Annie's New Letters (& notes)

The Golden Rule... Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

Saturday, October 11, 2025

Today’s Mass at the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza — the first day of the ceasefire, 736 days of nonstop prayers and unshakable faith.

Today’s Mass at the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza — the first day of the ceasefire, 736 days of nonstop prayers and unshakable faith. 
@IhabHassane

Anne Selden Annab at 6:31 AM No comments:
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Thursday, October 9, 2025

"UNRWA has food, medicines + other basic supplies ready to go to Gaza. We have enough to provide food for the entire population for the coming three months. Our teams in Gaza are crucial for the implementation of this agreement including to provide basic services like healthcare + education. There are over 660,000 children who are eagerly waiting to go back to school. UNRWA teachers stand ready to help them fulfill that. I call on all member states to support UNRWA to do its work to assist people in need in the coming critical period." Philippe Lazzarini

 UNRWA reposted

Philippe Lazzarini
@UNLazzarini

The agreement to finally secure a ceasefire in #Gaza & release the hostages is a huge relief. 
 
It will bring respite to people who survived the worst bombardment, displacement, loss and grief for two long years. 
 
After their excruciating ordeal, hostages & Palestinian detainees will finally join their families. 
 
@UNRWA  has food, medicines + other basic supplies ready to go to Gaza. 
 
We have enough to provide food for the entire population for the coming three months. 
 
Our teams in #Gaza are crucial for the implementation of this agreement including to provide basic services like healthcare + education. 
 
There are over 660,000 children who are eagerly waiting to go back to school. 
 
UNRWA teachers stand ready to help them fulfill that. 
 
I call on all member states to support UNRWA to do its work to assist people in need in the coming critical period.  
 
#ceasefiregaza

UNRWA

@UNRWA
 
For two years too long, humanitarian workers have been killed in #Gaza. 
 
UNRWA mourns 562 aid workers killed in #Gaza since 7 October 2023, among them 370 from UNRWA. 
 
They were killed while at home with their families. 
 
They were killed while on duty. 
 
They were civilians and should have been protected according to the laws of war. 
 
 #CeasefireNow

 

UNRWA

@UNRWA
 
Children belong in school, not in the rubble. 
 
In #Gaza, around 90% of UNRWA schools were hit or damaged, many while sheltering displaced families. 
 
Nearly 660,000 children are forced out of school for the third year in a row. Half of them used to go to UNRWA schools. 
 
 #CeasefireNow

 

UNRWA

@UNRWA
 
"It would take UNRWA just about 3 hours to get trucks to the borders and then get much needed supplies directly to desperate people in #Gaza” our Juliette Touma tells NPR https://x.com/i/status/1975926687805166015
 
For over 7 months now, the Israeli Authorities have blocked UNRWA from bringing any supplies in. 
 
Our services in Gaza have meanwhile continued thanks to 12,000 UNRWA workers who have not stopped for a day since the war began two years ago. 
 
The siege must be lifted, and the crossings must open.  
 
#CeasefireNow
 
https://bsky.app/profile/unrwa.org 

https://www.unrwa.org/ 

Anne Selden Annab at 5:43 AM No comments:
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"This ceasefire is just the beginning of a long road ahead, a road toward a future free from both the occupation and Hamas. No more being dragged into wars or turned into pawns in the games of others. For too long, Palestinians have been caught between oppression and exploitation, crushed by occupation, silenced by militias, and spoken for by those who never cared to listen. That chapter must end here. The only path forward is rebuilding our nation and working toward a two-state solution where Palestinians and Israelis can live side by side, in freedom, dignity, and peace. What remains is the hard, honest work of building a real future, one shaped not by slogans or weapons, but by the will of a people who have suffered enough and still dare to hope." Ihab Hassan

https://x.com/IhabHassane/status/1976125800979042626 

"This ceasefire is just the beginning of a long road ahead, a road toward a future free from both the occupation and Hamas. 

No more being dragged into wars or turned into pawns in the games of others. 

For too long, Palestinians have been caught between oppression and exploitation, crushed by occupation, silenced by militias, and spoken for by those who never cared to listen. That chapter must end here. 

The only path forward is rebuilding our nation and working toward a two-state solution where Palestinians and Israelis can live side by side, in freedom, dignity, and peace. 

What remains is the hard, honest work of building a real future, one shaped not by slogans or weapons, but by the will of a people who have suffered enough and still dare to hope."

