Current and former Cisco workers have objected to the company’s role in the Gaza war, calling it a ‘shocking and complete contradiction of values’

Alice Speri

 

Sat 7 Nov 2026

 in The Guardian 

A ‘customer success story’: leaked documents show Cisco doubled down on Israeli military deals during Gaza war

Current and former Cisco workers have objected to the company’s role in the Gaza war, calling it a ‘shocking and complete contradiction of values’

Tech giant leaped to shore up relationship even as company was roiled by worker protest over its role in the war

A year into the war in Gaza, the networks of Israel’s military intelligence community were plagued with technical problems. There were major, multi-hour outages to their systems, and repeated crashes. Built-in debugging mechanisms failed.

The problems, which started as intelligence operations were undergoing updates to digital infrastructure, became so persistent as to undermine the “confidence” of Israeli intelligence agencies in one of their top network providers: the multinational tech conglomerate Cisco.

“This series of events happened during the period of war, deeply impacting customer sentiment,” warned a confidential memo drafted by Cisco and obtained by the Guardian. “During a period of national conflict, these repeated outages severely impacted critical operations.”

The September 2025 draft memo was part of a trove of internal documents leaked by Cisco workers furious with the company’s ties to Israel’s military three years into the war, which has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/nov/07/israel-intelligence-cisco-gaza-palestine

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Smaller than a Mouse- a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye published in her most recent book "Sidekick" 2026

                   Smaller than a Mouse

We demonstrated on a steaming day,

carrying signs,

five hundred thousand people 

in the streets of New York

saying no to war,

gathering crowds for blocks and miles,

crush and press of world's religions

and secular codes, multi-flavored

WE SHALL NOT KILL

and the next day our story,

the story of saying no to war,

was written up in a three-sentence news item

on the back of the front section of the New York Times

smaller than the story of a mouse found

in a chain restaurant soup.

This is the truth.
 

    Poem by award winning Palestinian American poet Naomi Shihab Nye published in her most recent book "Sidekick" 2026  

 https://boaeditions.org/book/sidekick/

Praise for Naomi Shihab Nye

“On every page, Shihab Nye's insistent call is the same: people, all people, deserve to live safe and healthy lives, free from fear and violence. She mourns, rages, takes politicians to task, but always lands on the side of compassion.” —Shelf Awareness

 

Naomi Shihab Nye is the author and/or editor of more than thirty volumes including six collections of poetry from BOA Editions: Sidekick (2026), Red Suitcase (1994), Fuel (1998), You & Yours (2005), Transfer (2011), and The Tiny Journalist (2019). She has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow and a Witter Bynner Fellow. Her numerous awards include a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award from BOA, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, the Patterson Poetry Prize, four Pushcart Prizes, the Robert Creeley Prize the Betty Prize from Poets House for her service to poetry, and the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters. She served on the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets from 2010–2015, and in May 2019 she was named the 2019–2021 Young People's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. 

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"Given the way things are going in the US, corporations seem to have more freedom of speech than university students. And it might not be long before datacenters have more rights than women."

 The Week in Patriarchy  AI (artificial intelligence)

Pity the poor AI datacenters facing ‘discrimination’

The centers are diverting much-needed resources from regular people. Local resistance has the industry playing defense 

 

by Arwa Mahdawi 

 

 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/16/pity-the-poor-ai-datacenters-facing-discrimination

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‘The people getting filthy rich from AI will never have to live next door to their moneymaking creations.’ Photograph: Mark Hertzberg/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

“I continue to speak out because the kids are counting on us,” she said. “I continue because I would want people to speak out if it were my kids. It’s my calling to care about all children. It’s just who I am and I can’t not care.”

The current moment builds on decades of work – mothers harnessing their organizing power, meeting up with each other to keep their communities safe, launching and supporting campaigns, advocating for changes in public policy and getting out the vote. Composite: Rita Liu/The Guardian/Getty Images

 

‘I see every child like I see my children’: why US mothers are on the frontlines of resistance movements

Mothers’ experiences often intersect with federal policy battles over gun violence, immigration and childcare

Rachel Leingang in Minneapolis and Ankita Rao in Washington

Sun 10 May 2026

Sarah spent the first months of the year following immigration agents around the Twin Cities to document arrests and violations of constitutional rights. On the day Renee Good was killed by a federal agent after dropping her son at school, she too had been surrounded by agents who screamed that they were the good guys.

On the other side of the metropolis, Linsey Rippy showed up daily to a church, ready to assemble and distribute boxes full of produce, beans, rice, cereal, sometimes adding in formula for babies stuck at home with their parents because it wasn’t safe to go out during “Operation Metro Surge”, the Trump administration’s widespread and violent immigration enforcement crackdown.

Mothers built the backbone of the resistance in Minnesota, quickly setting up networks to get kids to school and feed people, march and protest, monitor immigration agents, give rides, protect school grounds and fundraise for rent – a revolution made of caregiving and community. The movement accelerated nationally when millions saw a now iconic photo of five-year-old Liam Ramos, who was detained in the state along with his father and taken to the Dilley immigration processing center in Texas.

