Back to School, in Gaza My nephews study in a big tent surrounded by bombed-out houses. They have no access to chairs or desks, so they sit on the dirt. By Mosab Abu Toha in The New Yorker

Palestinian children walk to school amid the rubble of destroyed buildings as the academic year begins in Khan Younis, on September 19th.Photograph by Bashar Taleb / AFP / Getty

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Back to School, in Gaza

My nephews study in a big tent surrounded by bombed-out houses. They have no access to chairs or desks, so they sit on the dirt.

By Mosab Abu Toha

October 7, 2026

When I was growing up, in northern Gaza, my parents took my siblings and me to a stationery store about a week before each school year started. I would pick out my favorite notebooks, pencils, sharpener, eraser, and ruler, and place them in my backpack. My parents also took us to the market, to buy jeans, shirts, shoes, socks, and a belt. The night before school began was the second most important day of my year, after Eid. I would lay out my outfit and backpack next to the mattress where I slept. Then I would tuck my new shoes under my pillow.

Most schools in Gaza are three- or four-story concrete structures with a U-shaped layout and a central courtyard for assemblies and recreation. My middle school, Al-Fakhoora School, in Jabalia Camp, was run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. It had two practical-arts rooms, where students could learn carpentry, blacksmithing, and metalworking. There was also a science lab, a computer lab, and a library. On the first day, my mother or father would accompany us while we found our classrooms and teachers. My favorite subjects were English and physical education.

Schools were where we accessed many public services. From birth until the age of fifteen, we received many of our vaccinations at UNRWA schools. I remember UNRWA teams performing comprehensive dental screenings at least twice. The agency also gave out new and used textbooks for free. (Students sometimes quarrelled over who got the new ones.) When we got home, our parents helped us fit the books with protective covers. After ninth grade, I began attending government schools, but for a year or two UNRWA continued to provide daily food rations to my younger siblings. I recall them returning home with things they hadn’t finished in class—a sandwich, yogurt, some fresh fruit, juice, nutrient-fortified milk... READ MORE https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/back-to-school-in-gaza

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Praise for Assal Rad's book DON'T SAY PALESTINE How the Media Manufactured Consent for Genocide

 

Assal Rad, headline fixer & author of  DON'T SAY PALESTINE How the Media Manufactured Consent for Genocide

If you’re not writing the truth about crimes against humanity, you’re culpable in them.

Activist and Middle East historian Assal Rad is known as the “headline fixer” for her powerful posts that illustrate how mainstream Western media’s coverage of the Gaza Genocide is filled with double standards. Israelis are described as “children” and “civilians,” while Palestinians are “people under 18” and “collateral damage”; Israelis are killed; Palestinians die. Even in the wake of the so-called ceasefire, major Western media continually obfuscates Israeli violence in Palestine: For example, the Associated Press reported that “Gaza’s living conditions worsen as strong winds and hypothermia kill 5.” No, Rad corrects: Gaza’s living conditions worsen as Israel blocks aid.

In Don’t Say Palestine, Rad reveals a pattern of dehumanizing language—in outlets from CNN and the AP to the BBC and The New York Times—so consistently employed throughout the Palestinian genocide that it amounts to a policy. Mainstream Western media consistently downplays Israeli responsibility, “others” Palestinians, and casts doubt on inviolable tenets of international law like the sanctity of hospitals and journalists in war zones. This groundbreaking, eye-opening exposé offers both a moral reckoning and an urgent call to action, mapping with devastating clarity the media’s complicity in whitewashing a human rights crisis. 

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/834977/dont-say-palestine-by-assal-rad/ 

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"A vital work... Rad's intellectual rigor and moral clarity are unwavering"

 

PRAISE 

“Amidst some of the worst journalistic failures of this century, Assal Rad has consistently done vital work to point out the myriad ways institutional hypocrisy, cowardice, and willful obliviousness work hand-in-hand with state violence to justify and normalize any manner of atrocity. Her intellectual rigor and moral clarity—not only on the journalistic malpractice that so often marks Western media coverage of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, but on how this malpractice eventually seeps into all coverage—are unwavering. At a time when it would have been so much more convenient to stay silent, I and so many others are grateful for her willingness to speak.” —Omar El Akkad, National Book Award–winning author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

 

“Eighty years ago, George Orwell wrote that ‘In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.’ Assal Rad shows, in painful detail, that in the case of Israel-Palestine, this remains true.” —Peter Beinart, author of Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza

