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JackCoop

JackCoop's Journal
JackCoop's Journal
November 12, 2023

'We Are Being Killed Here, Please Do Something': Nurses and Doctors Plead for Gaza Cease-Fire - CommonDreams

Doctors and nurses in the Gaza Strip issued urgent pleas for a cease-fire as Israeli forces encircled and attacked the territory's largest hospital, trapping thousands of displaced people and threatening the lives of medical workers and patients.

One Doctors Without Borders nurse texted his colleagues from the basement of al-Shifa Hospital early Saturday, writing that "four or five families"—including his own—were sheltering there amid heavy bombardment and fighting around the facility. "We are being killed here, please do something," the nurse wrote. "The shelling is so close, my kids are crying and screaming in fear."

The attacks on and around al-Shifa as well as the Israeli siege—which has cut off Gaza's electricity supply and prevented fuel from reaching the northern part of the enclave—have caused power outages at the hospital, endangering babies and other patients who are unable to evacuate. Al-Shifa's director said that two premature babies have died due to outages at the hospital's intensive care unit and pediatric ward.

Mohammed Obeid, a Doctors Without Borders surgeon at al-Shifa, said four patients in the hospital were wounded by sniper fire on Saturday and those who have tried to flee have been shot at and bombed.

Link: https://www.commondreams.org/news/doctors-nurses-gaza-cease-fire

November 12, 2023

Students at Brown, MIT, Columbia and Other Colleges Risk Arrest, Retaliation to Protest War on Gaza - Democracy Now



Students on college campuses across the U.S. have been protesting Israel’s U.S.-funded assault on Gaza amid an intensifying crackdown from school authorities. At Brown University, 20 Jewish students who participated in a sit-in to demand Brown consider a divestment resolution were arrested Wednesday. Hundreds of fellow students sang Jewish prayer songs outside Brown’s University Hall in solidarity with the sit-in.

Students with the MIT Coalition Against Apartheid held a peaceful protest despite threats from the school’s administration.

MIT student 1: “We are all here because MIT has now threatened to suspend all peaceful protesters who took part in the No Science for Genocide demonstration. And we must fight for this voice, because we are Gaza’s voice outside of Palestine.”

MIT student 2: “There’s a lot of energy around this No Science for Genocide claim, because a lot of people here, they come to MIT because they care about science, they care about engineering. They want to do good for the world. But the thing is that they come to MIT and become disillusioned, because we find out that what our work is going towards is not for good, is not for people. It’s going towards war, endless war.”


Here in New York City, students at the Columbia School of Social Work held a sit-in protest despite multiple threats of academic sanctions.

Link: https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/10/headlines/students_at_brown_mit_columbia_and_other_colleges_risk_arrest_retaliation_to_protest_war_on_gaza



November 12, 2023

... and I am afraid that all of the babies will lose their lives," said Abu Sada.

Israel-Hamas war live: Gaza’s al-Quds hospital declared ‘no longer operational’; al-Shifa hospital runs out of fuel - GuardianUK

Link: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/nov/12/israel-hamas-war-live-netanyahu-vows-to-press-on-with-full-force-as-fighting-rages-around-main-gaza-hospital

November 12, 2023

Um... I'm Stumbling Over My Stereotypes... Can Someone Please Explain ?

Found amongst the hundreds of pictures from yesterday's march in London.



Am I missing something ?


November 12, 2023

'Families want to die together': relatives count the cost of Gaza airstrikes - Guardian

The first call informing Fares Alghoul that a relative’s home had been hit by an Israeli airstrike arrived late on a Friday. The internet in Gaza was cut only moments later, forcing him to wait 12 hours to learn the names of the 18 dead. He would have to wait even longer for the confirmation that a further 18 family members stuck under the rubble had also been killed, bringing his family’s death toll to 36.

As a journalist, Alghoul has covered all Gaza’s previous wars but now lives in Canada, where he has had to watch from a distance as generations of his family are wiped out.

Families suffering such large losses have become a feature of the current bombardment of Gaza. According to the latest statistics provided by the Palestinian health ministry in the territory, 312 families have lost 10 or more members.

At least 70% of Gaza’s population has been displaced, according to the UN, and many families have clustered together, crowding dozens of them into their homes in the hope they can avoid the heavy bombardment or at least pool increasingly scarce resources such as water, fuel and food.

Link: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/12/relatives-count-cost-gaza-airstrikes-israeli-missiles-apartment-blocks-survivors

November 12, 2023

I Defended The Capitol On January 6. Now I'm Calling Out The Very Lawmakers I Was There To Protect - HuffingtonPost

Nine people did end up dead. I was so badly wounded that even after two surgeries, I wasn’t sure if I could do my job or take the lieutenant promotion I’d strived for. Instead of denouncing the siege and upholding the law, many of the Republican lawmakers I risked my life to shield did the unthinkable: They defended Trump and the insurrectionists. They claimed the violent uprising by that armed militia was “legitimate public discourse” and a “peaceful protest” conducted by “patriots.”

