On Wednesday, during a routine operation in Gaza, Israeli soldiers reportedly killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar—seemingly stumbling into realizing a major military objective. Despite over a year’s worth of efforts, Israeli soldiers appear to have found Sinwar by accident. After killing three people during a normal operation, they apparently realized that one of the men resembled the Hamas leader. The Israeli military confirmed Sinwar’s death on Thursday.
“I think Netanyahu has zero interest in ending this war and I don’t think he’s motivated to help Biden before the elections.”
Israel and the United States have been trying to find and kill Sinwar since last October. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has cast his death as one of the main reasons for Israel’s unceasing bombardment of Gaza, saying a main war objective is “eliminating” Hamas leadership.
With this objective met, Sinwar’s death could present a chance to end what has become a regional war. Vice President Kamala Harris said after the killing that Sinwar’s death gave “us an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza.” But it seems unlikely that Israeli and American leaders will fully press in this moment.
A former Biden administration official said they do believe that Sinwar’s death will be viewed by the administration as “somewhat of an opportunity to secure an end to the conflict,” particularly ahead of the elections as they try to win back votes that they “certainly have lost.” The problem, the former official explained, is that “I think Netanyahu has zero interest in ending this war and I don’t think he’s motivated to help Biden before the elections.”
The next move from Israel’s government, at the moment, is unclear. On Thursday, Netanyahu stated that “the mission ahead of us has not been completed.” In an initial statement Benny Gantz, a centrist member of Netanyahu’s war cabinet, said that while Sinwar’s death is a vital goal it would not mean the end of the war in Gaza.
Sinwar was killed just over a year after he orchestrated the October 7 attack in which Hamas killed nearly 1,200 Israelis. In response, the Israeli military has leveled Gaza, killing at least 42,000 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry. (The full death toll is feared to be more than double that number, according to some public health experts.)
Sinwar’s death comes at a time when ceasefire talks to end the war in Gaza have effectively fallen apart and the conflict has expanded throughout the region.
Israel recently launched a major invasion of Lebanon, where more than 2,000 people have now been killed. And Israel is on the verge of striking Iran in response to the ballistic missiles it launched against Israel on October 1. Iran’s decision to strike Israel came after a series of increasingly aggressive Israeli escalations in Lebanon—including extensive bombardment of residential areas in Beirut—that seemed all but guaranteed to provoke an Iranian retaliation. Hezbollah officials supported multiple ceasefireoffers in early October, none of which Netanyahu accepted. (The US is not currently pushing publicly for a ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel.)
The Biden administration could use Sinwar’s death as leverage to push for an end to what is now a regional war. This would build on a letter the United States recently sent to Israel that gave Israel 30 days to allow in more humanitarian aid to Gaza, or face potential restrictions on US weapons exports to Israel. “I don’t think [the Israeli government] will be responsive to the letter,” the former Biden official said. “I don’t think they take our threat seriously. I don’t think the US government would withhold weapons. I think this is a signal that won’t be followed through on.” (Human rights groups, according to a report in Politico, voiced similar concerns that “rules don’t apply” to Israel.)
Israel has now killed the top leaders of both Hamas and Hezbollah: Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike on September 27, and in July, Israeli is widely understood to have assassinated Hamas’ political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. (Haniyeh, who was Hamas’ key ceasefire negotiator, was considered to be more moderate than Sinwar.)
Israel has reduced much of Gaza to rubble following one of the most intense aerial bombardment campaigns in modern history. The IDF has dropped at least 75,000 tons of bombs on the territory, killed at least one out of every 55 people in Gaza, and has cut off nearly all humanitarian aid. Its actions in Gaza have reportedly violated international human rights law and—along with Hamas’ actions on October 7—constitute potential war crimes in the view of the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. A case in the International Court of Justice asserting Israel is actively committing a genocide is proceeding as well.
Both Iran and Hezbollah, which is closely aligned with Iran, have signaled they would like to avoid a full-scale war with Israel that could potentially further involve the United States. The question remains whether the Biden administration is willing to use its extensive leverage as Israel’s primary weapons supplier to force an end to the conflict.
Update, October 17: This post has been updated to reflect a new statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuand a new statement from Vice President Kamala Harris.
Yesterday, Axios reporter Barak Ravid published a copy of a letter from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to Israel urging the country to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza—and, in a rare move for the Biden administration, backing that request up by publicly threatening to remove some military aid.
“Failure to demonstrate a sustained commitment to implementing and maintaining these measures may have implications for US policy under NSM-20,” Blinken and Austin wrote, suggesting that the US could withhold money from Israel if the country does not: enable 350 aid trucks to enter daily, reinstitute “humanitarian pauses” in their military operations, allow Palestinians to move inland before winter, and open an additional aid crossing within thirty days.
“Today’s action falls into the category of better late than never—we will carefully monitor the situation to see if the Administration will finally hold the Netanyahu government to account.”
The State Department confirmed the veracity of the letter. And Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US representative to the United Nations, today said the effort was to ensure there was not a “policy of starvation” for a region that has received zero food or medical aid since October 1st.
Israeli press reported that 50 trucks of food aid entered North Gaza today, likely in response. But it still is not clear yet whether the administration will actually back up its words with action before the election and pull military funds if Israel continues blocking aid.
NSM-20, the policy directive Blinken and Austin reference in their letter, is based on an amendment filed by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) in December of 2023. The policy requires that the provision of US “security assistance” comply with international law, and that countries receiving US weapons and military funding—of which Israel has received over $17.9 billion in the past year—do not also obstruct the provision of humanitarian aid. This past spring, two US government agencies concluded that Israel was deliberately blocking aid; Blinken rejected the reports, according to ProPublica.
“As the humanitarian situation in Gaza has gone from horrible to catastrophic, the Biden Administration has failed in its ongoing duty to apply the law and terms of NSM-20,” Van Hollen said Tuesday. “Today’s action falls into the category of better late than never—we will carefully monitor the situation to see if the Administration will finally hold the Netanyahu government to account in meeting the requirements set forth in the secretaries’ letter.”
Annelle Sheline, a Quincy Institute analyst who resigned from the State Department in April over Biden’s Gaza policy, wrote on X that the letter, which expresses “concern” that Israel is impeding the movement of civilians within Gaza and prohibiting nearly all aid from entering the strip, is also a “clear acknowledgement” that section 620I of the foreign assistance act is being violated. 620I—which prohibits the provision of military aid to foreign governments which restrict humanitarian aid—“has never been systematically implemented,” according to the Center for Civilians in Conflict.
According to Blinken and Austin’s letter, September was the worst month for relief efforts since the war began a year ago. The United Nations said that Israel blocked all food aid from entering north Gaza between October 1st and October 14th. Health officials at North Gaza hospitals say food, medicine, and even water are running out.
The letter’s 30-day deadline means any threats it contains won’t be enforceable until after the US presidential election. And Austin announced on October 13th, just days before the letter, that the US would send another THAAD missile defense battery—along with about 100 soldiers to operate it—to supplement Israel’s pre-existing air defenses.
Annelle Sheline, the ex-State-Department official, told the Wall Street Journalshe suspects it’s a strategy to gain Arab and Muslim votes in key swing states like Michigan for Harris, rather than a real attempt to shift Israel’s policy long-term. “It’s very convenient that the deadline is after the election,” she said.
On October 7, 2024, the Costs of War Project at Brown University released two new reports. One report from the military-research group details how much the United States government has spent aiding the Israeli military between October 2023 and September 2024. The other gathers and evaluates previously published data to estimate the human cost of this past year’s unrelenting violence.
In both cases, the researchers show staggering new findings.
The Costs of War Project researchers estimate the cost to US taxpayers at over $17.9 billion, and the likely number of people killed at well over 100,000—which, even then, is a “very conservative, minimum amount of death.” As researchers begin to calculate the costs, the human and monetary toll is starting to become clearer.
Human Cost
To estimate the human cost of Israel’s war on Gaza, researcher Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins started with the Gaza Ministry of Health’s count of confirmed deaths, which has now surpassed 41,615.
Beyond that, an estimated 10,000 people are buried under rubble. Over the past year, 60 percent of buildings and nearly all road-systems in Gaza have been destroyed, making the retrieval of dead and injured people near-impossible. Adding an estimate of those who have died by starvation—about 62,413 people—brings the total estimated death toll to 114,000, or about 5 percent of Gaza’s population. Those likely death-by-starvation numbers come from a letter 99 physicians who served in Gaza sent President Joe Biden last week.
“With only marginal exceptions, every single person in Gaza is sick, injured, or both,” the physicians wrote to Biden. “We worry that unknown thousands have already died from the lethal combination of malnutrition and disease, and that tens of thousands more will die in the coming months, especially with the onset of the winter rains in Gaza. Most of them will be young children.”
Still, as Costs of War Project director Stephanie Savell told Mother Jones, factors like the destruction of water infrastructure and sanitary facilities mean the real loss may be incalculable for years to come. Savell said that the numbers used here are a “really solid, conservative minimum number of deaths.”
Given the depletion of Gaza’s medical system, thousands more have likely died due to lack of care for their chronic illnesses. (Cancer care, for example, has been unavailable in Gaza, as has most prenatal care. Women are dying in childbirth without adequate care, and are reportedly undergoing cesareans without anesthesia: “A big portion of death tolls from war comes in deaths of newborns, and pregnant mothers,” Savell said.
Since the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel one year ago on October 7 that killed nearly 1,200, Israel has imposed a severe blockade on food entering Gaza. “96 percent of Gaza’s population faces acute levels of food insecurity, with 2.15 million people in crisis levels of hunger or worse,” the Costs of War Project researchers reported, noting that Israel’s government has limited humanitarian aid convoys entering Gaza that might alleviate that hunger or bring in medical supplies. (A recent ProPublica report found that officials with the US State Department were aware that Israel deliberately blocked aid to Gaza, which would have triggered a potential end to arms shipments to the close ally; Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly rejected the findings.)
Researchers at Brown cited the metric for estimating indirect deaths used by the authors of a letter published in the medical journal The Lancet in July, that warned deaths might be much higher in Gaza than currently reported: four “indirect deaths”—that is, preventable deaths from starvation, or untreated illness, for example—for every direct death in a war. In this case, though, “It seems to me that ratio might be much higher,” Savell said.
Costs of War Project researchers Linda J. Bilmes, William D. Hartung, and Stephen Semler calculated that the United States government has spent $17.9 billion providing military supplies—including weapons, ammunition, vehicles, bombs, and jet fuel—to the Israeli army over the past year.
Those weapons have come through a variety of channels, including commercial sales approved by the State Department, Foreign Military Sales, Foreign Military Financing (which provides grants for countries to buy from US defense contractors), and a program providing excess military equipment no longer needed by the US military to ally nations for a steep discount.
“There are different degrees of public information available on each of these arms channels, and there have also been efforts to hide the full amounts of aid and types of systems through bureaucratic maneuvering,” the researchers explained.
In addition to the $17.9 billion going directly to Israel, the US Navy is spending at least $4.86 billion in the region, “primarily defending maritime shipping against attacks by Houthi militants in Yemen.” The Navy is currently operating two carrier strike groups present in the area, each of which costs $8.7 million per day to operate. (This led to a particularly odd moment when Vice President Kamala Harris boasted on the debate stage that there are no US troops present in conflict zones.)
