Week in Review
10/11/25
Urgent health update: Consequences of war on Gaza and the West Bank & East Jerusalem - October 4, 2025
Please read and share widely. The tide of public opinion is turning, but resistance to the genocide in Gaza must continue. As we face the Jewish New Year, let us commit ourselves to this critical political work using our voices as health care workers and people who respect justice and international human rights law.
Informative exhibit at the Doctors Against Genocide conference in Ann Arbor revealing the destruction of the Gaza healthcare system.
How Bari Weiss Won
The ascension of Bari Weiss to head CBS is dangerous and troubling in so many ways.
Why write in a genocide?
On the two year anniversary of October 7, We Are Not Numbers writers, many still living and surviving in Gaza, continue to write and we continue to publish their stories. I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this amazing effort as the mentor liaison.
On Bearing Witness
Standing by Our Colleagues in Gaza — A Plea to the U.S. Medical Community
The New England Journal of Medicine just published two articles about Gaza, the first in a mainstream US journal. Note, the NEJM failed to allow the word “Genocide”. Please thank the editors for breaking the silence of US journals and add your thoughts as well. 175 words…
Two Years After October 7: Israel’s War, Gaza’s Ashes, and the Collapse of Moral Authority
“[G}aza is witnessing destruction on a scale so vast it makes Dresden look like a prelude.
And unlike Dresden,
Gaza’s devastation has been broadcast live, in real time,
to a world that cannot claim it did not know.”
“Netanyahu, cornered by political instability, corruption trials,
and a fragile coalition held together by the far-right,
saw in October 7 a chance to do what had always been unspoken:
clear Gaza. Not of Hamas, but of Palestinians. Permanently.
Not by announcement, but by attrition—bombing, starvation, siege, trauma.
Gaza’s civilian population wasn’t collateral damage. It was the target.”
“This was never about hostages.
It was about Gaza. More specifically:
it was about removing Gaza as an obstacle to territorial ambition.”
Will California Zionize K-12 Education?
If you live in California, pay attention... but this is a template for the rest of us. Factual information about Israel and Palestine may soon be outlawed in the California K-12 school system. Assembly Bill 715 is currently on Governor Newsom’s desk.
The Gaza I Knew Is Gone
Voices from Gaza now published in NYT!
Watch now: I KNOW
MAP (Medical Aid for Palestinians produced this 1-minute, gut-wrenching film about the reality of healthcare in Gaza.
The Necropolitics of Hunger: Man-made Famine and Futurity of the Palestinian Nation
While starvation profoundly affects individuals across all age groups, this essay focuses specifically on Palestinian children to illuminate how deliberate starvation strategies are designed to compromise the futurity of the Palestinian nation by systematically destroying its youngest generation. Beyond the immediate devastation, Palestinian children’s physical health, mental well-being, and emotional development are being deliberately compromised through weaponized hunger. This analysis examines how starvation functions not merely as a byproduct of armed aggression, but as a calculated tool of necropolitical warfare aimed at foreclosing Palestinian futures.
An American Nurse in Gaza City Films Hospital Collapse as Israeli Forces Surround It
Nurse Andee Vaughan said the state of the healthcare system is “insanity”.
Visual Evidence Upends Israel’s Claims That Nasser Hospital Strike Targeted Hamas Camera
Drone footage obtained by Reuters reveals that the camera struck by Israel—which it claimed was covered by a towel and being used by Hamas for surveillance—actually belonged to Reuters photographer Hussam al-Masri, who had used his prayer rug to shield it from heat and dust. A Reuters analysis of visual evidence and related information contradicts Israel’s explanation for its 8/25 attack on Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, which killed 22 people, including five journalists. These journalists had routinely gathered on the hospital’s stairwell landing to film from a high vantage point and report on events in Gaza’s Khan Yunis area.
Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, Director General of Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City, told Seraj TV that Gaza City is facing “wholesale extermination” under relentless Israeli bombardment, with several hospitals out of service and tanks just a few hundred meters from Al-Shifa. Roughly 50 people killed daily, and dozens critically injured, while desalination plants have largely stopped functioning—limiting the availability of clean water—and international organizations, including Doctors Without Borders, are no longer operating. Children are being starved and killed, the occupation is blocking food and medicine deliveries, and famine is worsening. (Drop Site 9/29)
Dr. Muhammad Mustafa, a Palestinian-British ER doctor treating children in Gaza, told Breaking Points that the humanitarian situation is catastrophic: “A million children are being starved to death… a quarter of the population is in Stage 5 famine, where four of every 10,000 children die each day.” He described performing chest drains on children without sedation, calling it “like being a butcher.” Mustafa warned that without doctors, medicine, and functioning infrastructure, people die even if food is available, and he’s urging governments in Ireland, Australia, and the UK to provide urgent medical relief. (Drop Site 9/29)
Gaza’s many injured will need rehabilitation care and support for years to come, WHO report
World Health Organization released a new report that found nearly 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza have suffered “life-changing injuries” since the war began. One in four of those injuries are in children. More than 5,000 people have had amputations.
Israel has approved a $40 million boost to its Foreign Ministry’s hasbara (propaganda) budget
Israel’s cabinet unanimously approved a $40 million increase to the Foreign Ministry’s propaganda budget, Haaretz reported. The funds include $24 million for global influence campaigns and $16 million to finance international delegations through 2025. According to the Times of Israel, the allocation is more than 20 times the ministry’s usual public diplomacy budget, with a priority on shaping opinion abroad, particularly on U.S. college campuses.
Over 1,000 Rabbis and Jewish Peace Activists in Brooklyn Demand Gaza Ceasefire
In New York, more than 1,000 rabbis and Jewish peace activists led a protest demanding a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and an end to U.S. arms transfers to Israel. They gathered at Brooklyn Borough Hall for a mass public memorial service on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, known as the Day of Atonement. Nearly 60 people were arrested as they nonviolently blocked traffic to the Brooklyn Bridge.
Famine’s Long Shadow
Even if food is surged into Gaza today, the history of weaponized mass starvation shows that the social aftershocks will reverberate for generations.