Cold, wet, starving: everyday desperation in Gaza – Day 414

Heavy rains have worsened the plight of displaced Palestinians in the Gaza Strip amid a deadly Israeli war on the enclave, the Civil Defense Service said on Sunday.

“Rainfall has caused severe damage to tents housing thousands of displaced people with water flowing inside the tents and damaging luggage and mattresses,” spokesman Mahmoud Basal said in a statement.

“The current situation signals a real humanitarian catastrophe if immediate intervention does not take place,” he warned.

Heavy rains affected several areas across the Palestinian enclave, particularly central and southern Gaza on Sunday.

The spokesman appealed to the United Nations and the international community to quickly intervene to provide tents and caravans for displaced civilians in Gaza during winter.

UNRWA says only 6% of Gaza’s food needs are being met

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has confirmed that the food supplies entering the Gaza Strip meet only six per cent of people’s needs, the Palestinian Information Center reported Sunday.

UNRWA said that the Israeli occupation allows limited quantities of flour and food supplies through the crossings, which cover just six per cent of the required needs. The agency highlighted that this situation has led to a severe crisis in Gaza, particularly in accessing bread, forcing most bakeries in the southern part of the enclave to shut down.

The agency added that over two million displaced people in Gaza suffer from hunger, thirst, disease and fear. Families find it nearly impossible to secure meals, as conditions in displacement camps and shelters remain dire due to hunger, cold and the inability of international organizations to provide adequate humanitarian aid amidst severe food shortages. It called for the full reopening of crossings to allow essential supplies to prevent widespread famine, with malnutrition and disease already present.

Israeli forces executed two Palestinians, including a teenager, on Sunday, after storming the town of Ya’bad, west of Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank.

The Palestinian Health Ministry announced that occupation forces shot and killed the young man, Ahmad Mahmoud Zaid Al-Kilani, 20, and the child, Mohammad Rabie Jamal Hamarsheh, 13, during the invasion of Ya’bad town.

Media sources said that the army stormed the town of Ya’bad, from its eastern entrance, sparking protests among local citizens.

Israeli forces opened fire with live rounds, concussion grenades, and tear gas canisters, shooting the youth and young man multiple times at close range with live ammunition.

Ambulance crews transported the critically wounded to the Ya’bad Emergency Center, where doctors pronounced them dead as a result of their injuries.

Sources added that the army initially denied medical treatment to the injured by blocking ambulance crews from reaching them to provide first aid.

Israeli Government Imposes Sanctions on Haaretz, Cuts All Ties and Pulls Advertising

Israel’s government approved on Sunday a proposal by Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi that mandates any government-funded body refrain from communicating with Haaretz or placing advertisements in the paper. The proposal was approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The decision, according to the government’s explanation, is a reaction to “many editorials that have hurt the legitimacy of the state of Israel and its right to self defense, and particularly the remarks made in London by Haaretz publisher, Amos Schocken, that support terrorism and call for imposing sanctions on the government.”

In a speech in London last month, Schocken said “the Netanyahu government doesn’t care about imposing a cruel apartheid regime on the Palestinian population. It dismisses the costs of both sides for defending the settlements while fighting the Palestinian freedom fighters, that Israel calls terrorists.”

Haaretz reacted to the government decision with the following statement: “The opportunist resolution to boycott Haaretz, which passed in today’s government meeting without any legal review, is another step in Netanyahu’s journey to dismantle Israeli democracy. Like his friends Putin, Erdoğan, and Orbán, Netanyahu is trying to silence a critical, independent newspaper.

“Haaretz will not balk and will not morph into a government pamphlet that publishes messages approved by the government and its leader.”

Former Israeli Soldier, Rabbi Found Dead in UAE while Advancing Normalization

UAE authorities have discovered the body of Rabbi Zvi Kogan, who had been missing since Thursday, Israeli media reported on Sunday.

The Israeli Broadcasting Authority (KAN) reported that Kogan, a former member of the Israeli army’s Givati Brigade’s Charedi company and an emissary for the Chabad chapter in Abu Dhabi, was found dead.

Chabad is an extremist ultra-orthodox religious group known for its strong ties with the Israeli army.

Israeli officials condemned the killing claiming it was a “despicable antisemitic act of terror” and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice.

The Israeli National Security Council reiterated that the UAE has a Level 3 travel warning, urging Israeli citizens to avoid non-essential travel to the Gulf state due to threats against Israelis in the region.

Since the UAE normalized relations with Israel as part of the US-brokered Abraham Accords in 2020, Kogan has served as the country’s representative of Chabad, a Zionist organization dedicated to expanding Jewish life in the UAE.

Despite widespread condemnation of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, the UAE has not severed its diplomatic ties with the occupation state.

UPDATE: The UAE announced on Sunday evening the arrest of three individuals suspected of killing an Israeli-Moldovan rabbi.

Inside Project Esther, the right wing action plan to take down the Palestine movement

The Heritage Foundation got a lot of publicity during this election cycle for its infamous Project 2025. But that’s not the only project they intend to carry out now that Donald Trump is returning to the White House.

Project Esther is a new proposal from Heritage that claims to lay out a plan to combat antisemitism in the United States. In fact, it aims to destroy the Palestine solidarity movement as a first step in a crusade to, ultimately, restrict activism against American policy of all sorts, foreign and domestic. .

It’s not a new enterprise, of course. Disingenuous accusations of antisemitism have been weaponized by the Zionist movement and the State of Israel for a century or more but Project Esther means to unify and coordinate the cynical use of the fight against real antisemitism in order to completely destroy the movement for Palestinian rights.

But that is only its initial ambition. As the full plan makes clear, the people who produced this scheme see it as the key to devastating movements against both American imperialism abroad and white supremacy domestically (continue reading here).