“Throughout the course of the Gaza Genocide, historian Assal Rad has been a beacon of clarity in a media landscape clouded by lies. In this important new work of media criticism, Rad dissects the biases, distortions, and falsehoods by which press institutions conceal the atrocities of empire—as well as delivering a powerful call for accountability, justice, and truth.” —Molly Crabapple, author of Here Where We Live Is Our Country

 

“Assal Rad brilliantly exposes how, for the past years, reality itself had been distorted to fit a political ecosystem. Western media does not simply omit or distort reality, but actively launders it. Language reframes and ultimately erases both violence and responsibility. ‘Self-defense’ replaces the naming of genocide. These linguistic choices reveal intentionality in complicity: not neutral but political, shaping whose lives are grievable and whose deaths are rendered acceptable. In Don’t Say Palestine, Rad demonstrates how media narratives create permissive conditions for genocide through strategic omission, selective visibility, euphemism, and the erasing of Palestinian voices. When those same institutions dictate what can and cannot be said, this is not press freedom but censorship. And when they uncritically repeat the claims of a state responsible for unprecedented violence, in ways that obscure or diminish its gravity, this is not reporting—it is complicity.” —Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories and author of When the World Sleeps  

Israel’s expanding network of checkpoints is UNLAWFUL and must be dismantled immediately. Part of the carceral geography of apartheid, it makes Palestiniams' daily life fully dependent on arbitrariness. Thank you @WIRED for exposing this viciousnes: "Lost time. Lost jobs. Lost friends. Lost family. Lost lives. How Israeli checkpoints suffocate Palestinian life in the occupied West Bank. CHOKE POINTS "

https://x.com/FranceskAlbs/status/2107786279320482146 

Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt

@FranceskAlbs

 

Israel’s expanding network of checkpoints is UNLAWFUL and must be dismantled immediately. 

Part of the carceral geography of apartheid, it makes Palestiniams' daily life fully dependent on arbitrariness.  

Thank you @WIRED for exposing this viciousness:  https://www.wired.com/story/how-israeli-checkpoints-choke-palestinian-life-occupied-west-bank/

[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 here, there- and everywhere] 

Lost time. Lost jobs. Lost friends. Lost family.

Lost lives.

How Israeli checkpoints suffocate Palestinian life in the occupied West Bank.

CHOKE POINTS  

The Big Story

Sep 30, 2026 6:00 AM

Aref Jaber is on a neighbor's roof, trying to get home.

At 51, he is clambering over a wall into the next backyard, up onto the next roof, along the line of stone houses that stand between him and his own front door. He has no choice. Alleys and side streets in his neighborhood have been sealed with cement blocks and barbed wire, and a single point of access, called Checkpoint 160, is the only way in or out for the 140 families who live there.

But Checkpoint 160 is closed again; Jaber is not sure why. The whim of a soldier, a crash in the scanning system, breaking news in the region—it could be anything.

For the last three years, he says, this has happened at least two days a week. So the community has devised a system of alternative routes. Jaber calls his neighbors to ask if he can come through. They check their windows for soldiers, and then Jaber scales ladders and traverses roofs. “When I finally get home,” he says, “it feels like I’ve achieved something monumental.”

The enclosure of Jaber’s neighborhood is a dense microcosm of what life is becoming across the occupied West Bank—for Palestinians, that is. At the same time that deadly Israeli settler violence robs communities in the West Bank of their land, and amid the genocide in Gaza, Israel has expanded its infrastructures of military control and domination... READ MORE  https://www.wired.com/story/how-israeli-checkpoints-choke-palestinian-life-occupied-west-bank/

Dear America- No matter who is elected next month, I very much hope our elected leaders start to seriously invest in peace and prosperity for all people, not just white "Christian" con-artists, Billionaire tech bros, corporate corruption, AI delusions, and escalating pollution.

"Gaza is Drowning" by Palestinian artist Mahmoud Abbas

Dear America,

September was 9/11 and the criminal 2001 Al-Qaeda terror attacks on America. 

October is Oct 7th and the criminal 2023 HAMAS terror attack on Israel.  

November is elections- and Thanksgiving for many Americans, but not all.

No matter who is elected next month, I very much hope our elected leaders start to seriously invest in peace and prosperity for all people, not just white "Christian" con-artists, Billionaire tech bros, corporate corruption, AI delusions, and escalating pollution.

I hope our elected leaders STOP arming war violence and injustice.

Start with Palestine and the United Nations. Fund diplomacy and international law, and aid for those in need- not bombs and bully tactics.

And I hope our mainstream media- our fourth estate- starts being fully honest about Israeli crimes against humanity.