The amount of taxpayer money sent to Israel this year was not easy to calculate, or perfectly precise. The Pentagon has not been releasing regular reports on weapons transfers and military loans to Israel. Researchers were forced to rely on news reports instead. “The patchwork government reporting on U.S. military aid to Israel contrasts sharply with the treatment of military aid to Ukraine, where dollar amounts, channels of delivery, and specific systems supplied (including how many) are routinely reported in government-supplied fact sheets on a regular basis,” Blimes, Hartung, and Semler wrote.
This year’s $17.9 billion sum is by far the most the US government has spent on Israel’s military since the country’s founding in 1948, the researchers said, adding that the spending “exceeds the historic amounts of military aid approved for Israel following the Camp David Accords in 1978 and, before that, the start of the October War of 1973.” Though this number is unusually high, Israel has throughout its history received more US military aid than any other country, benefiting from $251.2 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1959.
“All of us have an obligation to…put the pieces of the picture together, and to look at not just the money that’s spent on war, but its toll on human lives,” Savell said.
On October 7, 2024, the Costs of War Project at Brown University released two new reports. One report from the military-research group details how much the United States government has spent aiding the Israeli military between October 2023 and September 2024. The other gathers and evaluates previously published data to estimate the human cost of this past year’s unrelenting violence.
In both cases, the researchers show staggering new findings.
The Costs of War Project researchers estimate the cost to US taxpayers at over $17.9 billion, and the likely number of people killed at well over 100,000—which, even then, is a “very conservative, minimum amount of death.” As researchers begin to calculate the costs, the human and monetary toll is starting to become clearer.
Human Cost
To estimate the human cost of Israel’s war on Gaza, researcher Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins started with the Gaza Ministry of Health’s count of confirmed deaths, which has now surpassed 41,615.
Beyond that, an estimated 10,000 people are buried under rubble. Over the past year, 60 percent of buildings and nearly all road-systems in Gaza have been destroyed, making the retrieval of dead and injured people near-impossible. Adding an estimate of those who have died by starvation—about 62,413 people—brings the total estimated death toll to 114,000, or about 5 percent of Gaza’s population. Those likely death-by-starvation numbers come from a letter 99 physicians who served in Gaza sent President Joe Biden last week.
“With only marginal exceptions, every single person in Gaza is sick, injured, or both,” the physicians wrote to Biden. “We worry that unknown thousands have already died from the lethal combination of malnutrition and disease, and that tens of thousands more will die in the coming months, especially with the onset of the winter rains in Gaza. Most of them will be young children.”
Still, as Costs of War Project director Stephanie Savell told Mother Jones, factors like the destruction of water infrastructure and sanitary facilities mean the real loss may be incalculable for years to come. Savell said that the numbers used here are a “really solid, conservative minimum number of deaths.”
Given the depletion of Gaza’s medical system, thousands more have likely died due to lack of care for their chronic illnesses. (Cancer care, for example, has been unavailable in Gaza, as has most prenatal care. Women are dying in childbirth without adequate care, and are reportedly undergoing cesareans without anesthesia: “A big portion of death tolls from war comes in deaths of newborns, and pregnant mothers,” Savell said.
Since the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel one year ago on October 7 that killed nearly 1,200, Israel has imposed a severe blockade on food entering Gaza. “96 percent of Gaza’s population faces acute levels of food insecurity, with 2.15 million people in crisis levels of hunger or worse,” the Costs of War Project researchers reported, noting that Israel’s government has limited humanitarian aid convoys entering Gaza that might alleviate that hunger or bring in medical supplies. (A recent ProPublica report found that officials with the US State Department were aware that Israel deliberately blocked aid to Gaza, which would have triggered a potential end to arms shipments to the close ally; Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly rejected the findings.)
Researchers at Brown cited the metric for estimating indirect deaths used by the authors of a letter published in the medical journal The Lancet in July, that warned deaths might be much higher in Gaza than currently reported: four “indirect deaths”—that is, preventable deaths from starvation, or untreated illness, for example—for every direct death in a war. In this case, though, “It seems to me that ratio might be much higher,” Savell said.
Costs of War Project researchers Linda J. Bilmes, William D. Hartung, and Stephen Semler calculated that the United States government has spent $17.9 billion providing military supplies—including weapons, ammunition, vehicles, bombs, and jet fuel—to the Israeli army over the past year.
Those weapons have come through a variety of channels, including commercial sales approved by the State Department, Foreign Military Sales, Foreign Military Financing (which provides grants for countries to buy from US defense contractors), and a program providing excess military equipment no longer needed by the US military to ally nations for a steep discount.
“There are different degrees of public information available on each of these arms channels, and there have also been efforts to hide the full amounts of aid and types of systems through bureaucratic maneuvering,” the researchers explained.
In addition to the $17.9 billion going directly to Israel, the US Navy is spending at least $4.86 billion in the region, “primarily defending maritime shipping against attacks by Houthi militants in Yemen.” The Navy is currently operating two carrier strike groups present in the area, each of which costs $8.7 million per day to operate. (This led to a particularly odd moment when Vice President Kamala Harris boasted on the debate stage that there are no US troops present in conflict zones.)
The amount of taxpayer money sent to Israel this year was not easy to calculate, or perfectly precise. The Pentagon has not been releasing regular reports on weapons transfers and military loans to Israel. Researchers were forced to rely on news reports instead. “The patchwork government reporting on U.S. military aid to Israel contrasts sharply with the treatment of military aid to Ukraine, where dollar amounts, channels of delivery, and specific systems supplied (including how many) are routinely reported in government-supplied fact sheets on a regular basis,” Blimes, Hartung, and Semler wrote.
This year’s $17.9 billion sum is by far the most the US government has spent on Israel’s military since the country’s founding in 1948, the researchers said, adding that the spending “exceeds the historic amounts of military aid approved for Israel following the Camp David Accords in 1978 and, before that, the start of the October War of 1973.” Though this number is unusually high, Israel has throughout its history received more US military aid than any other country, benefiting from $251.2 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1959.
“All of us have an obligation to…put the pieces of the picture together, and to look at not just the money that’s spent on war, but its toll on human lives,” Savell said.
On October 1, 2024, as Israel began a ground incursion of Lebanon and Iran prepared to fire missiles into Israel, Foreign Affairs published a piece from Secretary of State Antony Blinken on “America’s strategy for renewal” in a “new world.”
Like policy adviser Jake Sullivan’s essay in the same magazine a year ago—boasting of a “quiet” Middle East—Blinken’s manifesto had an ironic twist. It was published right as fighting broke out.
A different mood has begun to creep back into the US discussions of foreign policy: the glee of the big war to change the Middle East.
In the essay, Blinken promised a way forward that was actively failing. Over the past fifteen days, the Biden administration’s putative plan to avoid regional war has collapsed. Here is how Blinken described (in one long-winded sentence) the goals of US foreign policy in the Middle East:
The Biden administration, for its part, has been working tirelessly with partners in the Middle East and beyond to end the conflict and suffering in Gaza, find a diplomatic solution that enables Israelis and Lebanese to live in safety on both sides of the border, manage the risk of a wider regional war, and work toward greater integration and normalization in the region, including between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Every single thing Blinken said the administration is working “tirelessly” for is the opposite of what is happening: There is not a ceasefire, nor an end to suffering in Gaza; there is more conflict between Israel and Lebanon; there is a growing likelihood of a full regional war; and Saudi Arabia has now said it won’t normalize diplomatic relations with Israel until Palestinians get a state (something Israel has no plans to allow).
As Blinken’s plans have failed—and Israel has ignored stern warnings from Biden that did not carry consequences—an old hope has returned. In the three days since the Secretary of State’s essay, a different mood has begun to creep back into the US discussions of foreign policy: the glee of a potential big war to change the Middle East.
After the killing of Hezbollah’s leader, the US has seen a rhetorical push—from background administration sources, former government officials, op-ed columnists, and TV pundits—for a reshaping of the Middle East through large conflict (and away from the immediate goal of just stopping the death in Gaza). The war hawks are back in full force. In newspapers and speeches, there has been a return of neoconservative talking points and even repeated requests for Israel, or the United States, to attack Iran.
Politico reported that top Biden advisors Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk privately supported Netanyahu as he shifted Israel’s strategy towards “reshaping the Middle East.” Jared Kushner, current son-in-law and former adviser to Donald Trump, had a similar idea. He called Israel’s actions in Lebanon “brilliant, rapid-fire technical successes” and said that “there is not an expert on earth who thought that what Israel has done to decapitate and degrade [Hezbollah] was possible.” Kushner began to see the possibility of a total reconfiguration of the Middle East in the wake of the bombings, he said on X.
“Well, I don’t exactly know what Israel’s plans in Lebanon were,” John Bolton, famous war enjoyer, said Tuesday, “but their plans should not be for a limited incursion.”
In the New York Times, Bret Stephens suggested that America “absolutely” should escalate directly and attack Iran. (He then proceeded to name specific missile complexes he believes Biden should be planning to destroy.) Stephens said he is looking forward to when Israel “completes Hezbollah’s decapitation in Lebanon and Hamas’s evisceration in Gaza.”
On Tucker Carlson’s podcast, Sen Mike Lee (R-Utah) seemed to suggest that the Biden administration should stop calling for ceasefires altogether. He described Biden’s current position as deeply self-contradictory: “On the one hand, they want to be seen as pro-Israel. On the other hand, they’re constantly telling Israel: ceasefire. That’s very, very strange.”
Other Republicans chimed in on which places to bomb first. “I would urge the Biden Administration to coordinate an overwhelming response with Israel, starting with Iran’s ability to refine oil,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina suggested. “This is a moment of choosing for the free world regarding Iran.”
“Charred bodies and severed limbs,” a source in Gaza texted me, “all of this is just normal news to the outside world.”
Much of this began in mid-September, when official Israeli Defense Force messaging shifted from “return the hostages,” to “regain control of northern Israel.” It was then that Israel blew up hundreds of pagers and cell phones in Lebanon and Syria, killing both Hezbollah members and civilian children. The attacks injured thousands. In the following week, Israel dropped hundreds of bombs on southern Lebanon, and Hezbollah continued launching missiles at Israel, attacking further south, aiming for Haifa and Tel Aviv.
On September 26th, the US and France proposed a 21-day ceasefire with Lebanon. Netanyahu scuttled the plan. The following day, the Israeli Prime Minister gave a speech at the UN in which he made it clear that “Israel’s war on Hamas and Hezbollah will continue unabated,” until “total victory.”
That same day, Israel reportedly dropped more than eighty bombs on four residential buildings in Beirut. They announced that they’d killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in the process. Within days, Israeli forces went further and entered Lebanon.
But this escalation has not brought de-escalation. On Tuesday, Israel formally began a ground “offensive” in Lebanon, and Iran fired approximately 180 missiles at Israel (most of which were reportedly intercepted by the US and Israeli militaries). The only person killed in the attack was a Gazan laborer with an Israeli work permit who spent the past year stranded in the West Bank. Damage was also reported at a school in central Israel. In Lebanon, officials say over a thousand people have been killed, and one million displaced.
Throughout all this, the Israeli military’s incursion into Gaza continues. As bombardment in the city of Khan Younis increased, I received panicked messages from Palestinians in European Gaza Hospital who were hearing F-16s outside and witnessing mangled corpses arriving at the emergency room. (“Charred bodies and severed limbs,” one person texted me, “all of this is just normal news to the outside world.”)
