce only a tiny fraction of the carbon emissions created by wealthy Western nations.
The severity of the climate crisis — and the trillions of dollars in stranded assets that would result from meaningful climate action — create urgency for right-wing diversions. “They have to do literally anything to move our attention away from the structures themselves,” Burley said.
Claims that the federal government has abandoned southern states during this crisis reinforce narratives that Republicans are under attack and experiencing mass murder. Donald Trump has helped fuel false rumors that the Biden administration has diverted FEMA disaster relief funds to address the needs of newly arriving undocumented migrants. Other rumors that have recently circulated about FEMA include claims that the agency is confiscating the land of storm victims or seizing incoming donations for survivors. Misinformation is so rampant that FEMA has created a fact-checking web page to dispel rumors about relief efforts. These rumors and conspiracy theories about disaster relief play an important role in evolving right-wing narratives.
Another claim circulating is that flood victims are only eligible to receive $750 in assistance from FEMA. That figure refers to the amount a survivor might receive to cover immediate needs. The maximum amount an individual or household can ultimately receive is $42,500. The inadequacy of these sums, for people who have lost everything, is worthy of discussion, as is the pending budget shortfall that FEMA faces at the end of this year. However, such a discussion would have to include Republican efforts to undermine the agency. “This is a classic right-wing approach: underfund public services and then point to their failures as the reason to privatize them,” Burley said. “In this case, right-wing politicians are taking it one step further, claiming it’s happening because these populations are in the South or in red counties.”
The privatization of FEMA is exactly what Republicans envision. On page 135 of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation outlines a plan to privatize FEMA and the National Flood Insurance Program. The document proposes so-called reforms to FEMA emergency spending that would “shift the majority of preparedness and response costs to states and localities instead of the federal government.” As the current crisis has shown, states and municipalities lack the capacity to address the catastrophic events unfolding now, let alone those that lie ahead. Project 2025 also suggests raising the per capita threshold used to determine whether a disaster qualifies for federal assistance.
Fascist narratives, of course, aren’t grounded in facts. Instead, proponents of these myths are driven by emotional perspectives. Rather than advocating for policies that could materially improve their lives, they become invested in narratives that affirm their inherent worth and social and moral status. “These narratives shift attention away from systemic issues and onto specific grievances, preventing people from connecting crises like climate change and infrastructure collapse to broader problems we can actually solve,” Burley explained.
While it’s easy to dismiss hoaxes about weather control as fringe nonsense, we live in an era when fascist myth-making has reshaped the political landscape. Conspiracy theories about masking and vaccines have ramped up the pandemic’s death toll and created unsafe conditions for many. The false claim that the 2020 election was stolen has become an article of faith within the Republican Party. The violence of January 6 has been rebranded by the right as a story about peaceful protesters who have been unfairly persecuted. Rumors on Facebook about immigrants eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio, made it all the way to the presidential debate stage and have led to bomb threats at schools, hospitals, and municipal buildings in Springfield — while also escalating threats of violence against immigrants. Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has turned a once-crucial media platform into a breeding ground for conspiracies and hoaxes, crowding out real-time information about disasters, social movements, and more.
The right is currently trying to convince people whose lives have been shattered by catastrophe that malevolent forces — including powerful people who want to replace them with immigrants — are responsible for tearing apart their homes, drowning their neighbors, and leaving them for dead. Climate scientists and meteorologists have already endured years of harassment and death threats for speaking about climate change because the right claimed that global warming was a hoax. Now, right-wing voices are portraying scientists as purveyors of climate catastrophe — an escalation that is both alarming and dangerous.
Last week, meteorologist James Spann faced harassment after posting a FEMA announcement on his Facebook page. Spann described having “a very tough day” while being inundated with messages like this one:

We know you’re using HAARP to redirect huricanes over Asheville. Don’t lie. All you meteorologist types are the same. You say chemtrails aren’t real but then you talk about geoengineering and spray DDT on us. We know you used HAARP to direct the huricane over NC and it’s probably to try and mess up the election.