The brilliant headline fixer, Assal Rad, recently wrote a revealing new book "Don't Say Palestine: How the Media Manufactured Consent for Genocide".  Read it and learn the many ways Americans have been essentially lied to and swindled by the way "Mainstream Western media consistently downplays Israeli responsibility, “others” Palestinians, and casts doubt on inviolable tenets of international law like the sanctity of hospitals and journalists in war zones."  https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/834977/dont-say-palestine-by-assal-rad/

Sincerely,

Anne Selden Annab

NOTES https://anniesnewletters.blogspot.com/search/label/Notes

What happened to America’s compassion | Joyce M. Davis in The Patriot News, Pennsylvania

Peace & development are 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗱. It's time to rebalancing world military spending for a sustainable and peaceful future... Global military spending is soaring, fueling a new arms race and placing immense pressure on national budgets and priorities

61m tonnes of rubble: Gaza aid workers face delicate task of clearing ruins concealing up to 10,000 bodies. Removal of war debris, in which lives, memories and unexploded Israeli bombs lie buried, is one of largest clearance operations in modern history

It’s not hypothetical: the dangers of AI are already here- Israel and the US have used AI to kill in Gaza and Iran, while law enforcement uses it in surveillance and arrests. The future is here

Weapon of distraction: How Israel uses greenwashing to mask its climate crimes

"Peace and security. Inequality. Climate. Artificial intelligence. These are the four great power tests of the future. And they are interlinked." - United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

Israel uproots 400 olive trees in occupied West Bank as harvest season approaches... The trees are hundreds of years old- uprooting them not only destroys the trees, but also affects the livelihoods of Palestinian families that depend on them

Towards A More Just World... learn more

Refaat Alareer 1979-2023 killed by Israel (but not silenced) poet, professor, writer, & one of the co-founders of We Are Not Numbers: We remember him not only for how he died, but for how he lived — teaching and inspiring generations of young Palestinians to write back and tell their stories.

Breaking the Silence: " The IDF delegated target identification to an AI system, a deeply problematic step in itself. This enabled the military to carry out strikes at an unprecedented pace. Combined with the IDF’s extremely permissive collateral damage policy, this sent the death toll in Gaza skyrocketing. "

Genocide by Deprivation: How Israel keeps killing going in Gaza even without bombing

"Let this anniversary mark not only another year of mourning, but also a renewed determination to build a different future in which Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side in peace & security, with their rights, dignity & aspirations fulfilled." United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres’ message marking three years since the attacks of 7 October 2023

Israeli settlers beat press photographer as soldiers watch in West Bank- Jaafar Ashtiyeh was covering violence against olive farmers when settlers set upon him with the butts of their rifles

“Silence in the face of suffering and injustice is not neutrality, it is complicity,” he wrote. “Shutting down discussion on the starvation of the Palestinian people weakens the reputation of the organisation and the legitimacy of our mandate. Being true to our mandate calls for a frank and open discussion around starvation, famine, and genocide in Palestine and elsewhere.” Benjamin Davis, Former UN food agency official claims he was fired for highlighting hunger in Gaza

Gaza before and after the Genocide

Palestinian Ministry of Education says over 22 thousands Palestinian students have been killed by Israel in the last three years; 179 public schools and 105 UNRWA schools were destroyed. Yet 700 teaching locations in Gaza opened for Gaza students

‘Had I resigned, I would have handed them that victory on a plate,’ says former UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini

In Gaza, farmers rescue roots buried under rubble to grow fruit again. Gazan fig and date farmers are replanting crops from roots that survived years of Israeli bombing.

Mosaic view of Gaza in the Church of St Stephen, Um ar-Rasas, Jordan. It was constructed in 756CE by the mosaics artists Stauranchius & Euremius

With deep sorrow and grief, His Beatitude Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, mourns the passing of Mrs. Maysa Khader Ibrahim Abu Daoud (Ayyad) and Mrs. Mary Hafez Michel Najjar (Abu Daoud), who were killed in the Israeli air strike that took place last night October 2nd, 2026, in ​Gaza City.

Gaza: WHO appeals for massive aid influx ahead of winter- Repeated delays in bringing lifesaving medicines, prosthetics and more [food, clean water...etc...] from Israel into Gaza risk having devastating consequences on Palestinians who urgently need them in the war-torn enclave, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said [warned] on Friday

AI [artificial intelligence] weapons systems are already here. Algorithms must not decide who lives and dies. Israel’s conduct in Gaza shows the danger of using AI in warfare. Humans must remain at the center of wartime decisions

Friday's International Day of Non-Violence [October 2, 2026] marks the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, a leader who remained committed to the principle of non-violence, even in the most difficult circumstances

WCNSF — Wounded Child, No Surviving Family... Medical workers [in GAZA PALESTINE] began using it to describe children who arrive at hospitals wounded, but with no surviving family left to find them. Nothing can make the deliberate or indiscriminate harming of children acceptable. There are an estimated 30,000 WCNSF in Gaza, they are not statistics. They are someone's whole world — until there is no one left.