Indeed, global attention is shifting away from Gaza toward everywhere else in the region. At this point, at least four other countries are involved in Israel’s war that began with a goal of eliminating Hamas: Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iran. Netanyahu’s government is expected to directly retaliate against Iran soon.
Now, the question is whether America will merely fund that barrage, or more actively join in. The hawks—from background sources to Bolton—seem eager to broaden the violence.
Sullivan, the same man who once called for “red lines” in Rafah and hailed a “quiet” Middle East right before October 7th, spoke from the White House mid-day Tuesday of “consequences” for Iran; and not just doled out by Israel, but potentially levied by the United States and the Biden administration.
“We are proud of the actions that we’ve taken alongside Israel to protect and defend Israel,” he said. “We have made it clear that there will be consequences—severe consequences—for this attack, and we will work with Israel to make that the case.”
On October 1, 2024, as Israel began a ground incursion of Lebanon and Iran prepared to fire missiles into Israel, Foreign Affairs published a piece from Secretary of State Antony Blinken on “America’s strategy for renewal” in a “new world.”
Like policy adviser Jake Sullivan’s essay in the same magazine a year ago—boasting of a “quiet” Middle East—Blinken’s manifesto had an ironic twist. It was published right as fighting broke out.
A different mood has begun to creep back into the US discussions of foreign policy: the glee of the big war to change the Middle East.
In the essay, Blinken promised a way forward that was actively failing. Over the past fifteen days, the Biden administration’s putative plan to avoid regional war has collapsed. Here is how Blinken described (in one long-winded sentence) the goals of US foreign policy in the Middle East:
The Biden administration, for its part, has been working tirelessly with partners in the Middle East and beyond to end the conflict and suffering in Gaza, find a diplomatic solution that enables Israelis and Lebanese to live in safety on both sides of the border, manage the risk of a wider regional war, and work toward greater integration and normalization in the region, including between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Every single thing Blinken said the administration is working “tirelessly” for is the opposite of what is happening: There is not a ceasefire, nor an end to suffering in Gaza; there is more conflict between Israel and Lebanon; there is a growing likelihood of a full regional war; and Saudi Arabia has now said it won’t normalize diplomatic relations with Israel until Palestinians get a state (something Israel has no plans to allow).
As Blinken’s plans have failed—and Israel has ignored stern warnings from Biden that did not carry consequences—an old hope has returned. In the three days since the Secretary of State’s essay, a different mood has begun to creep back into the US discussions of foreign policy: the glee of a potential big war to change the Middle East.
After the killing of Hezbollah’s leader, the US has seen a rhetorical push—from background administration sources, former government officials, op-ed columnists, and TV pundits—for a reshaping of the Middle East through large conflict (and away from the immediate goal of just stopping the death in Gaza). The war hawks are back in full force. In newspapers and speeches, there has been a return of neoconservative talking points and even repeated requests for Israel, or the United States, to attack Iran.
Politico reported that top Biden advisors Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk privately supported Netanyahu as he shifted Israel’s strategy towards “reshaping the Middle East.” Jared Kushner, current son-in-law and former adviser to Donald Trump, had a similar idea. He called Israel’s actions in Lebanon “brilliant, rapid-fire technical successes” and said that “there is not an expert on earth who thought that what Israel has done to decapitate and degrade [Hezbollah] was possible.” Kushner began to see the possibility of a total reconfiguration of the Middle East in the wake of the bombings, he said on X.
“Well, I don’t exactly know what Israel’s plans in Lebanon were,” John Bolton, famous war enjoyer, said Tuesday, “but their plans should not be for a limited incursion.”
In the New York Times, Bret Stephens suggested that America “absolutely” should escalate directly and attack Iran. (He then proceeded to name specific missile complexes he believes Biden should be planning to destroy.) Stephens said he is looking forward to when Israel “completes Hezbollah’s decapitation in Lebanon and Hamas’s evisceration in Gaza.”
On Tucker Carlson’s podcast, Sen Mike Lee (R-Utah) seemed to suggest that the Biden administration should stop calling for ceasefires altogether. He described Biden’s current position as deeply self-contradictory: “On the one hand, they want to be seen as pro-Israel. On the other hand, they’re constantly telling Israel: ceasefire. That’s very, very strange.”
Other Republicans chimed in on which places to bomb first. “I would urge the Biden Administration to coordinate an overwhelming response with Israel, starting with Iran’s ability to refine oil,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina suggested. “This is a moment of choosing for the free world regarding Iran.”
“Charred bodies and severed limbs,” a source in Gaza texted me, “all of this is just normal news to the outside world.”
Much of this began in mid-September, when official Israeli Defense Force messaging shifted from “return the hostages,” to “regain control of northern Israel.” It was then that Israel blew up hundreds of pagers and cell phones in Lebanon and Syria, killing both Hezbollah members and civilian children. The attacks injured thousands. In the following week, Israel dropped hundreds of bombs on southern Lebanon, and Hezbollah continued launching missiles at Israel, attacking further south, aiming for Haifa and Tel Aviv.
On September 26th, the US and France proposed a 21-day ceasefire with Lebanon. Netanyahu scuttled the plan. The following day, the Israeli Prime Minister gave a speech at the UN in which he made it clear that “Israel’s war on Hamas and Hezbollah will continue unabated,” until “total victory.”
That same day, Israel reportedly dropped more than eighty bombs on four residential buildings in Beirut. They announced that they’d killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in the process. Within days, Israeli forces went further and entered Lebanon.
But this escalation has not brought de-escalation. On Tuesday, Israel formally began a ground “offensive” in Lebanon, and Iran fired approximately 180 missiles at Israel (most of which were reportedly intercepted by the US and Israeli militaries). The only person killed in the attack was a Gazan laborer with an Israeli work permit who spent the past year stranded in the West Bank. Damage was also reported at a school in central Israel. In Lebanon, officials say over a thousand people have been killed, and one million displaced.
Throughout all this, the Israeli military’s incursion into Gaza continues. As bombardment in the city of Khan Younis increased, I received panicked messages from Palestinians in European Gaza Hospital who were hearing F-16s outside and witnessing mangled corpses arriving at the emergency room. (“Charred bodies and severed limbs,” one person texted me, “all of this is just normal news to the outside world.”)
Indeed, global attention is shifting away from Gaza toward everywhere else in the region. At this point, at least four other countries are involved in Israel’s war that began with a goal of eliminating Hamas: Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iran. Netanyahu’s government is expected to directly retaliate against Iran soon.
Now, the question is whether America will merely fund that barrage, or more actively join in. The hawks—from background sources to Bolton—seem eager to broaden the violence.
Sullivan, the same man who once called for “red lines” in Rafah and hailed a “quiet” Middle East right before October 7th, spoke from the White House mid-day Tuesday of “consequences” for Iran; and not just doled out by Israel, but potentially levied by the United States and the Biden administration.
“We are proud of the actions that we’ve taken alongside Israel to protect and defend Israel,” he said. “We have made it clear that there will be consequences—severe consequences—for this attack, and we will work with Israel to make that the case.”
When Benjamin Netanyahu took the stage at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on Friday morning, he looked out over a world transformed by almost a year of unabated bombing and tens of thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza. Several delegations walked out of his speech and throngs of people outside protested his presence in the city.
The way the world views Netanyahu, and Israel, has changed. But the man’s view of the world remains seemingly unaltered.
After a year of war, global pressure to stop bombing Gaza, protests in Israel to make a peace deal bringing hostages home, and an Israeli military whose soldiers are exhausted and stretched thin, Netanyahu is not preparing for peace. Instead, he’s planning further war. “Israel’s war on Hamas and Hezbollah will continue unabated,” until “total victory,” he told the UN.
As he gave his speech, reports showed Israel had bombed a neighborhood in southern Lebanon targeting, they said, Hezbollah’s headquarters. Images of destruction flooded social media. This was seemingly, as Israeli sources reportedly said earlier this week, the plan for “de-escalation through escalation.” Peace, Netanyahu told the UN, would come from war.
This stuff is so exhausting. No, Netanyahu doesn't "share the aims" of US policy in Lebanon or Gaza. He wants to bomb the shit out of both places, ignore all US concerns about civilian casualties or regional escalation, and then demand more American weapons and money. https://t.co/jj7oZHShqd
“They put a missile in every kitchen, a rocket in every garage,” Netanyahu told the UN, casting Lebanese civilian homes as legitimate targets. “As long as Hezbollah chooses the path of war, Israel has no choice, and Israel has every right to remove this threat.”
The day before his UN speech, the Israeli Prime Minister spoke of “sharing the aims” of American policy but rejected a US-backed proposal for a ceasefire with Lebanon. That same day, the US signed off on $8.7 billion more military funding for Israel.
Netanyahu’s battles are now expanding on at least three fronts: Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank. Despite that, he is still speaking the same way he did a year ago.
In September 2023, he brought a map labeled “the new Middle East” to his UN speech, in which he spoke of two paths forward for the region: a “blessing,” in which Israel is powerful and allied with Saudi Arabia, and a “curse,” in which it is not. In 2024, as an arrest warrant from the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for war crimes hung over his head, Netanyahu spoke as though the past year simply had not happened.
Just as he did in 2023, he waved around maps as props. (Once again, the maps did not include Gaza or the West Bank—two places whose residents hardly merited a mention in his half-hour speech.) Once again, he said this was justified because of Iran, not only calling for sanctions as he did last year, but suggesting that Iran funds the protests against him: “Who knows? Maybe, maybe some of the protesters, or even many of the protesters outside this building now.”
Netanyahu spent more time berating the United Nations for antisemitism than addressing the prospect of a ceasefire with either Hamas or Hezbollah. “For the Palestinians, this UN house of darkness is home court,” Netanyahu said. “They know that in this swamp of antisemitic violence, there is an automatic majority willing to demonize the Jewish state on anything.” He dismissed his own potential ICC arrest warrant as nothing other than “pure antisemitism.”
Israeli National Security Minister and lifelong anti-Arab extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has threatened to boycott Netanyahu’s governing coalition if the prime minister signs a temporary ceasefire with Lebanon, tweeted his approval of Netanyahu’s speech minutes after it concluded.
As he gave his address, Israel launched a massive bombing campaign across Beirut, a city that only days ago the IDF told Lebanese civilians to flee to for their safety. Reports said that Netanyahu personally approved these bombings from New York, in order to target Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Netanyahu’s office released an image of him sitting in a New York hotel room before his speech, making the call for bombs to come down.
Donald Trump’s Republican Party platform, released in July, contains little in terms of tangible policy proposals.
But one of the few concrete ideas is a call to (apologies for the capitalization) “PREVENT WORLD WORLD III” by building “A GREAT IRON DOME MISSILE DEFENSE SHIELD OVER OUR ENTIRE COUNTRY”—a plan that experts say is nearly impossible to execute, unnecessary, and hard to even comprehend.
Trump has vowed to build this Iron Dome in multiple speeches. It is among his campaign’s 20 core promises. The former president has said that the missile shield would be “MADE IN AMERICA,” creating jobs, as well as stopping foreign attacks.
An expert called Trump’s Iron Dome idea “the insane ramblings of a senile old person.”
“It’s dramatically unclear to me what any of this means,” Lewis said of the Iron Dome idea, “other than just treating it like the insane ramblings of a senile old person.”