A number of right-wing social media users have suggested violent retaliation against anyone “involved” with HAARP. One X user wrote, “Track HAARP whoever is responsible and involved should be hung for crimes against humanity.”
On the same day that I reviewed posts attacking meteorologists and climate scientists for their alleged roles in HAARP, I also watched a video of meteorologist John Morales in tears as he reported on the growing strength of Hurricane Milton. For years, scientists have warned the public about the rise of climate chaos and chronicled the damage done while also working to save lives. Now, scientists are being blamed for the disasters they have tried to raise the alarm about, with some people openly declaring that they should be lynched.
While the idea that hoaxes about weather manipulation could inspire violence might seem far-fetched, it’s worth noting that conspiracy theorists have already plotted to raid the HAARP facility. In 2016, two Georgia men were arrested while loading large quantities of ammunition, bulletproof vests, and other supplies into a vehicle. They reportedly believed that HAARP researchers were engaged in climate manipulation and mind control. The men allegedly planned to travel to Alaska, enter the facility, take hostages, and set off explosives. Now, with random meteorologists being accused of being HAARP operatives, the danger appears more widespread.In our current context, it’s important to recognize the role of fascist myth-making in fueling right-wing attacks. Fascist narratives become emblematic of people’s pain and the indignities they feel they’ve endured, offering the false promise of satisfaction and redemption through violence. Beyond the scope of fascism, myths and conspiratorial thinking have fueled wars and acts of genocide throughout human history. Fascists like Musk want public sentiment to be ruled by myths, which is why the far right aggressively spreads conspiracies and misinformation while attacking and discrediting journalists.
So, how can we respond to this fascist myth-making? While it’s important to share accurate information and avoid amplifying misinformation, Burley argues that fascist myths must be countered through community-building. “The antidote to this is already happening,” Burley said. “Mutual aid networks ground people back in their communities, fill the gaps left by fragmented public services, and create a steady stream of reliable information among communities facing technological challenges.”
In many areas affected by Hurricane Helene, the reality of who is showing up to do the work of collective survival directly contradicts fascist lies. Relationships forged in struggle can counter the narratives that seek to divide our communities. Organizers in the South are working across differences to help their communities survive an unthinkable disaster. More of us must move in that spirit. Simply asserting our superiority over those who are misled by hoaxes or drawn to harmful ideologies will not save us.

The UN peacekeepers’ headquarters in Lebanon came under Israeli attack for the second time in two days on Friday, the group reported as human rights experts raise alarm about Israel’s continued impunity for committing likely war crimes against UN staff and facilities.
The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) headquarters in Naqoura, Lebanon, “was affected by explosions” on Friday morning, the group said. This is the second attack on the headquarters in the last two days.
Two peacekeepers were wounded and are hospitalized after two explosions affected an observation tower at the facility.
Further, on Friday, Israeli forces took down several reinforced walls near a UN position by the border in Ras Naqoura that Israeli forces opened fire on earlier this week.
An Israeli bulldozer, nicknamed caterpillars after their U.S.-based manufacturer, Caterpillar Inc., “hit the perimeter and IDF tanks moved in the proximity of the UN position,” the group said. “Our peacekeepers remained at the location, and a UNIFIL Quick Reaction Force was dispatched to assist and reinforce the position.”

The group warned that the peacekeepers are now facing “very serious risks” of violence by Israeli forces, who have spent recent days intimidating and attacking UNIFIL peacekeepers and facilities. Deliberately attacking peacekeepers is a violation of international law and Israel’s mandate, under the UN Security Council resolution 1701, to refrain from carrying out attacks in the “buffer zone” in south Lebanon.
Friday’s aggression appears to be an extension of a potentially ongoing attack by Israeli forces on UNIFIL, which was created in 1978 with the goal of ensuring that Israeli forces do not invade southern Lebanon. The group has a mandate to protect civilians in south Lebanon from military incursions.