Rachel Accurso, the popular children’s show host and advocate known as Ms Rachel, ramped up a campaign on social media and across TV networks to end immigration detention for children. She described a video call with a nine-year-old, Deiver, a spelling bee winner who was also held at Dilley detention center in Texas who wanted to be released so he could go to the state bee, as “devastating and surreal”.

“I see every child like I see my children and I think about their mothers having to see them suffer,” Accurso said. “It breaks me.”... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/10/mothers-resistance-protest-movements

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"This is where things get tricky: I’m not sure what I’m allowed to say about Palestine Action in this column without getting chucked in jail myself. Last July, you see, the British government took the extraordinary, and hugely criticized, step of terming the group a terrorist organization on the same level as the Islamic State militant group. This is despite the fact that Palestine Action has killed nobody; its efforts are focused on trying to shut down weapons manufacturers enabling the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Even the government’s own intelligence assessment, a declassified version of which was obtained by the New York Times, undercut its condemnations of the group, finding that most of their activities “would not be classified as terrorism” under Britain’s legal definition. Still, the British government has been very busy arresting thousands – many of whom are elderly activists – for the “crime” of peacefully holding up a sign saying: “I support Palestine Action.” "

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/06/greta-thunberg-palestine-action-arrest 

Greta Thunberg came to stay – and my kid may have inadvertently helped her get arrested

Arwa Mahdawi

 

The activist had held a sign written with my daughter’s crayon. Try explaining that to a four-year-old 

 

Tue 6 Jan 2026 05.00 EST

 

‘I’m back in the US now and I can’t quite fathom what Britain, under the leadership of a former human rights lawyer, has become.’  Photograph: Prisoners for Palestine/AP

 

It was 6am. London. A few days before Christmas. My four-year-old is singing at the top of her lungs and charging around my parents’ house on a hunt for the perfect crayon. There is nothing particularly unusual about this scene except for the fact that the crayon in question was for Greta Thunberg. The world’s most well-known activist needed a writing tool and my daughter, O, was on the case. (Remember this crayon: it’s going to be important later on.)

O, I should note, had absolutely no idea who Greta was. We’re not longtime chums or anything like that. Rather Greta was in London to support the Palestine Action-linked hunger strikers. She needed somewhere to stay and my dad, who is a Palestinian refugee, and appreciative of anyone speaking up about the place where he was born but can’t return to live in, keeps an open house for activists who need a bed or a meal. When the visit had been hastily arranged by a friend of a friend of my sister a couple days earlier, we’d tried to explain to O that Greta was a famous activist who tried to help people and the environment.

“Does famous mean beautiful?” my princess-obsessed child asked. Oh dear, I thought, I have failed as a parent and a feminist.

“No, it doesn’t. And remember being beautiful is not important – what’s important is being kind,” I said, trying to redeem some feminist points.

“How dare you!” O replied. This has been her favourite catchphrase for a while now. I have no idea where she picked it up; probably from a kid’s show. I had thought nothing of it until the surprise Greta visit.

“Please don’t say that while Greta is here,” I told O. I didn’t want her to think we were making fun of her memorable rebuke. But once again, I failed at parenting: everyone knows that the best way to get a kid to keep doing something is to suggest they stop doing it.

While Greta may be famous, the hunger strikers she was coming to support are definitely not; they have had very little mainstream media attention. Indeed, if you are reading this in the US, you may not have heard about them at all. So, in brief, eight activists awaiting trials for alleged offences relating to Palestine Action have been on hunger strike since 2 November, the anniversary of the Balfour declaration.

This is where things get tricky...  READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/06/greta-thunberg-palestine-action-arrest

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Torture in Israeli prisons rose sharply during war, says freed Palestinian author - Nasser Abu Srour says prisons became like ‘another front’ in Gaza conflict and tells of struggle to adjust to life outside

A Palestinian protester holds a placard in 2015 bearing a portrait of Nasser Abu Srour during a demonstration marking Palestinian Prisoner Day in the West Bank town of Bilin, near Ramallah. Photograph: Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images

Julian Borger

Tue 4 Nov 2025 02.00 EST

A celebrated Palestinian author who was freed last month after more than 32 years in Israeli prisons has said the use of torture increased dramatically during his last two years of captivity as Israel came to treat its jails as another front in the Gaza war.

Nasser Abu Srour, whose prison memoir has been translated into seven languages and is tipped to win a major international literary prize this month, was among more than 150 Palestinians serving life sentences who were freed as part of the US-brokered Gaza ceasefire and then immediately exiled to Egypt, where most remain in limbo.

Abu Srour, 56, recounted a sharp increase in the use of beatings and the deprivation of food and warmth after the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023.

“The prison guards uniform changed, with a tag on the chest written on it the word ‘fighters’, or ‘warriors’, and they started acting like they were in a war and this was another front, and they started beating, torturing, killing like warriors,” he said.