It may be more useful to consider an American Iron Dome as a bombastic businessman’s branding exercise, rather than a viable policy position, said Lewis: “The Iron Dome here has just become a kind of brand name, like Xerox or Kleenex for missile defense.”
The Iron Dome, a short-range missile defense system created by Israeli state-owned company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and American weapons manufacturer Raytheon, has been a prized part of the country’s military arsenal since it became operational in 2011. It is not, as the name suggests, an impenetrable shield. It’s more mobile: when a short-range missile reaches Israel’s airspace, “interceptor missiles” are launched to blow them up before they can touch the ground.
The Iron Dome’s functionality depends on Israel’s comparatively miniscule size and proximity to enemies. This makes it particularly hard to imagine a similar setup in the US, which is over 400 times the geographical size of Israel. Such an apparatus, national security analyst Joseph Cirincione estimated, would cost about 2.5 trillion dollars. That’s over three times the country’s entire projected military budget for 2025.
Such a system would also be unnecessary. As of now, there are no armed groups sending missiles toward the United States from within a theoretical Iron Dome’s 40-mile interception range. Such a system “couldn’t even protect Mar-a-Lago from missiles fired from the Bahamas, some 80 miles away,” Cirincione wrote in late July.
America’s pre-existent missile defense network, which has been in place since the Bush administration, is currently made up of 44 interceptors based in California and Alaska, geared towards longer-range missiles, such as those that could be fired from North Korea. But the system has performed abysmally in tests, despite Republicans generally claiming “it works,” said Lewis. (Groups like the right-wing Heritage Foundation have been calling for increased missile defense funding since at least the 1990s.)
“This is why it’s so hard to make heads or tails of what Trump is saying,” Lewis continued. “Is Trump saying the system in Alaska doesn’t work? Is Trump saying that Canada is going to develop artillery rockets to use against North Dakota?”
Donald Trump’s Republican Party platform, released in July, contains little in terms of tangible policy proposals.
But one of the few concrete ideas is a call to (apologies for the capitalization) “PREVENT WORLD WORLD III” by building “A GREAT IRON DOME MISSILE DEFENSE SHIELD OVER OUR ENTIRE COUNTRY”—a plan that experts say is nearly impossible to execute, unnecessary, and hard to even comprehend.
Trump has vowed to build this Iron Dome in multiple speeches. It is among his campaign’s 20 core promises. The former president has said that the missile shield would be “MADE IN AMERICA,” creating jobs, as well as stopping foreign attacks.
An expert called Trump’s Iron Dome idea “the insane ramblings of a senile old person.”
“It’s dramatically unclear to me what any of this means,” Lewis said of the Iron Dome idea, “other than just treating it like the insane ramblings of a senile old person.”
It may be more useful to consider an American Iron Dome as a bombastic businessman’s branding exercise, rather than a viable policy position, said Lewis: “The Iron Dome here has just become a kind of brand name, like Xerox or Kleenex for missile defense.”
The Iron Dome, a short-range missile defense system created by Israeli state-owned company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and American weapons manufacturer Raytheon, has been a prized part of the country’s military arsenal since it became operational in 2011. It is not, as the name suggests, an impenetrable shield. It’s more mobile: when a short-range missile reaches Israel’s airspace, “interceptor missiles” are launched to blow them up before they can touch the ground.
The Iron Dome’s functionality depends on Israel’s comparatively miniscule size and proximity to enemies. This makes it particularly hard to imagine a similar setup in the US, which is over 400 times the geographical size of Israel. Such an apparatus, national security analyst Joseph Cirincione estimated, would cost about 2.5 trillion dollars. That’s over three times the country’s entire projected military budget for 2025.
Such a system would also be unnecessary. As of now, there are no armed groups sending missiles toward the United States from within a theoretical Iron Dome’s 40-mile interception range. Such a system “couldn’t even protect Mar-a-Lago from missiles fired from the Bahamas, some 80 miles away,” Cirincione wrote in late July.
America’s pre-existent missile defense network, which has been in place since the Bush administration, is currently made up of 44 interceptors based in California and Alaska, geared towards longer-range missiles, such as those that could be fired from North Korea. But the system has performed abysmally in tests, despite Republicans generally claiming “it works,” said Lewis. (Groups like the right-wing Heritage Foundation have been calling for increased missile defense funding since at least the 1990s.)
“This is why it’s so hard to make heads or tails of what Trump is saying,” Lewis continued. “Is Trump saying the system in Alaska doesn’t work? Is Trump saying that Canada is going to develop artillery rockets to use against North Dakota?”
On September 24, ProPublica revealedthat Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly ignored two different reports from within the Biden administration concluding that Israel was deliberately blocking aid into Gaza. Only days after receiving detailed memos explaining exactly how the Israeli military was blocking humanitarian aid, Blinken told Congress that US does not “currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance.”
Now, the Secretary of State is facing calls for his resignation. “[Blinken] lied. People went hungry, and some died. He needs to resign now,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich) wrote this morning. Tlaib, who is the only Palestinian-American in the US House, is the first member of Congress to call for Blinken to resign.
Blinken has not, as of the time of publication, responded to Tlaib’s comment. He justified his response to the reports on CBS this morning, saying his response was “actually pretty typical.”
The US government is legally required to cut off weapons shipments to countries that prevent the delivery of humanitarian aid. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the head of the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration each gave reports to Blinken concluding that Israel was deliberately blocking aid from the starving people of Gaza.
“USAID had sent Blinken a detailed 17-page memo on Israel’s conduct,” ProPublica reported. “The memo described instances of Israeli interference with aid efforts, including killing aid workers, razing agricultural structures, bombing ambulances and hospitals, sitting on supply depots and routinely turning away trucks full of food and medicine.”
As recently as August, the US approved a $20 billion sale of weapons to Israel, including fighter jets, tank shells, and missiles.
After 50 days, Gaza European Hospital, one of the few trauma centers serving the Gaza strip, reopened, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The hospital has been a vital part of the crumbling medical infrastructure in the region. It reopened earlier this month.
In August, I told the story of two medical students who worked at Gaza European Hospital before it was shuttered and forcibly evacuated on July 1st. The medical center remained closed amid bombardment in the area for over a month. Each student told me harrowing stories of their time suddenly propelled to the job of full-time doctors amid the devastation of the medical system in Gaza.
Now, the students are back to work. Hasan Ali Abu Ghalyoon, a dental student I interviewed via WhatsApp in August, returned to European Hospital on September 9th. He said things are different there now.
Before the July evacuation, he slept at the hospital. Now, he commutes back and forth from his family’s tent in Deir al-Balah, a trip that takes him three or four hours a day. It is only about a seven-mile journey. But in Gaza, it can be treacherous.
Normally, he takes a hospital-provided bus to work. Last Friday, though, “I was a little late for the bus and I was forced to go by car,” he said. On his journey, he passed a destroyed World Health Organization warehouse, a torched mosque, and innumerable teetering husks of buildings and dust-covered tents. “I took three cars on my way to get from my tent to the hospital and I walked through many destroyed streets on foot.”
In some areas of eastern Gaza, there are no cars at all. The trip, he said, cost him 25 shekels, or about eight dollars, thanks to the lack of fuel entering Gaza. Before the war, transportation wouldn’t cost a thing.
Nermeen Ziyad Abo Mostafa, another student volunteer, hears the zanana—Gazan slang for the incessant buzzing of drones overhead—on her way to the hospital. “It was not easy to reopen it, because all the hospital’s property was stolen,” she said. The hospital is still not fully equipped, she explained, but medical teams are doing their best to work with what they have.
Once the students arrive, they see “mostly burns and fractures,” Abu Ghalyoon said. Every day, there are patients requiring skin grafts.
Another change: there are now fewer international delegations than before. The flow of international medics into the Gaza strip has slowed to a trickle. The Israeli military has hit international aid workers like those from World Central Kitchen, after a vehicle from the group was bombed in April, and UN workers, like those from the World Food Program, whose vehicles were struck in August. Supply shortages are ongoing. As Abu Ghalyoon put it: “There is a very, very severe shortage of all medicines. The medical equipment is old and sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t.”
On September 12th, the World Health Organization released a report estimating that over 22,500 people in Gaza have suffered “life-changing injuries” since Israel’s offensive in Gaza began. Most of these injuries—about 13,000 to 17,000—are what the WHO report calls “severe limb injuries,” and at least 3,000 are amputations.
“The huge surge in rehabilitation needs occurs in parallel with the ongoing decimation of the health system,” said Dr. Richard Peeperkorn, WHO Representative in the occupied Palestinian territory. “Patients can’t get the care they need. Acute rehabilitation services are severely disrupted and specialized care for complex injuries is not available, placing patients’ lives at risk. Immediate and long-term support is urgently needed to address the enormous rehabilitation needs.”
After 50 days, Gaza European Hospital, one of the few trauma centers serving the Gaza strip, reopened, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The hospital has been a vital part of the crumbling medical infrastructure in the region. It reopened earlier this month.
In August, I told the story of two medical students who worked at Gaza European Hospital before it was shuttered and forcibly evacuated on July 1st. The medical center remained closed amid bombardment in the area for over a month. Each student told me harrowing stories of their time suddenly propelled to the job of full-time doctors amid the devastation of the medical system in Gaza.
Now, the students are back to work. Hasan Ali Abu Ghalyoon, a dental student I interviewed via WhatsApp in August, returned to European Hospital on September 9th. He said things are different there now.
Before the July evacuation, he slept at the hospital. Now, he commutes back and forth from his family’s tent in Deir al-Balah, a trip that takes him three or four hours a day. It is only about a seven-mile journey. But in Gaza, it can be treacherous.
Normally, he takes a hospital-provided bus to work. Last Friday, though, “I was a little late for the bus and I was forced to go by car,” he said. On his journey, he passed a destroyed World Health Organization warehouse, a torched mosque, and innumerable teetering husks of buildings and dust-covered tents. “I took three cars on my way to get from my tent to the hospital and I walked through many destroyed streets on foot.”
In some areas of eastern Gaza, there are no cars at all. The trip, he said, cost him 25 shekels, or about eight dollars, thanks to the lack of fuel entering Gaza. Before the war, transportation wouldn’t cost a thing.
Nermeen Ziyad Abo Mostafa, another student volunteer, hears the zanana—Gazan slang for the incessant buzzing of drones overhead—on her way to the hospital. “It was not easy to reopen it, because all the hospital’s property was stolen,” she said. The hospital is still not fully equipped, she explained, but medical teams are doing their best to work with what they have.
Once the students arrive, they see “mostly burns and fractures,” Abu Ghalyoon said. Every day, there are patients requiring skin grafts.
Another change: there are now fewer international delegations than before. The flow of international medics into the Gaza strip has slowed to a trickle. The Israeli military has hit international aid workers like those from World Central Kitchen, after a vehicle from the group was bombed in April, and UN workers, like those from the World Food Program, whose vehicles were struck in August. Supply shortages are ongoing. As Abu Ghalyoon put it: “There is a very, very severe shortage of all medicines. The medical equipment is old and sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t.”
On September 12th, the World Health Organization released a report estimating that over 22,500 people in Gaza have suffered “life-changing injuries” since Israel’s offensive in Gaza began. Most of these injuries—about 13,000 to 17,000—are what the WHO report calls “severe limb injuries,” and at least 3,000 are amputations.