Ihab Hassan
@IhabHassane

Palestinian Christian | Human rights activist | MA in Human Rights
@catholicuniv
| Director of Human Rights Project
@Agoradotorg
| views are my own.
Washington, DC | Ramallah
 
 
GAZA:
 734 days.
67,183 killed.
169,841 injured.
83% of Gaza’s infrastructure destroyed.
90% of its buildings reduced to rubble.
296 schools wiped out.
All universities destroyed.
134 hospitals and health centers reduced to ruins.
Over 1.6 million people left homeless and displaced.
Anne Selden Annab at 5:23 AM No comments:
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Wednesday, October 8, 2025

The ruin of Gaza: how Israel’s two-year assault has devastated the territory- IDF’s bombs and ground offensive have killed tens of thousands of people and reduced entire cities to rubble

Students doing their homework amid the rubble of buildings in Khan Younis in September 2024. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
 https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/oct/07/the-ruin-of-gaza-how-israel-two-year-assault-has-devastated-the-territory
Jason Burke. Graphics by Paul Scruton and Heidi Wilson
Tue 7 Oct 2025 06.35 EDT

The devastating war in Gaza has entered its third year, standing as Israel’s longest war since the 1948 conflict that led to the country’s creation.

The majority of those killed by Israel’s offensive in the strip have been civilians, and the overall total now exceeds 67,000. Entire families have been wiped out in a single airstrike. Sometimes, only a single individual, frequently a child, is left alive. There are also nearly 170,000 injured. In all, casualties amount to roughly 10% of Gaza’s pre-war population of 2.3 million.

There may well be many more dead uncounted in the rubble that now covers much of Gaza. Those killed by untreated illnesses, poor nutrition, suicide or other causes linked to the conflict are more numerous still. Thousands of people have simply disappeared – lost, incinerated or blown apart by explosions, or held in secret detention by Israel.

Israel has controlled and restricted supplies going into Gaza throughout the conflict but imposed a total blockade of supplies from March to May 2025, saying that Hamas was stealing assistance to pay for its military operations. Though restrictions were eventually eased amid international outrage, famine was declared in parts of Gaza in August.

The impact of Israel’s offensive on Gaza has led to accusations of genocide, which Israel has denied. In September, independent experts working for the UN high commissioner for human rights said that the death toll and destruction in Gaza met its criteria for a genocide. This, too, was challenged by Israel.

The war, triggered by a Hamas raid into Israel on 7 October 2023 which killed approximately 1,200 people and took a further 251 as hostages, has devastated Gaza, in physical and human terms. Almost all Palestinians in the territory have been displaced, usually many times. Entire cities have been reduced to dust and broken concrete. Witnesses of attacks, or victims of the violence around some food distribution sites, or medics in overwhelmed hospitals describe “post-apocalyptic landscapes” or “hell on earth”... READ MORE   https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/oct/07/the-ruin-of-gaza-how-israel-two-year-assault-has-devastated-the-territory?CMP=GTUS_email

  AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies] 

Declaration of famine in Gaza lays bare Israel’s disregard for humanitarian duty 

Anne Selden Annab at 8:59 AM No comments:
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Tuesday, October 7, 2025

Gaza genocide: 2 years of Western media stenographing for Israel. Western media has spent 2 years denying Gaza’s genocide, platforming Israel’s lies, & enabling ongoing violence through silence & distortion, writes Assal Rad.

Instead of interrogating official claims, even as Israel carried out mass killing, starvation, and destruction in Gaza, mainstream media echoed their language—speaking of “collateral damage” and “targeting Hamas”, writes Assal Rad. [GETTY]
https://www.newarab.com/opinion/gaza-genocide-2-years-western-media-stenographing-israel 

 AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies] 

Assal Rad

Assal Rad

When we study historical atrocities—the worst crimes committed against human beings—they often raise haunting questions about the people of that era: How could they allow such horrors to happen? We reassure ourselves by saying they did not know, or did not know any better, and promise that we would never allow that to happen. Never again.

And yet, the world, and our generation, has watched one of the most well-documented genocides unfold, live-streamed on our devices for two years. We have seen Gaza become a wasteland, parents digging desperately through rubble, hospitals left in ruins, and the mass slaughter of children—what UNICEF describes as a “classroom of children killed, every day,” by Israel.

As of this writing, Israel’s killing in Gaza continues with the full global awareness and the support the world’s most powerful nations. We have seen the daily horrors from Gaza because of the immense resilience of Palestinian journalists, who paid with their lives to show the reality on the ground.

As Israel barred foreign press from entering Gaza, media workers in the field became the central source for what was happening.

Forced to record their own genocide, Palestinian journalists became targets themselves. Where they exemplified the highest ideals of their profession, many of their Western counterparts—and especially the institutions behind them—have utterly failed. It is the media institutions themselves, bound to political power and economic incentives, that bear the most responsibility.