On Wednesday and Thursday, Israeli forces carried out three attacks on UNIFIL peacekeepers and facilities. In one of the attacks, again on UNIFIL’s headquarters, an Israeli tank opened fire at an observation, injuring two peacekeepers.
Human rights experts and groups have raised alarm that Israel’s attacks on UNIFIL are likely war crimes and represent a dangerous escalation of Israel’s attacks in Lebanon and on humanitarian workers.
In a news conference on Friday, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said that Israeli forces intentionally targeted UNIFIL peacekeepers. “This was not a mistake and not an accident,” he said. Italy is one of the 50 countries that contributes troops to UNIFIL.
Human Rights Watch has called on the UN to urgently launch an investigation into Israel’s attacks on UNIFIL in order to allow the group to carry out its mandate of humanitarian work and civilian protection.
“UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon have long played a critical civilian protection and humanitarian role,” said Lama Fakih, Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa director, in a statement. “Any targeting of UN peacekeepers by Israeli forces violates the laws of war and dangerously interferes with UNIFIL’s civilian protection and aid work.”
The Israeli military has claimed that it is “conducting a thorough review” on the UNIFIL attacks and that soldiers “inadvertently” hurt peacekeepers while fighting Hezbollah in south Lebanon.
However, UNIFIL equipment and peacekeepers are very clearly marked as UN staff, and Israeli forces have attacked humanitarian groups hundreds of times throughout the genocide in Gaza and assault of Lebanon; one UN source told Al Jazeera that it “feels like Israel is going to war with the UN.”
The group expressed concern over Israel’s continued violence and threats toward UNIFIL in the past two weeks, including Israel’s demand for peacekeepers to evacuate. Israel’s attacks have made it harder for UNIFIL to fulfill its humanitarian duties, as UNIFIL’s spokesperson has said that thousands of people in villages under UNIFIL’s area of operation have been trapped without food and water because of the attacks.
“Attacks on UNIFIL not only impede the peacekeeping forces’ work but also the ability of civilians in the south to access much-needed humanitarian aid,” said Fakih.

As the Israeli military continues its assaults on Gaza and Lebanon, which have included the targeting of hospitals and ambulances and the killing of medical personnel, among other violations of international law, we speak to a doctor currently volunteering in Beirut. Dr. Bing Li is an emergency medicine physician and U.S. Army veteran who also volunteered at Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza earlier this year. Li recounts her experiences in Gaza, where “it feels like death is everywhere,” and warns that Israel’s latest forced evacuation, of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, is “essentially a death sentence” for patients, including children in the hospital’s intensive care unit. Now in Lebanon, Li describes how providers are scrambling to increase healthcare capacity in anticipation of additional attacks.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: A team of United Nations experts has accused Israel of committing war crimes and the crime of extermination for its, quote, “relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities,” unquote. This comes as medical authorities in Gaza report Israel has killed at least 63 more Palestinians amidst an intensifying siege on the northern Gaza Strip.
The situation at three hospitals in northern Gaza remains critical as medical workers struggle to respond to forced expulsions ordered by Israel. The director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, filmed this video from inside the intensive care unit on Thursday.

DR. HUSSAM ABU SAFIYA: [translated] We are here under threat, because our hospital will go out of service due to the continuous threats to evacuate the hospital and due to the lack of entry of fuel to the Kamal Adwan Hospital. From here, from the middle of the intensive care unit, I call on all the international organizations and humanitarian organizations and the international community to stop the occupiers from implementing their decision to evacuate the Kamal Adwan Hospital and ceasing its services. Stopping the Kamal Adwan Hospital from providing services means the ending of these children’s lives.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined right now by Dr. Bing Li, an emergency medicine physician based in Arizona who worked at the Indonesian Hospital in the north of Gaza as a volunteer with Rahma Worldwide. Dr. Li is a U.S. Army veteran. She’s joining us now from Beirut, Lebanon, where she’s working to increase healthcare capacities as a volunteer with MedGlobal.