“The huge surge in rehabilitation needs occurs in parallel with the ongoing decimation of the health system,” said Dr. Richard Peeperkorn, WHO Representative in the occupied Palestinian territory. “Patients can’t get the care they need. Acute rehabilitation services are severely disrupted and specialized care for complex injuries is not available, placing patients’ lives at risk. Immediate and long-term support is urgently needed to address the enormous rehabilitation needs.”
The Uncommitted movement announced on Thursday that it will not be endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris. The decision comes in response to Harris declining to break with the Biden administration over its response to the war in Israel and Palestine and after a tumultuous Democratic National Convention in which Palestinian voices were largely shut out from speaking about the horrors happening in Gaza.
The group, which represents the hundreds of thousands of Democrats who voted “uncommitted” during the primaries in protest of Biden’s Gaza policy, said in a statement released Thursday that “Vice President Harris’s unwillingness to shift on unconditional weapons policy or to even make a clear campaign statement in support of upholding existing US and international human rights law has made it impossible for us to endorse her.”
At the same time, the movement’s leaders stressed that they oppose Donald Trump and are not recommending that supporters vote for a third-party candidate because doing so could help elect Trump.
“I told VP Harris through the tears that Michigan voters want to vote for her, but we need a policy change that is going to save lives.”
“We must block Donald Trump, which is why we urge Uncommitted voters to vote against him and avoid third-party candidates that could inadvertently boost his chances, as Trump openly boasts that third parties will help his candidacy,” the group said in a statement released on Thursday. “We urge Uncommitted voters to register anti-Trump votes and vote up and down the ballot.”
Uncommitted leaders, throughout the past months, have been eager to endorse Harris and organize on her behalf if she were willing to move more aggressively towards ending the war. In early August, when organizer Layla Elabed briefly met the vice president, she told her as much. “I told VP Harris through the tears that Michigan voters want to vote for her,” Elabed said at the time, “but we need a policy change that is going to save lives.” Elabed stressed that “pro-war forces like AIPAC may want to drive us out of the Democratic Party, but we’re here to stay.”
Uncommitted had asked Vice President Harris to respond by September 15 to a request to meet with Palestinian Americans in Michigan whose family members have been killed during the war. That meeting has not happened and the Harris campaign has not committed to making it happen.
“The Vice President is committed to work to earn every vote, unite our country, and to be a President for all Americans,” the Harris campaign said in a statement. “She will continue working to bring the war in Gaza to an end in a way where Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.”
The latest announcement from Uncommitted comes one month after the group made news with a sit-in at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Uncommitted made two main policy asks at the convention: an immediate ceasefire and a US arms embargo on Israel to help bring one about. But Uncommitted delegates also made much smaller demands in the lead up to and during the convention.
Most notably, they asked that an American doctor who has volunteered in Gaza, or a Palestinian American, be given a brief speaking slot from the convention’s main stage. After convention organizers rejected Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care doctor, the group eventually began pushing for a speaking slot for Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian American Democrat.
Lexis Zeidan, an organizer with the Uncommitted national movement, said that in their refusal to allow even one Palestinian American speaker, “the DNC and the vice president’s campaign fumbled even a small gesture.”
“Now, the vice president’s team is courting people like Dick Cheney, while sidelining these incredibly important anti-war voices,” she said. Some leaders within Uncommitted are voting for Harris—and others will not be voting at the top of the ticket at all. Zeidan, who is Palestinian American, said that on a personal level, she “simply cannot go to the ballot box and cast a vote for a candidate that is not hearing the demands of her people.” Her fellow organizer, Abbas Alawieh, will be voting for Harris, a choice he describes as a “chess move” against Donald Trump.
“If you’re willing to get some satisfaction out of feeling like you punished Harris, and that’ll help you sleep at night, I can respect that,” Alawieh said. But, he added, “In order for me to try and start sleeping at night, I need to know that I’m blocking Donald Trump because his plans are very clearly to enable Netanyahu to do more murdering.”
Mother Jones reported during the convention that Romman, who was not an Uncommitted delegate, planned to explicitly endorse Harris from the main stage. Nevertheless, national Democrats denied her and any other Palestinian American Democrat a speaking slot without asking to see their remarks. Uncommitted had made clear that any speech would be vetted and pre-approved by convention planners. As we reported:
By denying someone of Palestinian descent the chance to speak, the Harris campaign missed an easy opportunity to create distance between itself and President Biden’s failing and highly unpopular response to the war. A June poll by CBS News and YouGov found that 77 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of independents believe that the United States should not send weapons and supplies to Israel, despite the Biden administration’s support for continuing to do so. Only 23 percent of Democrats, compared with 76 percent of Republicans, told Gallup in June that they support Israel’s military actions in Gaza.
More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 100,000 have been injured in Gaza, according to the local health ministry. Public health experts fear that the full death toll may be far higher. Nearly a year into the war, the chances for a ceasefire in the near future still appear low.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears committed to prolonging the war—even if it means the death of more hostages—to appease far-right cabinet members and remain in power. President Biden has largely refused to use the United States’ extensive leverage to push Netanyahu toward a ceasefire.
In last week’s debate, Harris reiterated her support for Israel and once again called for the US to have the “most lethal fighting force in the world.”
“Our organizing around the presidential election was never about endorsing a specific candidate,” Alawieh, the Uncommitted cofounder, made clear on Thursday. “It has always been about building a movement that saves lives.”
Update, September 19: This post has been updated with a statement from the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Last school year’s historic protests over the war in Gaza roiled campuses and dominated headlines, with more than 3,100 students arrested nationwide. Over the summer, the protests cooled off and students returned home. But college administrators spent the summer crafting new free speech policies designed to discourage students from continuing what they started last spring. Between May and August, at least 20 colleges and university systems—representing more than 50 campuses—tightened the rules governing protest on their property.
The protest encampments that appeared on more than 130 campuses last spring served as a visual reminder of the 2 million displaced people in Gaza. Students held teach-ins, slept in tents, created art together, ate, and prayed in these makeshift societies—some for hours or days, others for entire weeks or months. The free speech organization FIRE estimated last week that 1 in 10 students has personally participated in a protest regarding Israel’s war in Gaza. The protesters demanded that their schools disclose any investments in (variously) the Israeli military, the state of Israel, or the military-industrial complex in general—and disentangle their endowments from war-makers.
Some student groups won meetings with administrators, disclosure of the terms of their college’s endowment, or representation for Palestine studies in their school’s curriculum. A few schools agreed to work towards divestment or implement new investment screening procedures. Students elsewhere, though, saw no concessions on their goals from college administrators—and were left, instead, to spend months doing court-ordered community service or working through a lengthy school-ordered disciplinary process.
Prior to last year’s protests, “time, space, and manner” restrictions on campus protest were considered standard practice, said Risa Lieberwitz, a Cornell University professor of labor and employment law who serves as general counsel for the American Association of University Professors.Many universities had pre-existing policies prohibiting, for example, obstructing a walkway or occupying an administrative office. Those policies were usually enforced via threats of suspension or expulsion. This year’s restrictions are different, said Lieberwitz, who previously described the new rules as“a resurgence of repression on campuses that we haven’t seen since the late 1960s.”
Lieberwitz is particularly concerned with policies requiring protest organizers to register their protest, under their own names, with the university they are protesting. “There’s a real contradiction between registering to protest and being able to actually go out and protest just operationally,” she said. “Then there’s also the issue of the chilling effect that comes from that, which comes from knowing that this is a mechanism that allows for surveillance.” Students who are required to register themselves as protest organizers may prefer to avoid expressing themselves at all.
MIT has lots of rules about ethical funding, about the duty to do no harm with one’s research. And yet, they refuse to apply any of those rules to their own behavior.
“The point of having a rally is to be disruptive, anyway,” said MIT PhD student Richard Solomon, who participated in last year’s campus protests. For Solomon, divestment is personal. Last month, Mohammed Masbah, a Gazan student he refers to as his brother and who spent several months living with his family, was killed in an Israeli airstrike. As Solomon pointed out in a column for the student newspaper, Masbah was likely killed with the help of technology developed at American universities like MIT.
“MIT has lots of rules about ethical funding, about the duty to do no harm with one’s research,” he told Mother Jones. “And yet they refuse to apply any of those rules to their own behavior, their own research, their own institutional collaborations.” It’s hard, he said, for students to respect protest rules when their school doesn’t respect its own rules, either. (When asked to comment, a MIT representative pointed me to a speech by the school’s president last spring, in which she stated that MIT “relies on rigorous processes to ensure all funded research complies with MIT policies and US law.”)
Beyond demanding that protests be registered, many schools have banned camping on their grounds. Some have required that anyone wearing a mask on campus—whether for health reasons or otherwise—be ready to present identification when asked. Others have banned all unregistered student “expressive activity” (a euphemistic phrase that generally covers a range of public demonstrations including protests, rallies, flyering, or picketing) gatheringsover a certain size.Still others have banned all use of speakers or amplified sound during the school week (including, in one case, the use of some acoustic instruments).
At Carnegie Mellon University, students and faculty were informed during the last week of August that any “expressive activity” involving more than 25 students must be registered—under the organizers’ names—at least three business days prior to the event, and be signed off on by a “Chief Risk Officer.”
In response, a group of Carnegie Mellon students, faculty members, and alumni lined up on a grassy campus quadrangle holding up signs labeled “1” through “29.” This act, now prohibited on Carnegie Mellon’s campus, drove home the policy’s absurdity—on a campus of 13,000 students, half of whom live on campus, a gathering of 25+ people may be harder to avoid than to initiate.
David Widder, who earned his PhD at Carnegie Mellon last year, called the new policy “authoritarian,” and unlike anything he’d seen during his six years at the institution. “We hoped to playfully but visibly violate the policy—and show that the sky does not fall when students and faculty speak out about issues that matter to them,” he told Mother Jones. “We can’t credibly claim to be a university with these gross restrictions on free expression.”
According to a statement by the university’s provost, the new policy was intended to “ensure coordination with the university and support the conditions for civil and safe exchange.”
Linguistics Professor Uju Anya, who spoke at the rally, pointed out that at least $2.8 billion of Carnegie Mellon’s research funding has come from the Department of Defense since 2008. “We know that our universities have skin in the game now, in the weapons and in the money,” Anya said. “So, ultimately, Carnegie Mellon is in bed with baby bombers, and they don’t want us—the members of this community, who also have a stake in what the university does—to openly question them.”
At some schools, the conflict over newly instituted protest policies has already made its way to the courts. The ACLU of Indiana announced August 29 that it would be suing Indiana University over an “expressive activity” policy which, like CMU’s, was implemented in late summer. The policy under debate defines “expressive activity” in part as “Communicating by any lawful verbal, written, audio visual, or electronic means,” as well as “Protesting” and “Distributing literature” and “circulating petitions.”
The policy limits “expressive activity” to the hours between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. “This is written so broadly, if any one of us was to wear a T-shirt supporting a cause at 11:15 p.m. while walking through IU, we would be violating the policy,” Ken Falk, legal director of the ACLU of Indiana, said. “The protections of the First Amendment do not end at 11:00 p.m., only to begin again at 6 a.m.” Since Indiana University is a public school, it is bound by the First Amendment and can’t limit speech as strictly as a private college.