Just a gentle reminder from Dr. Hanan Ashrawi of Palestine: "In Gaza, Israel continues to shell Palestinians, killing up to a dozen daily, while Palestinian civil defence employees continue to dig up hundreds of remains of the ten thousand that Israel massacred in their own homes & neighborhoods. In the West Bank, Israeli settler thugs continue their daily raids & pogroms armed, funded & aided by the Israeli government & army. They uproot hundreds of thousands of mainly olive trees & steal the olives that Palestinian farmers picked. In the meantime, the Israeli government brazenly announces the stealing of more land & the building of more settlements while re-engineering the demographic reality & courses of movement in the West Bank to facilitate its fragmentation & annexation"

New Google Maps images reveal massive scale of devastation in Gaza: Satellite imagery shows further destruction of homes, businesses and places of worship since fragile ceasefire

"Perhaps I should be terrified by this announcement from a man who, for all his sins, knows a thing or two about technology. But I’m sick of hearing about the hypothetical dangers of AI when the technology is being used to kill people today. Gates may not be directly involved in Microsoft any more, but, rather than making prophecies about the future, I’d love to hear what he thinks about the company’s role in the AI-enabled destruction of Gaza." Arwa Mahdawi

"For me, as a Palestinian from Gaza who survived the ongoing genocide, when I look at the rubble of homes on Google Maps, I am not seeing only the remains of buildings, which from far look like a decaying wall. I am seeing the remains of people whose bodies were crushed beneath walls and ceilings they painted with their own hands. I see children’s toys. Books. Backpacks. Coloring pencils. An unfinished meal. Blankets. Shoes. Photo frames of grandparents whose grandchildren never met. An old key to a home in Yaffa or Haifa. I can also hear the last words of a broadcaster on the radio before the news occurred, before the radio was broken and the family crushed..." Mosab Abu Toha

They see them, then kill them: Israeli quadcopters track, deliberately target civilians in Gaza

In the Fields- Jerusalem 2026 water colors painting by Rawan Anani

As Israeli bulldozers destroy more homes, uproot more trees, tear through orchards and fields, and alter a landscape that Palestinians have tended for generations, I find myself thinking about another kind of plow. A wooden one. And the hands of the man who held it. I think of my uncle—my aunt’s husband—Abu Ali, and of happier, simpler times....

Gaza students return to makeshift schools after three years of genocide. Hundreds of thousands of children attend classes in tents as destroyed schools, overcrowding and shortages continue to disrupt education across the strip

Israel and the US have battered the international legal order. The impunity must stop

Nearly 400 members of UNRWA 's workforce in Gaza have been killed, with hundreds of premises in the Occupied Palestinian Territory made “inaccessible, severely damaged, or utterly destroyed” - Antonio Guterres warned at the UN General Assembly

‘They uprooted it all’: Israel bulldozes Palestinian-owned olive groves. Israeli bulldozers uprooted olive groves near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank weeks before the annual harvest.

Humanity in war: A global initiative for humanitarian law - As of mid-August 2026, 118 states have officially joined the Global IHL Initiative, launched by Brazil, China, France, Jordan, Kazakhstan and South Africa, together with the ICRC.

Experts say that after nearly three years of war, the environmental consequences of the destruction in Gaza are now spilling back into Israel.

At 76, Mansoura’s most precious possession is the key to her former home... ‘This is where I live now, the back of a truck’: a day in the life of a grandmother in Gaza

25 Million Stitches - One Stitch, One Refugee; Raising awareness of the global refugee crisis through Art

‘I’m afraid they’ll bomb the cafe where I work, or bomb me’: a day in the life of a 12-year-old boy in Gaza, Palestine

Jordan's king tells The United Nations that Israel's 'expansionist appetite' is a regional threat.... “This sense of impunity has reached terrifying levels,” he continued, warning that “no one in this assembly should assume [Israel's] ambitions stop at Palestine.”

"What we know is that, because Israel controls about seventy per cent of the territory of the Gaza Strip, some two million people are squeezed into thirty per cent of the territory. We know that eighty-one per cent of the Gaza Strip is damaged or destroyed, and more than three hundred thousand housing units were completely destroyed during the war, in addition to schools and other infrastructure, like clinics, hospitals, and mosques."