Dr. Bing Li, thank you so much for being with us. If you can start on the situation in Gaza?
DR. BING LI: Thank you, Amy.
So, the situation, especially in north Gaza, has been incredibly heartbreaking for those of us that volunteered and met many of the people that work in north Gaza in these three hospitals, and for me at Indonesian Hospital, where I spent two weeks.
These people that chose to stay in north Gaza — the doctors, the nurses, the administrators, even the janitors — they stayed because they knew that they needed to be there for their patients. They are the most impressive people, the most courageous and the most principled people that I have ever met, and it has been incredibly hard to hear their stories right now. They are people that never complain, that have unlimited patience, that showed us generosity. Usually when I ask them, “How are you doing? Are you OK?” they always say, “Thank God, I am fine.” There’s no complaint. The other day, one of them reached out to me to ask how I was doing because of the hurricanes, and he was concerned that in the U.S. that it wasn’t safe because of these hurricanes that are happening.
And what is happening now, this is the first time that I have heard many of these people be concerned, to show complaints. The medical director at Indonesian Hospital, he says that there are over 40 patients that are trapped inside the hospital, that it is unsafe for them to go anywhere, unsafe for them to step outside to try to evacuate these patients. They are running out of food, running out of water. There already was such a limited amount of medical supplies and medications during the time that we were working there in June, and those are now running out. They’re running out of fuel for electricity, for the ventilators that keep patients breathing on machines.
There are 17 staff that are trapped with them that are just doing daily what they can. They’ve been trapped now for five days, unable to leave the hospital. And the other doctors are unable to come in to relieve them, because, one of them told me, he was trying to travel to the hospital to be there, and in front of him he saw an ambulance get struck by a missile, and so it was unsafe for him to continue passing.
They tell me that it feels like death is everywhere. The smell of death is everywhere. They have nowhere safe to go. One of the medical students, a 20-year-old who has been — that worked every day very hard, always trying to take care of patients, he’s telling me that his family has been displaced now four times in the past three days, that there are bombs going off constantly around them in the homes next door. They’re not sure where they might go next.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about —
DR. BING LI: There’s been —
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about the group Medical Aid for Palestinians, who says it’s removed newborn babies from Kamal Adwan, but that ambulances are being detained at military checkpoints as they attempt to reach Gaza City. The humanitarian group warned, “The world must act before Gaza is erased entirely.” Now, Dr. Bing Li, you did not work at Kamal Adwan, but it was your referral center for OB-GYN and pediatric cases. Your response to this news of the infants?
DR. BING LI: This is incredibly concerning. We must remember that when we say that a hospital, especially in north Gaza, is being told to evacuate, it’s not the same as you’re going from one hospital that is fully functional to another hospital that is fully functional, because the healthcare system has been devastated to this extent. Both Kamal Adwan Hospital and Indonesian Hospital, they have been forced to close multiple times. Not only have they been directly hit by bombs, but then they are occupied by a ground invasion, and so it becomes unsafe to continue to operate.
And then, what is impressive is that the healthcare administrators, the healthcare leaders come together, and they open up these hospitals in one week, in two weeks’ time. When we arrived at Indonesian Hospital, they were able to open up two floors, the ER and the surgical floor, within two weeks of the occupying force having left.
So, with this piecemeal way that people are coming together and making things work, we rely on these different hospitals to work together. So, Kamal Adwan Hospital was the only hospital that was receiving pediatric patients, that could take very sick patients into their ICU. They have a nutrition center to help the extremely malnourished children that can’t be released, that would die without IV support and die without hospital nutritional support. And they also took in the OB patients, the pregnant women and the neonatal patients.