Certainly, not all journalists share the blame—many of which protested, resigned, and tried to do their jobs under challenging conditions—but the betrayal lies with the systems that they work within.

Complicity

Rather than seeking truth and minimising harm, Western media often acted as stenographers for the narratives of powerful governments, particularly Israel and the US. Instead of interrogating official claims, even as Israel carried out mass killing, starvation, and destruction in Gaza, mainstream media echoed their language—speaking of “collateral damage” and “targeting Hamas”—and repeated government talking points with little scrutiny.

Time and again, headlines obscured the perpetrator of attacks, downplayed Palestinian suffering, and cast doubt on Palestinian sources, while validating Israel’s attacks on hospitals, homes and schools by saying they were “targeting Hamas.” In doing so, Western media helped to whitewash Israel’s crimes and the complicity of its allies.

But perhaps the gravest offence is the refusal to call what it happening by its name: genocide.

Just days into Israel’s assault on Gaza, Israeli scholar and genocide expert Raz Segal called it a “textbook case of genocide.” Segal was not only looking at Israel’s initial actions—like a complete blockade and carpet bombing a dense-civilian population in a strip of land the size of Philadelphia—but also listening to the explicit statements of Israeli officials.

Referring to the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, Segal stressed that “intent to destroy a group is defined as racial, ethnic, religious or national as such that is collectively, not just individuals. And this intent, as we just heard, is on full display by Israeli politicians and army officers.” His warnings received little coverage in legacy media and the language of genocide was largely overlooked in the early months of reporting.... READ MORE  https://www.newarab.com/opinion/gaza-genocide-2-years-western-media-stenographing-israel

 AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies] 

Anne Selden Annab at 2:31 PM No comments:
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B'Tselem בצלם بتسيلم: The October 7 atrocities as a trigger for genocide: an escalation rooted in decades of apartheid and occupation. Read more in “Our Genocide” report,


B'Tselem בצלם بتسيلم
@btselem

The October 7 atrocities as a trigger for genocide: an escalation rooted in decades of apartheid and occupation. Read more in “Our Genocide” report, link in 🧵  https://x.com/btselem/status/1975508253313245594/photo/1

 Square profile picture

B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories strives for a future in which human rights, liberty and equality are guaranteed to all people, Palestinian and Jewish alike, living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Such a future will only be possible when the Israeli occupation and apartheid regime end.

Interactive Map 

Our Genocide 

Watch in: English | Français | Español
Download Full Report
Download Summary

https://www.btselem.org/publications/202507_our_genocide

AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies] 

Frequently Asked Questions

What is genocide?

How did you reach the conclusion that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza?

How did we get to a point where the Israeli regime is committing genocide against the Palestinians?

Why does the report warn of a risk that the genocide will spread to other areas under Israeli control?

How does the report address the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023?

What needs to be done now?

Anne Selden Annab at 7:19 AM No comments:
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"... On this solemn anniversary, let us honour the memory of all the victims by working for the only path forward: a just & lasting peace, in which Israelis, Palestinians & all the peoples of the region live side by side in security, dignity and mutual respect." António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations

 António Guterres

@antonioguterres

"Two years ago today, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups launched an abhorrent large-scale terror attack on Israel. 
 
On this day, let us remember all those who were killed and suffered horrific violence. 
 
The horror of that dark day will be forever seared in the memories of us all. 
 
Two years later, hostages remain captive in Gaza in deplorable conditions. 
 
I have said it time and again, and I am repeating it today with even greater urgency: 
 
Release the hostages, unconditionally & immediately. 
 
End the suffering for all. 
 
This is a humanitarian catastrophe on a scale that defies comprehension. 
 
Put an end to the hostilities in Gaza, Israel & the region now. 
 
Stop making civilians pay with their lives & their futures. 
 
After two years of trauma, we must choose hope. Now. 
 
The recent proposal @POTUS presents an opportunity that must be seized to bring this tragic conflict to an end. 
 
A permanent ceasefire and a credible political process are essential to prevent further bloodshed & pave the way for peace. 
 
The United Nations @UN remains unwavering in its commitment to support peace. 
 
On this solemn anniversary, let us honour the memory of all the victims by working for the only path forward: a just & lasting peace, in which Israelis, Palestinians & all the peoples of the region live side by side in security, dignity and mutual respect."

António Guterres

Opens profile photo
Secretary-General of the United Nations @UN. 
 
We will never, ever give up making this world better for everyone, everywhere.
Anne Selden Annab at 7:02 AM No comments:
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Anne Selden Annab
American homemaker & poet ...author of Creek Side Poems & Ladybug Lodge Poetry & The Fairy Garden Poems ... & Annie's New Letters and Notes ... Growing Gardens for Palestine
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