As a public servant for two decades, I was horrified to hear the invaders painted as victims and felt compelled to tell my story, but my wife and I were petrified that Trump’s influence could harm our family. So I kept my mouth shut.

Then Harry Dunn, a Black colleague of 13 years who was also traumatized by the attempted coup, spoke out. He exposed the violence and racist epithets hurled at him by the pro-Trump white nationalists who stormed the Capitol. In TV interviews, he revealed how he was berated and racially profiled by fellow U.S. citizens whose crimes were rationalized and concealed.

I identified with Dunn, a fellow policeman of color, vilified for doing his job. I waited for Republican leaders Lindsey Graham, Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio — people I’d met and protected — to condemn the revolt. Yet they refused to blame our lawless ex-president for causing this historic tragedy. Hawley actually raised his fist in support of the rioters and printed the image on a cup for sale on his website.

Link: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/capitol-riot-january-6-police-lawmakers_n_6547cd0be4b0e3ecaf89be7c

November 11, 2023

An open letter from Jewish students - The Brown Daily Herald

As we grapple with millennia of Jewish struggle and survival, we will not abandon our Palestinian cousins and peers, or let them stand alone.


As of today, it has been a month since the Oct. 7 attacks that have dominated global political consciousness and discourse, not to mention our experiences as young Jewish people. Zionist institutions purport to be representative of all Jews, often using us as a rhetorical shield to support the unconscionable actions of the state of Israel. We feel a particular pain as Jews having to continuously justify our stance against genocide. We are here to make ourselves clear: We stand in solidarity with Brown Students for Justice in Palestine and the Palestine Solidarity Caucus in the pursuit of the liberation of Palestinian peoples. We know intimately that Jewish struggles are necessarily bound up in global struggles for freedom. We are a group of Jewish students who have coalesced around our shared vision of justice, anti-occupation, liberation and community. We ask you to listen to us now:

1. What do we mean when we say, “from the river to the sea”?

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is not a call for the forced removal of Jews from Palestine or, as it is commonly misconstrued, a call to "throw Jews into the sea;” instead, it is a call for the end to the oppression of all Palestinians — in Gaza, the West Bank and within the Green Line. Liberating all of Palestine requires revolutionary change: not an eradication of Jews from the land, but a total dismantlement of the apartheid regime occupying it. The assumption that this phrase is inherently genocidal falsely conflates liberation with the annihilation of each citizen of the oppressive state and ignores its liberatory intent. Within this conflation, we hear a racist assumption that Palestinians are ruthless "animals” and an intentional obscuring of the violent intent of a neo-fascist government — a characterization shared even by writers in Israel’s newspaper of record. It is not only blatantly false but obscene to frame a call for liberation and justice as genocidal while Israel is carrying out genocide in Gaza funded by billions of American tax dollars. If calling for a future in which Palestinians can live in their homeland unshackled implies an existential threat to the Zionist ideology, it is that ideology that must be called into question — not the call for liberation.

2. Are we saying that antisemitism doesn’t exist?

Of course not...

Link: https://www.browndailyherald.com/article/2023/11/an-open-letter-from-jewish-students

November 11, 2023

'Please stop this.' Gaza's hospitals are failing under the weight of war. US medical groups are scrambling to help - CNN

Dr. Mohammed Ghneim has not left his hospital in Gaza City in four weeks. He can’t remember the last time he slept or ate, and his blue scrubs are stained in the blood of patients who’ve died in his arms.

His voice cracks under the weight of the horrors he’s seen: fetuses pulled from the wombs of dying mothers, children with crushed lungs struggling to breathe, and his own colleagues – doctors, nurses and EMTs – transported to the hospital morgue in body bags.

“We are doing our best – this is why we haven’t left here for days – but the situation is very horrible. There’s no way to describe it in any language or with any words,” Ghneim told CNN in a voice message on November 7, as sounds of chaos and panic unfolded around him. “Many times I want to go to the side and cry, but unfortunately there is no time.”

Ghneim is an emergency room doctor at Dar Al-Shifa, also known as Al-Shifa Hospital or Shifa, and is Arabic for “house of healing.” But at this hospital – the largest medical complex in Gaza – there’s far too much death.

Link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/please-stop-this-gaza-s-hospitals-are-failing-under-the-weight-of-war-us-medical-groups-are-scrambling-to-help/ar-AA1jM3Ci

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