So, as an ER physician, it’s very concerning to me to hear that there are children that are this young, that are babies, infants, that are being told they need to evacuate to be transported to other facilities, because I think this is impossible. There is nowhere else for them to go. This was the only facility that was in that area. And I know that the U.N. forces and the Palestinian Red Crescent, that has been trying to get up to that area to try to evacuate these patients, they’ve not been allowed through.
Another point that many people do not realize when they hear about north Gaza and south Gaza is that they are completely divided. It is about as hard to get from outside Gaza into south Gaza as it is to get from south Gaza to north Gaza. There is a whole new border, a whole military blockade between the north and the south. And that is why we say that it’s different. Virtually no aid, virtually no help is allowed into north Gaza at this time. And so, these children that are being told to evacuate, these patients, there simply isn’t the infrastructure, there isn’t the equipment present and the safety present for them to go anywhere, for them to be put on an ambulance and safely be transported to another facility, that doesn’t exist. It’s essentially a death sentence for these infants, for these very young children that need a high level of care, that need IC levels of care.
AMY GOODMAN: This is the director of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Ramesh Rajasingham.

RAMESH RAJASINGHAM: Critical items are awaiting approval for entry. Our access is restricted. For example, yesterday, OCHA and the World Health Organization tried to reach northern Gaza to support the Kamal Adwan Hospital after Israeli authorities offered its immediate evacuate. And after receiving a green light from the Israeli authorities for the mission, the team was forced to wait at a holding point for hours, and ultimately the mission had to be aborted. And that’s not an unusual practice. In September, less than 10% of coordinated missions to the north were facilitated by the Israeli authorities.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s the director of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Ramesh Rajasingham. Dr. Bing Li, if you can respond to that and also the U.N. chief António Guterres saying he’s written directly to the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, warning him against dismantling the U.N. agency tasked with providing food and healthcare and social services to Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank? Two bills under consideration in Israel’s parliament would prevent UNRWA from continuing its essential work. Guterres said passage of the legislation would be “a catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster.” As you worked in these hospitals in the north and south of Gaza, the role of UNRWA in helping them?
DR. BING LI: So, it’s extremely, extremely alarming that already when we were working in these hospitals, there’s already so little aid, so little supplies that are coming in. To take away what little is left is, essentially, again, a death sentence for anybody there who requires medical care, who requires this kind of help. When we were working in north Gaza — so, already in South Gaza — I spent two weeks in the south, when we first arrived. It’s already a very difficult place to work. It’s already overburdened. There’s already very few supplies. And then, when you go to the north, there’s even a fraction of that.
And I’m not surprised that the border has been difficult, that aid hasn’t been getting through, because I know we waited for hours, both ways, to be able to — allowed through. It’s extremely difficult for medical aid, for these teams to make it through. I think we were the first team in many months to make it to that area of the north.
And to dismantle UNRWA, which is the main support, the main lifeline for these Palestinians — even before the war, they were the ones that fed 50% of the population, provided services, provided education — it’s just another example of the violation of humanitarian law and these humanitarian rights.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Bing Li, I want to get to Lebanon — we only have a few minutes — where you are right now. Interestingly, you worked at Indonesian Hospital, which was originally set up by Indonesia for Gaza. And in the south of Lebanon, the two U.N. peacekeepers who were shot, who were injured, are Indonesian U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon. But you’re in central Beirut, where a mass explosion rocked the city. Dozens of people were killed, more than a hundred injured. Can you describe the situation on the ground there?
DR. BING LI: So, a lot of anxiety, a lot of families that don’t know what is going to happen next, where they should go, if they should try to stay.