Lieberwitz, the AAUP lawyer, said she expects more legal challenges like the ACLU’s this coming year. According to the Crowd Counting Consortium at Harvard University, protests on college campuses are spiking again, though not at the levels seen last year. On at least two campuses, protesters have already been arrested. And between August 15 and September 3, there wasn’t a single day without some sort of Palestine solidarity action on a college campus somewhere in the United States.
The following is an incomplete list of US university protest policies changed between May and August of 2024.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology: As of August 30, unauthorized tent encampments are prohibited. Authorized demonstrations on campus may only be organized by “Departments, Labs, or Centers, recognized student organizations, and employee unions.”
University of Virginia: Updated “Rules on Demonstrations and Access to Shared Spaces” as of August 26. Non-permitted tents are now forbidden, no tent can stay up for over 18 hours, unless “in use for official University or school events,” and anyone wearing a mask on University property must present identification if asked. No outdoor events are permitted between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m.
University of Wisconsin, Madison: Updated its policy on “expressive activity” August 28. “Expressive activity,” defined as activities protected by the First Amendment including “speech, lawful assembly, protesting, distributing literature and chalking,” is now prohibitedwithin 25 feet of university building entrances.
University of California (1o campuses): Camping or erecting tents is forbidden as of August 19. Masking “to conceal identity” is banned.
California State University (23 campuses): “Camping, overnight demonstrations, or overnight loitering” is banned, as are “disguises or concealment of identity,” as of August 19.
Virginia Commonwealth University: As of August 9, anyone on University property covering their face must show identification. Encampments are explicitly prohibited, “unless approved in advance by the University.”
University of Pennsylvania: As of June 7, encampments are banned, as are any overnight demonstrations, and “non-news” livestreaming. “Unauthorized overnight activities” are to be considered trespassing.
James Madison University: As ofAugust, no “tents or other items” may be used to create a shelter on campus unless approved by the university. Chalking on walkways is prohibited. “Camping” is defined as “the use of any item to create a shelter.”
Indiana University (nine campuses): As of July 29, “expressive activity” is limited to the hours between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m., and any “signs or temporary structures” are now required to be approved at least 10 days in advance of “expressive activity” by the university.
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: As of August 21, camping is prohibited except in designated areas.
University of South Florida system (three campuses): As of August 26, “activities in public spaces” after 5 p.m. are prohibited unless students request a reservation.
Harvard University: Plans to ban “outdoor chalking” and “unapproved signage” are in process as of July 30, according to a draft obtained by the Harvard Crimson. Indoor protests have already been banned as of January 2024.
University of Connecticut (five campuses): As of August 21, students cannot make amplified sound through speakers or megaphones, or use certain acoustic instruments like “trumpets, trombones, or violins” in public spaces at any point during the day Monday through Friday, with official university events excepted.
Carnegie Mellon University: As of August 23,an “event involving expressive activity” occurring on campus “must be registered with the University if more than 25 participants are expected to attend” at least three business days in advance.
Pomona College: As of August 2024, encampments are prohibited, and noncompliance may result in “detention and arrest by law enforcement.” Additional police officers have been hired to patrol campus.
Emory University: As of August 27, camping is prohibited on campus, and protests are prohibited between midnight and 7 a.m.
Emerson College: As of August 23, protests may only occur between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m., and must be pre-registered with the college.
Rutgers University: As of August 20, Demonstrations must be held between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. and only in “designated public forum areas.”
University of Minnesota (five campuses): On August 27, university administrators unveiled new “guidelines for spontaneous expressive activity,” which state that all protests must end by 10 p.m., must use no more than one megaphone, and that groups of over 100 people must register their spontaneous expressive activity at least two weeks in advance.
Syracuse University: As of August, “unauthorized use or assembly of tents or other temporary shelter structures” is prohibited.
Did your school implement a new protest policy this year? Email shurwitz@motherjones.com.
Correction, September 13: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s protest policy as prohibiting protests within 25 feet of university buildings, rather than prohibiting protest within 25 feet of university building entrances.
Salma Hamamy wasn’t even watching the presidential debate when former President Donald Trump attempted a familiar verbal jab against Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I’m talking now if you don’t mind,” said Trump, as Harris grinned. “Does that sound familiar?”
The line hearkens back to a moment in the 2020 vice presidential debate, when Harris responded to an interruption from Mike Pence with the curt retort “I’m speaking.” The catchphrase, since then, has become a calling card for Harris; an indication of her toughness as the first female vice president.
But it has not always been completely effective. Earlier this summer, when Harris had just become the de facto Democratic nominee, she gave one of her first addresses on the trail in Detroit. Moments into her speech, she was heckled by Hamamy—a recent graduate from the University of Michigan—and other protesters clamoring for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and end to weapon shipments to Israel.
The vice president responded to the demonstrators with a version of the same catchphrase she once used against Pence: “If you want Donald Trump to win, say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”
The July exchange instantly became another viral moment. Many ardent Harris fans cheered on social media while others, more sympathetic to the protesters, objected to Harris’ dismissal of not only the demonstrators but the topic that they were there to address—US support of Israeli military operations in Gaza.
Shortly after Trump landed his attack Tuesday night, curious what Hamamy thought, we texted her to ask whether she had seen the moment. She had not. “I’m watching a debate amongst our central student government right now regarding divestment,” Hamamy replied. She was referring to her alma matter’s student government debate over withholding more than half a million dollars for campus groups until the school would divest from all business with ties to Israel and weapons manufacturers. (Once Hamamy got a chance to watch the debate clip, she said it sounded familiar.)
“On October 7, Hamas, a terrorist organization, slaughtered 1,200 Israelis, many of them young people who were simply attending a concert,” Harris said.
“Israel has a right to defend itself, and how it does so matters because it is also true far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed: children, mothers,” she added. “What we know is that this war must end.”
But in contrast to Harris’ enumeration of Israeli deaths, she made little effort to explain the scale of the death and carnage in Gaza beyond the vague qualifier “too many.”
According to the official numbers from Gaza’s Ministry of Health, more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7. A July letter published in the Lancet, one of the most famous medical journals in the world, estimated the total death toll may be closer to 186,000. (The study factored in the difficulty of accurately collecting data under crumbling infrastructure, and the indirect deaths caused by lack of access to health care, food, and aid.) Another letter published by international medics later that same month estimated that 92,000 Palestinians have been killed.
“She was fatally shot in the head by a bullet that came from an Israeli sniper positioned 200 meters away,” wrote Hamid Ali, Eygi’s partner. “This was no accident, and her killers must be held accountable.”
Harris issued a statement a day after the debate, saying “No one should be killed for participating in a peaceful protest. The shooting that led to her death is unacceptable and raises legitimate questions about the conduct of IDF personnel in the West Bank. Israel must do more to ensure that incidents like this never happen again.”
Trump was asked on the debate stage how he would negotiate with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas on a hostage deal and prevent more civilians from being killed.
“She hates Israel,” Trump said. “At the same time, in her own way, she hates the Arab population because the whole place is going to get blown up: Arabs, Jewish people, Israel. Israel will be gone. It would have never happened.”
Harris replied, “That’s absolutely not true. I have my entire career and life supported Israel and the Israeli people.”
The short back-and-forth on Gaza probably didn’t do too much to move the political needle as far as activists for Palestinian human rights are concerned.
“Harris’s comments on Gaza continue to offend voters appalled by Netanyahu’s US-funded killing campaign,” wrote Abbas Alawieh, an organizer of the Uncommitted movement, after the debate. Alawieh had personally spoken with Harris in Detroit at a VIP greeting line. “They offer nothing new & perpetuate the murderous status quo. It’s simple: to stop the war, our government must stop sending the weapons fueling the war.”
According to a CBS/YouGov poll in April, nearly 70 percent of Democratic voters want the US to stop sending weapons to Israel. Neither candidate acknowledged an arms embargo as an option Tuesday night. Polls released the day before the debate show Harris leading Trump by only one point in the critical swing state of Michigan, which has been a center of anti-war organizing since October 2023.
On June 6, the Rahma Worldwide international medical delegation arrived at Gaza European Hospital in Khan Younis. The humanitarian volunteers noticed something immediately: Some of the medical staff welcoming them—with the best food available, an assortment of cucumbers, hummus, and french fries—appeared remarkably young to be doctors.
Before the delegation could ask any questions, an airstrike hit the neighborhood. The walls of Gaza European Hospital—then one of the only functioning medical centers in the region—shook.
“Within the first 15 minutes that we were here,” Dr. Mohammed Mustafa, an emergency specialist from Australia, recalled, “nine people came in an ambulance, already dead.”
This, the doctors learned, was typical of the day-to-day life in Gaza. It was only later the international doctors would come to find out that many of the staff were not fully credentialed doctors, but student volunteers. Dr. Bing Li, another member of the Rahma delegation—a team of a dozen doctors from different countries, there to provide support to Gaza’s depleted health system—estimated that half of the people working in European Hospital’s emergency department in June were students or trainees from Gaza’s two medical schools.
“The health care system’s on the verge of collapsing,” Salman Dasti, an anesthesiologist who worked in Gazan hospitals both before and during this war, said. “It’s being propped up because of students.”
“In this war, I lost many of my colleagues and friends from school. I lost four members of my family.”
Mustafa found the students’ ability to keep the hospital functioning remarkable. “We were getting patients moving and getting them treated. It was pretty amazing to see,” he recalled, “especially since you can see how broken they are physically, emotionally.”
Nermeen Ziyad Abo Mostafa, 21, was in her third year of medical school before the war.Photo courtesy of Nermeen Ziyad Abo Mostafa.
On the first day, Li recalled meeting one of the volunteers keeping Gaza’s hospitals running. A patient was brought in and losing blood quickly from a blast injury to his leg. Li worked with a volunteer to stabilize the man; the volunteer then pulled Li aside and introduced herself excitedly in English: Her name was Nermeen Ziyad Abo Mostafa, and she was 20 years old.
“I had this impression she was this very friendly person, and she asked me if I wanted help with translation and seeing other patients,” Li said. The foreign doctor appreciated the aid. Earlier that day, Li, an emergency specialist from Arizona, had already had a heartbreaking experience. “We evaluated one patient that was maybe three or four years old,” she recalled. “Half his head was basically blown off.” (It ended up being “just one of many similar cases,” Li said; other doctors who have returned from Gaza say the Israeli military regularly targets children.)
As Nermeen showed Li around, another doctor noticed who the American was talking to and pulled her aside. Li was told Nermeen had a friend die earlier that same day in the blast that sent a raft of critically injured patients to the hospital.
“She was keeping this brave face despite learning that she lost somebody,” Li remembers.
Nermeen always wanted to be a doctor. As a young child, she said, she “had doctor’s tools in the form of toys.” As she grew older, she watched medical school graduation videos online, transfixed by the celebrations. She imagined herself as a cardiovascular specialist, or perhaps a pediatrician; she was overjoyed when, in 2021, she was finally able to enroll at her dream school: Al-Azhar University-Gaza. (For this article, I interviewed Nermeen using WhatsApp text messages and voice memos. Her internet and data access in Gaza is not good enough for phone calls of length.)
By October 7, 2023, Nermeen had made it through two and a half years of medical school. (In Gaza, students’ medical training starts immediately after high school, when they begin a six-year program of study.) Her tuition was expensive, and the hourlong bus ride to school from her home in Abasan Al-Kabira, a small city east of Khan Younis, made her carsick. But she was happy to be learning.