"Bustan Al-Ard" (Garden of the Earth) 2020 painting by Palestinian artist Fayez Elhasani.

Painting "Playing for Return" (2020) from the "The Flute and the Goldfinch" series - by Palestinian artist Fayez Al-Hasani

New report shows key indicators of Earth’s health are ‘outside the safe operating space’ as climate disaster looms

Let’s give peace a chance "First, pay attention to conflicts, even those that aren’t in the headlines. You can ask your elected officials to make global peacemaking a priority. Ask them to fund peacemaking initiatives rather than fuel arms races." William Lambers in The Patriot News

“Achieving peace is not passive or automatic. It’s an active and deliberate choice to invest in a better future.” United Nations 2026

For more than 80 years, UNESCO has worked to build peace through education, culture, freedom of expression and dialogue. Peace is never secured once and for all. It is built through institutions, relationships and daily choices.

Local churches call it genocide — and say silence is no longer an option | Joyce M. Davis in The Patriot News

"For so long I wondered why I survived while family and friends were killed. Now I know the only difference between life and death may have been an AI algorithm..."

The Guardian view on NAZA’s persecuted directors: journalism is not treason. Politicians who threaten filmmakers rather than investigate alleged military crimes expose not strength but a leadership frightened of the evidence

“It’s good to criticise governments for violating children’s rights. It’s something that everyone should be doing. Because we’re the grownups of this world and we’re meant to keep children safe. And the fact that we are not is horrific” Ms Rachel, the queen of toddler TV- Her preschool fanbase are, of course, unaware of any of her politics, and they cannot get enough of her.

DEAR AMERICA

Dear America, I know for a fact that there are good and decent Jewish people on planet earth, there are good and decent Jewish groups on earth... but Israel is bad.

How much pollution and corruption has been generated by the manufacturing, transport, and deployment of bombs?

WE THE PEOPLE are being forced to fund weapons, escalating war, hate, and hypocrisy everywhere.

ICE and Israel should both be de-funded and de-fanged.

Jobs created by the weapons industry bring temporary economic relief to some- while inflicting immense pain and suffering on many many many more.

Pushing all commerce online to "Save A Tree" ends up decimating numerous forests and fields for energy and water hungry Data Centers. CEOs and our elected leaders take huge profits while taxpayers are left with escalating losses, including the surging loss of land and water for hyperscale Data Centers.

Anti-immigrant legislation and excessive funding for ICE are more about protecting wealthy people and corporations, who can hire illegals knowing that the workers and their families will be too afraid to complain about dangerous working conditions, low pay, long hours, and slum landlord housing.

You can't win a modern war. You can destroy homes & families, you can usurp land & resources from the rightful owners, and you can undermine & destroy a free press and the fourth estate- but people worldwide have memories, as well as a sense of right and wrong that cannot be bombed into oblivion.

STOP THE BOMBS and the bigotry, and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stop accepting bribes & propaganda & bad advice from a very foreign country that seeks to destroy support for UNIVERSAL human rights and the rule of fair and just laws.

Along the way we learned that slavery is wrong. We learned that domestic violence is wrong. We learned that racist hate is wrong. SO WHY are we funding Israel and why are we bombing Iran for Israel!!!

Violence is a problem- not the answer

The power of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the power of ideas to change the world. It inspires us to continue working to ensure all people can gain freedom, equality and dignity...

In 1945, 50 nations came together in San Francisco to create a new organization for peace, prosperity & human rights- the United Nations

"The United Nations is the only place on Earth where all the world's nations come together to discuss common problems and find shared solutions that benefit all of humanity. This intergovernmental organization born out of the ashes of the Second World War remains indispensable to the pursuit of world peace, justice, equality and sustainable development" https://www.un.org/en/

The right of refugees to return to homes and lands they were expelled from is an individual right and cannot be unilaterally abrogated by third parties.  https://imeu.org/resources/resources/fact-sheet-palestinian-refugees-the-right-of-return-under-international-law/441

"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world..."   https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

The real refugee crisis is the failure to make peace. Refugees flee war, conflict and persecution. End the wars that force people to run for their lives

Genocide by Deprivation: How Israel keeps killing going in Gaza even without bombing

https://x.com/EuroMedHR/status/2107731782598787089/photo/1

 Euro-Med Monitor

@EuroMedHR

 

Genocide by Deprivation: Following the October 2025 ceasefire agreement, Israel has continued to employ quieter forms of genocide in #Gaza, forms that ensure that even when the bombing stops for a while, the killing continues in different ways

 

https://x.com/EuroMedHR/status/2107731782598787089

[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 here, there- and everywhere]