A UN commission listed 75 deaths of Palestinians in Israeli custody between 7 October 2023 and 31 August 2025... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/04/freed-palestinian-author-nasser-abu-srour-israel-prisons-gaza-war 

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"Fashion has always been political. Now, demonstrators are putting pro-Palestinian slogans and symbols on their clothes – and not just for marches" REPORTING by Ellie Violet Bramley. Photographs by Ethan Parker in The Guardian

 

Wear it loud, wear it proud: how marchers for Gaza are bringing ‘protest dressing’ up to date

It’s early afternoon at the latest national march for Gaza in central London. A man is wearing a sweatshirt bearing a photograph of Hind Rajab, the five-year-old girl who was killed in the Gaza conflict last year along with family members and the paramedics who tried to save her. He doesn’t want to be named. But it is, he says, his attempt “to keep her memory alive, until we get justice … Whether it takes one month, one year, 100 years, I’m not giving up. I’m not going to stop wearing this until the killers are behind bars.”

It’s a heart-rending example of a phenomenon common to all these marches over the past two years: people are here to call for an end to the war and the Israeli occupation, and many are using their clothes to bolster their message.

Far from being a frivolous afterthought, protest dressing has become an important part of these marches. Wearing the symbols and colours of solidarity can be an expression of grief and a call to action.

“Enough is enough,” says Mariama, who is in her 30s and works for the NHS in Nottingham. She is wearing a football-style shirt with a Palestinian flag in place of the club crest. Alongside it are the words “viva Palestina” and a visual representation of the contested area.

“It’s one way of giving voice to your opposition, my opposition, to the occupation of Palestine,” says the Rev Poppy Hughes, 65, of her Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) pin badge. Otherwise “there’s nothing to identify you as somebody who’s opposed to the occupation and the genocide and the starvation.”

There’s a sense of shared project about it. “You feel more united when you’re sharing the dress code,”... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2025/sep/19/wear-it-loud-wear-it-proud-how-marchers-for-gaza-are-bringing-protest-dressing-up-to-date 

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Protesting over Gaza’s starvation feels like screaming into a void – but we mustn’t stop by Nesrine Malik in The Guardian

Political platitudes and a few trucks of aid won’t save the children dying now. But they show leaders can’t ignore public opinion for ever

Illustration: Nathalie Lees/The Guardian

Mon 28 Jul 2025 01.00 EDT

Last modified on Mon 28 Jul 2025 03.14 EDT

The children die first. In conditions of starvation, their growing bodies’ nutritional needs are higher than those of adults, and so their reserves are depleted faster. Their immune systems, not yet fully developed, become weaker, more susceptible to disease and infection. A bout of diarrhoea is lethal. Their wounds don’t heal. The babies cannot be breastfed as their mothers have not eaten. They die at double the rate of adults.

Last week, over a period of just 72 hours, 21 children died in Gaza of malnutrition and starvation. The path to death from starvation is a slow and agonising one, especially in a territory suffering shortages of not just food, but medicine, shelter and clean water. The total death toll from hunger surpassed 100 at the weekend; 80 of those were children. An aid worker reported that children are telling their parents that they want to die and go to heaven, because “at least heaven has food”.

Every single one of these deaths, and those that will come, is preventable. The World Health Organization described the starvation as “man-made”, but it is more than that. It is foreseeable and thus deliberate. Israel’s siege on Gaza has blocked tonnes of aid from entering, or being distributed to those who need it, according to humanitarian organisations there. The “tactical pause” of military operations for a few hours a day in three parts of the Gaza Strip to allow in some aid is a measure that does not ameliorate a crisis accrued over time. The starvation, long warned about, is the latest phase of a campaign almost two years long, for which words are now entirely inadequate.

Genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass punishment – all these descriptions still somehow do not capture the lurid and varied ways in which Palestinians in Gaza are being killed: bombed in their homes, and in their tents, burned alive in their hospital beds, shot while queueing for food and now starved. It almost doesn’t matter what it is called any more, because all you need to see to know that what is happening is a crime that requires immediate action is the bones of a child sticking out of its thin skin, while the food it needs is being blocked by Israeli soldiers.

The time for justifications, arguing about semantics and hand-wringing over the “complexity” of the conflict has long passed... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/28/gaza-israel-aid-starvation-children

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A 2025 BANG on POTs protest of Israel's systematic starvation & torture of Palestinian men, women, & children in Gaza #PALESTINE

Misan Harriman

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I just discovered that the woman on the right is Selma James, an American writer, feminist, and social activist. She co-authored the book 'The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community' with Mariarosa Dalla Costa, founded the International Wages for Housework Campaign, and coordinates the Global Women’s Strike. She is also a co-founder of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. She will turn 95 next month. She was married to C L. R. James. The woman with her is an activist named Nina Lopez.

Still marching at 94 years old! Wow

Thanks for the information, @angeledavidguillou  https://www.instagram.com/p/DMlVsYEomZQ/