Then, the war came. In early November, Israeli warplanes destroyed Nermeen’s campus. By mid-January, Israeli bombardment had reduced every university in Gaza to rubble. Nermeen moved constantly. She evacuated from place to place four times in the first six months of the war. Eighty-four percent of Gaza is now under evacuation order. She watched classmates, professors, and friends die nearly every week. “In this war, I lost many of my colleagues and friends from school,” she told me. “I lost four members of my family.”
In April, Nermeen started volunteering at the hospital. It was the “one positive amid all of this,” she said. A third-year student would not ordinarily be actively treating patients. But her clinical phase began early. “I was learning from the doctors and helping them,” she said.
Video
Nermeen Ziyad Abo Mostafa, a medical student in Gaza, explains her work as a frontline doctor:
Many of those working and volunteering at the hospital had shifts lasting 24 hours—and no one I spoke with had received payment from the hospital since October. Anything shorter than a 24-hour shift would mean more trips on treacherous roads, made nearly impassable by millions of pounds of debris and sewage overflows from broken sanitation systems.
On a normal day, Nermeen began her shift early in the morning, connecting to the internet and trying to download lectures and readings from the website of her bombed university, before beginning to see the injured, “standing with doctors, talking to patients.”
Hasan Ali Abu Ghalyoon studying before the war. He is now 22, and unable to start his fourth year of medical school because his university has been destroyed.
As a volunteer, she cleaned wounds, translated for foreign doctors, and made treatment plans. “There were days when…the work was a lot, due to the arrival of large numbers of martyrs, and injured,” she said. “But the thing I loved to do most was stitches in the emergency department.”
This was made difficult by short supplies. The sutures in Gaza hospitals were labeled “not for use on humans,” Mohammed Mustafa, the ER doctor from Australia, recalled. Still, he helped Nermeen with her suture technique; he noticed that she was particularly careful in caring for patients during the process. Nermeen did her best to stitch in a way that would minimize scarring.
Conditions were hard. There were no beds, only rigid metal frames. Rooms were cramped and hot. Even the chairs in the hospital were occupied by patients, leaving little room for their caregivers to rest. The complex smelled of rot, and flies landed in patients’ wounds just as Nermeen finished disinfecting them. Even the suture needle was less sharp than it should be.
“It would take you maybe three, four attempts to pierce the skin with the suture,” Mustafa said. “And you can imagine trying to do that with very limited anesthetic, [on] children as well.”
Beyond the shortage of goods, there was also a shortage of personnel. Students did their best to fill in. One 22-year-old student who spoke to Mother Jones, Hasan Ali Abu Ghalyoon, was in his third year of dental school before the war. He was initially told he’d be working as a porter, then a translator. He spent four months volunteering at European Hospital, unable to see his family in Deir al-Balah after the Israeli army took over the area between the hospital and his family’s tent.
“I slept in the office of the International Committee of the Red Cross at the hospital for four months,” he said. ‘There was a broken bed that does not move from its place,” which was not used except for emergencies. When it was unoccupied by patients—and when he wasn’t being called to translate for a surgeon in the middle of the night—he got that bed.
As he spent more time in the hospital, he learned “there was a severe shortage of dentists specializing in maxillofacial surgery,” so he quickly found himself assisting with those surgeries, too. “It is difficult to talk to patients with burns or fractures,” he said, “some of whom lost a loved one with the same injury minutes before.”
Medical student Hasan Ali Abu Ghalyoon spent four months volunteering at Gaza European Hospital. Sometimes, he slept on a broken bed in the ICRC office there.Photo courtesy of Hasan Ali Abu Ghalyoon
Sometimes, the patients the students cared for were people they recognized. On the mid-June day when Nermeen met Bing Li, she wasn’t supposed to be at work. She was at her family’s tent, taking a rest day, when she felt a bomb detonate nearby. “We saw the smoke of the bombing, and a large number of ambulances,” she recalled. Without internet access, Nermeen worried her own relatives might be among the dead.
Nermeen decided to go to the hospital on her day off. “I put on the uniform and walked to the road.” A man with a car offered her a ride when he saw her medical uniform. His family lived in the area that had just been bombed, Nermeen remembered, and he was headed to the hospital, too. Once there, she opened her phone to scroll through the names of the dead. “My friend’s name was among the names of the martyrs of this massacre.” She rushed to the emergency room in hopes that the news was wrong. “But it was true.”
Most of her friend’s family had been killed. She found her friend’s younger sister, Samar, waiting alone, with wounds all over her body. Nermeen monitored her vital signs, stitched up a deep gash in her left foot, and patched up two wounds on her leg.
Samar was later transferred to a different department, where her head wounds were treated. “She remained in care for several days,” Nermeen remembered. Then, Samar was discharged, but “she was still in a state of shock, and would not speak.” At the end of July, Nermeen received word that Samar had been killed, too: “She joined the rest of her family.”
Video
Nermeen talks about the death of her friends in Gaza:
Gaza’s medical system has been painfully constricted for decades. This is partially due to the longstanding Israeli policy of blocking “dual-use items” at the border—medical devices that could, allegedly, be used as weapons. Those items have included crutches, hearing aid batteries, thermometers, and incubators. This means the doctors of Gaza must make do.
Dasti, the anaesthesiologist from San Francisco, visited Gaza multiple times as part of a medical mission group with the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund before 2023. “I was fairly impressed with the robustness of the health care system,” he said. “I mean, it still lacked resources, but I was pretty impressed with the training that the physicians there had.”
There were 36 fully functioning hospitals in Gaza prior to the war. By mid-August, according to the World Health Organization, only 16 of those 36 hospitals were even partially operational. These 16 hospitals have treated patients far beyond their capacity. Staff is low: The UN Human Rights Office reported that more than 500 medical workers have been killed in Gaza since October 7. And an NBC News investigation recently suggested Israel has targeted doctors for kidnapping and taken them to torture camps. Hanan Balkhy, Eastern Mediterranean regional director for the World Health Organization, said that as of early August, WHO has been able to verify more than 500 attacks on medical personnel in Gaza.
This leaves a staggering hole for those in need of care. The WHO estimates that nearly 93,000 people in Gaza are injured. Among those 16 remaining hospitals, there are fewer than 1,500 hospital beds—about one for every 60 injured people. And those numbers don’t account for those who would ordinarily require hospital beds even in peacetime: diabetic patients requiring dialysis, cancer patients, and pregnant women needing somewhere to give birth.
Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.
“The remaining students are now basically frontline doctors, because of just the lack of personnel,” Dasti said. Students spent their days at European Hospital “functioning as essentially an attending physician, while not getting paid and working long arduous hours with little sleep.”
Balkhy, of WHO, said the students are exhibiting “more resilience than anyone should need to have.” Nermeen and her classmates dream of continuing their education—perhaps leaving and studying elsewhere if the borders reopen—but, as Balkhy said, it is “a race against time and circumstance.”
Conditions in Gaza, meanwhile, are only worsening. WHO confirmed the first case of polio in Gaza in 25 years on August 22: “Health workers have been digging graves for patients they know they are not able to save because they don’t have the resources needed.”
Forty-five international doctors who spent time in Gaza published a letter on July 25 addressed to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Bing Li and Salman Dasti were among the signatories. They detailed the injuries they’d seen—preteens deliberately shot in the head, healthy babies dying of preventable diseases—and noted their “acute awareness” that Gaza’s medical professionals have been targeted. The doctors begged the president for an arms embargo, and for “unfettered aid delivery” of antibiotics, painkillers, and sutures.
On August 1, 300 days into the destruction of Gaza, Nermeen turned 21 in a white tent, as temperatures soared above 90 degrees.As she sent me WhatsApp voice notes, warplanes buzzed overhead and her siblings chattered in the background.
She had been away from the hospital for a month. It was evacuated on July 1. Patients left, or were carried out by hand, over a chaotic 24 hours. “There’s really no roads because they’ve all been destroyed,” Dasti remembered. Taking a patient a couple of miles to the nearest hospital took at least an hour. Even in the United States, under the best of conditions, it is hard to move a patient from the ICU down the hall to the operating room safely. “I think some of them died on the way,” Dasti said.
Hasan, the dental student, evacuated too. He has spent the past two months sharing an 8-by-20-foot tent with four families in Deir al-Balah refugee camp, not far from the site of the Al-Tabin School bombing, in which the Israel Defense Forces used US-made bombs to hit a school building and kill nearly 100 people. He spends time making videos about his work in the hospital, which the international doctors he met have been sharing at conferences back home.
Hasan has been trying to return to European Hospital to see if he could help if it reopens—and perhaps find a path to continuing his studies. (World Health Organization officials told Mother Jones that they are partnering with the Gaza Ministry of Health to restore emergency services at the hospital, though the timeline has been postponed amid heavy bombing.) On WhatsApp, Hasan showed me a map outlining the route he planned to take, with red danger zones highlighted. When he tried to make the journey, “the people on the road told me to go back [because] the army is on the road.” He turned around and returned to Deir al-Balah.
When we messaged last week, Hasan said he had heard a system of buses organized by the International Committee of the Red Cross might be able to bring him back to Khan Younis. But a day after we spoke, Israeli forces once again ordered the evacuation of large portions of Khan Younis—and bombed portions of Deir al-Balah, where Hasan now lives. But he hasn’t given up. “I will try again,” he said.
Video
Nermeen discusses how she fled during the war...
Nermeen faces similar obstacles. “I am impatiently waiting for the hospital to reopen, because I miss helping and learning new things,” she said. While she heard that administrative work on reopening the hospital began in mid-August, she doesn’t know when it will reopen fully. And returning to the hospital might be dangerous: “Sudden bombing could occur on the road.” So, instead, she has returned to her studies, when the intermittent-at-best internet allows, and when the “terrifying” noises of artillery shells pause long enough to let her focus. One day, Nermeen announced proudly that she’d managed to turn in her endocrinology exam online, to a virtual classroom run by professors from a university that, physically, no longer exists.
“All of this losing makes my heart broken,” Nermeen said. “I hope I can be strong, because my dreams wait [for] me, and many people…I want to help them.”
On Wednesday night, the Uncommitted Movement called a surprise press conference outside the United Center Arena. Under giant glowing signs of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, delegate Abbas Alawieh announced that a few hours earlier the Harris campaign had given him a call. After about two months of asking, the Uncommitted movement had gotten the news: They would not be granted a speaker at the Democratic National Convention.
That means, barring any change, not a single Palestinian or Palestinian-American will be given the chance to step on to the DNC stage. Alawieh, a longtime Democratic congressional staffer—a man who has dedicated his life to working within the system—said he was “stunned” by the refusal of the request: “I said, what do you mean? We just want our voices to be heard.”
At the DNC, Republican staffers have been offered the chance. An Uber lawyer who is high in the campaign got a prime-time slot. But not a single Palestinian has been given even five minutes on that stage. The Uncommitted movement tried, as Alawieh explained, to appease. He said they offered the DNC an extensive list of potential speakers—even offered to find a Palestinian speaker who would endorse Kamala Harris from the stage. (That, as Alawieh noted, “is a hard thing to do” in this moment.) They offered to send a pre-written speech, with promises not to deviate from the script.
“I’ve had some pretty crushing days, but to be honest today took the cake,” Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian-American Georgia State Representative posted on X. Romman was one of the speaker candidates Uncommitted gave to the Harris campaign. “I do not understand how there’s room for an anti-choice Republican but not me in our party. I need someone to explain to me what to do now.”