I’m here with MedGlobal at the moment, and we’re helping to build the healthcare capacity of Lebanon. I’m working with the Ministry of Public Health to try to bring in more supplies to help support the capacity of some hospitals that have been identified as those that will be most helpful in case these crises continue to happen, in case there continue to be mass casualties. And when this blast in Beirut happened, I was actually in Sidon, which is — in Saida, which is south, maybe about an hour south of Beirut, and talking to hospitals about their needs, doing needs assessments, and seeing what kind of services we can provide to those hospitals.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you so much for being with us, emergency medicine physician based in Arizona, who worked at the Indonesian Hospital in the north of Gaza and as a volunteer with Rahma Worldwide. She’s now in Beirut, Lebanon, volunteering with MedGlobal. Dr. Li is a U.S. Army veteran.
Coming up, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to a Japanese group of atomic bomb survivors. The head of the group has said Gaza today looks like Japan 80 years ago. Stay with us.

Calling for peace in war zones around the world and an end to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, a grassroots group organized by survivors of the United States’ atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.
Nihon Hidankyo was established in 1956 after a number of local organizations of hibakusha, the Japanese name for “bomb-affected people,” joined together.
Toshiyuki Mimaki, the group’s leader, was three years old when the U.S. killed 100,000 people in Hiroshima with a nuclear weapon, and his message after learning Nihon Hidankyo was the 2024 Peace Prize winner was straightforward.
“I am not sure I will be alive next year,” said Mimaki, 82. “Please abolish nuclear weapons while we are alive. That is the wish of 114,000 hibakusha.”
Mimaki focused not only on the plight of the estimated 650,000 Japanese people who survived the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks, but also people — particularly children — facing war now.

“It has been said that because of nuclear weapons, the world maintains peace. But nuclear weapons can be used by terrorists,” said Mimaki. “For example, if Russia uses them against Ukraine, Israel against Gaza, it won’t end there. Politicians should know these things.”
“In Gaza, bleeding children are being held [by their parents],” he added. “It’s like in Japan 80 years ago.”
Mimaki said he had believed “the people working so hard in Gaza” would be awarded the Peace Prize, referring to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which was also nominated.
The U.N. agency has struggled to continue providing humanitarian services to Palestinians in Gaza this year after unverified claims by Israel that 12 UNRWA workers were involved in a Hamas-led attack last year prompted countries including the U.S. to suspend its funding. A majority of countries — but not the U.S., the agency’s biggest donor — have restored funding after an independent probe found Israel had not provided evidence for its accusations.
Kazumi Matsui, the mayor of Hiroshima, said that with the average age of hibakusha now 85, “there are fewer and fewer people able to testify to the meaninglessness of possessing atomic bombs and their absolute evil.”
“People in coming generations must know that what happened is not just a tragedy for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but one that concerns all humanity that must not be repeated,” said Matsui.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 for its efforts to ensure countries comply with the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, applauded the Nobel Committee for recognizing Nihon Hidankyo’s “lifelong work to bring the world’s attention to what nuclear weapons actually do to people when they are used.”
Several years after the nuclear bombings, rates of leukemia diagnoses rose considerably in Japan among survivors. After a decade, other cancers were also detected at higher-than-normal rates. Pregnant women who were exposed to radiation from the bombings also had higher rates of miscarriage and their infants were more likely to die.
Cancer rates have continued to increase among hibakusha throughout their lives.
“It is particularly significant that this award comes at this time when the risk that nuclear weapons will be used again is as high, if not higher, as it has ever been,” said Melissa Parke, executive director of ICAN.
As Nihon Hidankyo was honored “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again,” the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) announced it would be holding its annual nuclear exercise, “Steadfast Noon,” on October 14 over Western Europe.
On Democracy Now! on Friday, Joseph Gerson, president of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament, and Common Security, said the award “could not come at a better time.”
“What most people don’t understand is the increasing danger of nuclear war at this point,” said Gerson. “Among all the nuclear powers, the threshold for nuclear use is decreasing, and all the nuclear powers are in the process of so-called ‘modernizing’ their nuclear arsenals. This is a very dangerous moment.”
“We must, as the hibakusha say, recognize that human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist,” Gerson added, “and we have to work for their abolition.”