Week in Review
7/5/25
Urgent health update: Consequences of war on Gaza, West Bank/Jerusalem, and Lebanon - June 28, 2025
Please read, share, agitate, and keep talking about Gaza, which has mostly disappeared from the headlines. The genocide continues on steroids.
How Support for Palestine Became a Hate Crime
Cohen details the ways that prosecutors around the country, under pressure from pro-Israel law firms and organizations, and goaded by sensationalized reporting in the media, are trumping up charges against pro-Palestine individuals and activities via hate crimes laws, even in cases where there may be no underlying crime.
Harvard appears to think all Jews support Israel. That is discriminatory
Harvard is suing to stop the Trump administration’s unprecedented interference in the operation of the university, supposedly to protect Jewish students from antisemitism. Harvard maintains it has already addressed a crisis of antisemitism on campus. The government is wrong in attacking Harvard, but so is Harvard in its defense.
We are part of a group of 27 Jewish scholars of Jewish studies who have filed an amicus brief in Harvard’s lawsuit against the Trump administration... We reject Harvard’s troubling assumption that being Jewish necessitates supporting Israel, or that criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza constitutes antisemitism.
Israeli Soldiers Killed at Least 410 People at Food Aid Sites in Gaza This Month
How to Wreck the Nation’s Health, by the Numbers
A good summary of how Trump’s policies will make us all sicker. Beyond the daily fear and depression.
The Supreme Court Has Dealt Another Devastating Blow to Women
The Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to women, their ability to choose their own doctor, and the entire structure of civil rights protections today. By a vote of 6–3 (which broke down along the usual partisan lines), the court ruled that women on Medicaid cannot choose their own doctor, or sue the state to defend their civil rights, unless Republican state legislators in South Carolina approve.
Gaza on the Brink of Total Collapse: Israeli Occupation Forces Systematically Destroy Electricity Infrastructure and Cut Off Energy Sources
Violent and Nonviolent Death Tolls for the Gaza War: New Primary Evidence
Here, we present results from a large-scale household survey, the Gaza Mortality Survey (GMS), which provides independent estimates of war-related deaths between 10/7/23 and 1/5/25. Our findings suggest that violent mortality has significantly exceeded official figures. We also find that nonviolent excess deaths, often overlooked in conflict assessments, also represent a substantial burden.
100,000 Dead: What We Know About Gaza's True Death Toll
The death toll in Gaza, as reported by the Palestinian Health Ministry, understates the true scale of the crisis, researchers say. Hunger, disease, and Israeli gunfire at food distribution centers have made the war in the Strip one of the bloodiest of the 21st century.
“Starving a Generation” report indicts Israel for weaponizing starvation as a tool of genocide
6/24, Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP), in partnership with Doctors Against Genocide (DAG) published a report, “Starving a Generation: Israel’s Famine Campaign Targeting Palestinian Children in Gaza.” The report asserts Israeli authorities have deliberately weaponized starvation as a method of genocide, resulting in the preventable deaths and suffering of Palestinian children in Gaza that will carry negative impacts for generations to come. “Starving a Generation” concludes that famine has been present in Gaza since early 2024, when the first Palestinian children died of starvation, and it has been a key Israeli strategy since the days following 10/7.
No justice in a genocide: sexual and reproductive health and rights in Gaza
Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters: explores sexual and reproductive health in Gaza through the lens of reproductive justice. The authors discuss how the three central tenets of reproductive justice—the right to have children, the right not to have children, and the right to parent in safe environments and with dignity—have been systematically destroyed in Gaza leading to what they term a “reproductive genocide.”
I’m in northern Gaza. I would rather starve than take GHF aid
No amount of hunger would push me to seek aid wrapped in blood and humiliation.
Urgent Appeal: Lives of Gaza’s Children Are at Risk as They are Denied Therapeutic and Formula Milk
Fortified milk formulas have completely run out in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs), despite being essential for infants suffering from health conditions such as compromised immune systems, digestive problems, and the inability to breastfeed.
Organization says pro-Palestine protester should lose job, free speech group disagrees
An organization publicly questioned two hospitals for employing individuals who participated in pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, but free speech advocates said that Americans have the right to “both a career and a political opinion.” Accuracy in Media [NOT] is running two separate petitions against Alameda Health and UW Harborview Medical Center, respectively, in an attempt to make the hospitals evaluate whether they should employ the pro-Palestinian protesters in question.
Israel unleashes massive wave of strikes on south Lebanon
why is the news not covering this??? Israeli army carried out a massive wave of airstrikes on the Nabatieh area in southern Lebanon on 6/27, targeting what it claimed was “terror infrastructure” belonging to Hezbollah. Successive air raids struck the Ali al-Taher forests, the Kfar Tibnit heights, and Nabatieh al-Fawqa. Israeli warplanes also bombed the area between the southern Lebanese villages of Zrarieh and Ansar. Video footage and images circulating on social media showed huge explosions as a result of the Israeli strikes.…At least one person was killed and 11 others wounded by the attacks on Nabatieh. 6/26, one person was killed in an Israeli drone strike which targeted a motorcycle in the town of Beit Lif, in the Bint Jbeil district of southern Lebanon. A truck in the town of Mays al-Jabal was also bombed. The Israeli army said in a statement that it killed two Hezbollah operatives.
In Gaza we watched Iranian missiles go by, heading for Israel. That war is over – it seems ours will never end
A ceasefire that would allow Gaza’s sky at sunset to be dotted with children’s kites floating gently over the rubble. For a moment, they would watch them fly and think: maybe not everything up there means death. Maybe, just maybe, there’s an angel, too.
All we want is what all people want: for this nightmare to end. For warplanes to leave. For tents to become safe, warm homes again. For the soft coastal breeze to blow away the smell of blood.
Written by a writer from We Are Not Numbers
Trump’s War on Free Speech & Higher Ed
We must remember that what’s happening now was precipitated, and it’s still largely taking place, through what some of us are calling “The Antisemitism Scare.”
We’re invoking the Red Scare of the 1950s because there are so many similarities.
One tick and ‘anti-Semitic’ fruit: The curse of being Palestinian
It was a still-life image: figs, olives, grapes, oranges, watermelon, and a few glass bottles. A quiet nod to my culture and roots. But in today’s climate, even fruit is political. Any symbol of Palestinian identity can now be interpreted as a threat.