This was the smallest and most immediately achievable of the Uncommitted movement’s demands, a matter of simple representation. Their larger goals—a ceasefire, an arms embargo, the end to the killing of thousands of Palestinian children with American bombs—went unmentioned. And, nonetheless, the answer, after weeks of silence, was “no.”
At the press conference, Alawieh picked up his phone and returned the Harris campaign staffer’s call in front of allies and reporters. “No it is not acceptable,” he said. Then, he sat down on the sidewalk and refused to move. “Call me if you change your mind. Thank you. Please pass it on. Tell the vice president that I’m sitting outside. I’m not going anywhere. I hope you change her mind.”
As of 9:00 am on Thursday, with Harris ready to accept the nomination, Alawieh was still sitting on that sidewalk. He was joined by delegates June Rose, Sabrene Odeh, and Rima Mohammad. Supporters brought them blankets to sit on, as they struggled to get comfortable on the concrete.
News of their sit-in spread. Representatives like Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) facetimed the group. About 30 minutes into the sit-in, other Democratic groups representing voters began speaking out. Muslim Women for Harris-Walz stated that they could not continue advocating for the ticket in light of this decision.The United Auto Workers tweeted that “if we want peace, if we want real democracy, if we want to win this election,” a Palestinian must be allowed to speak from the stage. Bend The Arc—a progressive Jewish PAC that rarely speaks on international issues—sent a rabbi to join the sit-in. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) arrived on the ground around 11:00 and hugged Alawieh, who sobbed into her shoulder. As the clock ticked past midnight, delegates took turns speaking about the over 10,000 Palestinian children the IDF has killed, about the targeting of civilians that is clear in Gaza’s hospitals—and about their hope that, maybe, the Democratic Party would listen to them and stop the violence.
Everyone at this protest thinks the families of hostages should have spoken today and were glad they did.
So why can't a Palestinian-American elected official have the same luxury?
The Harris campaign did text a counter-offer. A speaker “is not happening,” they said. Would the Uncommitted movement want to send representatives for a private meeting instead of speaker time? Uncommitted representatives might have taken that meeting three weeks ago. Now, though, it’s being offered as a way to deny a Palestinian presence “on the stage of a party that professes equal rights for all,” as Uncommitted organizer Waleed Shahid put it.
The denial comes in the light of a convention that has tried to a paint picture of big-tent solidity among Democrats.
The night before the denial, former President Barack Obama preached to the DNC audience about the need for unity. “Our politics have become so polarized these days that all of us—across the political spectrum—seem so quick to assume the worst in others unless they agree with us on every single issue….Our fellow citizens deserve the same grace we hope they’ll extend to us.” Obama went on to chide the left of his party for not extending sympathy to those who do not always want to vote for Democrats. “If we want to win over those who aren’t yet ready to support our candidates, we need to listen to their concerns and maybe learn something in the process,” Obama said.
And yet that grace, it seemed—that choice to listen and learn—did not extend to allowing a Palestinian to speak from the DNC stage. Instead, the Uncommitted delegates stayed on that sidewalk waiting. They plan to sit there for the remainder of the convention.
“My back hurts, my body’s fatigued…it’s just a shock to the system,” Alawieh said early on Thursday morning. “I suppose most acts of blatant suppression, exclusion, and silencing are.”
He still seemed confused, after waging a campaign coded in all the respectability Democrats demand from dissenters: “We talked to the DNC, we offered options, we said we’ll identify someone who is willing to express support for Vice President Harris…we did everything right, you know?”
Noah Lanard contributed reporting.
Editor’s note: The author of this post and other Mother Jones workers are represented by UAW Local 2103.
On Wednesday night, the Uncommitted Movement called a surprise press conference outside the United Center Arena. Under giant glowing signs of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, delegate Abbas Alawieh announced that a few hours earlier the Harris campaign had given him a call. After about two months of asking, the Uncommitted movement had gotten the news: They would not be granted a speaker at the Democratic National Convention.
That means, barring any change, not a single Palestinian or Palestinian-American will be given the chance to step on to the DNC stage. Alawieh, a longtime Democratic congressional staffer—a man who has dedicated his life to working within the system—said he was “stunned” by the refusal of the request: “I said, what do you mean? We just want our voices to be heard.”
At the DNC, Republican staffers have been offered the chance. An Uber lawyer who is high in the campaign got a prime-time slot. But not a single Palestinian has been given even five minutes on that stage. The Uncommitted movement tried, as Alawieh explained, to appease. He said they offered the DNC an extensive list of potential speakers—even offered to find a Palestinian speaker who would endorse Kamala Harris from the stage. (That, as Alawieh noted, “is a hard thing to do” in this moment.) They offered to send a pre-written speech, with promises not to deviate from the script.
“I’ve had some pretty crushing days, but to be honest today took the cake,” Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian-American Georgia State Representative posted on X. Romman was one of the speaker candidates Uncommitted gave to the Harris campaign. “I do not understand how there’s room for an anti-choice Republican but not me in our party. I need someone to explain to me what to do now.”
This was the smallest and most immediately achievable of the Uncommitted movement’s demands, a matter of simple representation. Their larger goals—a ceasefire, an arms embargo, the end to the killing of thousands of Palestinian children with American bombs—went unmentioned. And, nonetheless, the answer, after weeks of silence, was “no.”
At the press conference, Alawieh picked up his phone and returned the Harris campaign staffer’s call in front of allies and reporters. “No it is not acceptable,” he said. Then, he sat down on the sidewalk and refused to move. “Call me if you change your mind. Thank you. Please pass it on. Tell the vice president that I’m sitting outside. I’m not going anywhere. I hope you change her mind.”
As of 9:00 am on Thursday, with Harris ready to accept the nomination, Alawieh was still sitting on that sidewalk. He was joined by delegates June Rose, Sabrene Odeh, and Rima Mohammad. Supporters brought them blankets to sit on, as they struggled to get comfortable on the concrete.
News of their sit-in spread. Representatives like Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) facetimed the group. About 30 minutes into the sit-in, other Democratic groups representing voters began speaking out. Muslim Women for Harris-Walz stated that they could not continue advocating for the ticket in light of this decision.The United Auto Workers tweeted that “if we want peace, if we want real democracy, if we want to win this election,” a Palestinian must be allowed to speak from the stage. Bend The Arc—a progressive Jewish PAC that rarely speaks on international issues—sent a rabbi to join the sit-in. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) arrived on the ground around 11:00 and hugged Alawieh, who sobbed into her shoulder. As the clock ticked past midnight, delegates took turns speaking about the over 10,000 Palestinian children the IDF has killed, about the targeting of civilians that is clear in Gaza’s hospitals—and about their hope that, maybe, the Democratic Party would listen to them and stop the violence.
Everyone at this protest thinks the families of hostages should have spoken today and were glad they did.
So why can't a Palestinian-American elected official have the same luxury?
The Harris campaign did text a counter-offer. A speaker “is not happening,” they said. Would the Uncommitted movement want to send representatives for a private meeting instead of speaker time? Uncommitted representatives might have taken that meeting three weeks ago. Now, though, it’s being offered as a way to deny a Palestinian presence “on the stage of a party that professes equal rights for all,” as Uncommitted organizer Waleed Shahid put it.
The denial comes in the light of a convention that has tried to a paint picture of big-tent solidity among Democrats.
The night before the denial, former President Barack Obama preached to the DNC audience about the need for unity. “Our politics have become so polarized these days that all of us—across the political spectrum—seem so quick to assume the worst in others unless they agree with us on every single issue….Our fellow citizens deserve the same grace we hope they’ll extend to us.” Obama went on to chide the left of his party for not extending sympathy to those who do not always want to vote for Democrats. “If we want to win over those who aren’t yet ready to support our candidates, we need to listen to their concerns and maybe learn something in the process,” Obama said.
And yet that grace, it seemed—that choice to listen and learn—did not extend to allowing a Palestinian to speak from the DNC stage. Instead, the Uncommitted delegates stayed on that sidewalk waiting. They plan to sit there for the remainder of the convention.
“My back hurts, my body’s fatigued…it’s just a shock to the system,” Alawieh said early on Thursday morning. “I suppose most acts of blatant suppression, exclusion, and silencing are.”
He still seemed confused, after waging a campaign coded in all the respectability Democrats demand from dissenters: “We talked to the DNC, we offered options, we said we’ll identify someone who is willing to express support for Vice President Harris…we did everything right, you know?”
Noah Lanard contributed reporting.
Editor’s note: The author of this post and other Mother Jones workers are represented by UAW Local 2103.
During the Democratic National Convention, the Uncommitted movement’s 30 delegates—chosen by voters frustrated by the United States policies toward Israel as it wages war in Gaza—are trying to speak with as many of Vice President Kamala Harris’ approximately 4,000 pledged delegates as possible and make a pitch: Help us add an arms embargo to the Harris campaign platform to bring about a ceasefire.
On Monday, delegates at the DNC formally approved the party’s policy platform for 2024. That document included no mention of an arms embargo on Israel—or even a “permanent ceasefire.” The phrases “durable ceasefire” and “lasting ceasefire” were both used.
But there is still discussion of a ceasefire and the possibility, organizers with Uncommitted hope, to push for changes in a potential Harris administration. As we previously reported, the Uncommitted movement has spent the DNC trying to recruit delegates already pledged to Harris specifically to join their push by signing a letter that requests alterations in policy.
In that petition, the Uncommitted movement asks for two key things. First: “Inclusion of language in the party and campaign platform that unequivocally supports a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and a cessation of supplying weapons for Israel’s assault and occupation against Palestinians.” Second, the delegates ask for a “meeting between the elected leadership of the Uncommitted delegation, [Harris], senior campaign staff, and administrative staff who determine US foreign policy vis-a-vis Gaza.”
Uncommitted delegate Inga Gibson of Hawaii told Mother Jones that the responses she’s been getting from her fellow delegates are overwhelmingly positive. As the Uncommitted delegates walk around the convention, “we’re pretty identifiable,” she said. “We’re wearing keffiyehs or ‘Not Another Bomb’ pins.” That makes them a magnet for attention from Harris delegates.
“People are regularly coming up to us and saying: How can we get involved, what can I do to help?” Gibson said. “And of course, they’re thrilled to hear that you can be pledged to Harris and still join the voices, which are the majority of people in polls that want a ceasefire and an arms embargo.” When Gibson asked three Harris-pledged delegates from her home state of Hawaii to sign on, she said, they didn’t need convincing. “They were very pleased to learn that they could use their voice without compromising their position as a Biden/Harris delegate.”
Around 240 delegates have signed on to a Ceasefire Delegate letter, the Uncommitted movement told Mother Jones.
In her rhetoric on Gaza, Harris has deviated little from her predecessor. At a press conference yesterday, though, Uncommitted movement leaders including Layla Elabed of Michigan hadn’t given up hope that she might be made to shift her stance.
“We are no longer willing to choose between two impossible options—supporting a candidate complicit in genocide or one who never saw our humanity,” Elabed said. “Instead, we’ve been able to send a message, that our values, our votes, and our rightful place in the Democratic Party cannot be taken for granted.”
Update, August 20th, 10:40 p.m.: The number of delegates who have signed on to a Ceasefire Delegate letter was updated.
Login
