Wednesday, May 13, 2026

Children shot, stabbed and pepper-sprayed in occupied West Bank - United Nations news 12 May 2026 ... Israeli military operations and surging settler attacks in the occupied West Bank are killing and maiming a growing number of Palestinian children, while in Gaza tens of thousands with life-changing injuries lack access to treatment and rehabilitation, UN agencies warned on Tuesday.

By Dominika Tomaszewska-Mortimer in Geneva

12 May 2026 Peace and Security

“We're seeing attacks become increasingly coordinated,” UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) spokesperson James Elder told reporters in Geneva. “Documented incidents include children shot, stabbed, children beaten, and children pepper-sprayed.”

Some 70 children have been killed since January 2025 – at least one on average every week – and a further 850 injured, mostly by live ammunition, UNICEF says.

“All this comes amid historic levels of settler attacks,” Mr. Elder continued, explaining that March 2026 saw the highest number of Palestinians injured by settler attacks in the last 20 years.

Bludgeoned by attackers

Following a recent West Bank visit, the UNICEF spokesperson described meeting an eight-year-old who had been beaten with a piece of wood in a settler attack and hospitalized for head injuries.

The boy’s mother “had both her arms broken when she reached across to protect her four-month-old baby, putting therefore her arms between her baby and the attacker's club”.

Mr. Elder also highlighted the prevalence of education-related attacks, including the killing, injury and detention of students, as well as the demolition of schools.

“Schools, which should be places of safety and stability, are increasingly becoming places of panic,” he stressed.

“I walked with schoolchildren through the West Bank so as to try and help them avoid any attacks,” the UNICEF spokesperson recounted. “It's interesting to watch them walk...They don't walk in a straight line because they're constantly looking over their shoulder.”

“This is a walk to school. It's become a walk through fear,” he insisted.

Record detention numbers

Mr. Elder also reported on a “sharp rise” in the arrest and the detention of Palestinian children from the occupied territory, saying that 347 of them are being held in Israeli military detention “for alleged security-related offences” – the highest number in eight years.

“Alarmingly, more than half of these children, 180, are held under administrative detention and without the procedural safeguards, including detention without regular access to legal counsel and the right to challenge detention,” he said.

Gaza children killed and maimed

Meanwhile in Gaza, Mr. Elder said that since the October 2025 ceasefire, the UN has documented at least 229 children killed and 260 injured.

Dr Reinhilde Van de Weerdt, the UN World Health Organization (WHO)’s representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, told reporters that some 10,000 children in the devastated Strip live with life-changing injuries.

Overall, an estimated 43,000 of the 172,000 people injured in Gaza since October 2023 have sustained such trauma, affecting limbs, the spinal cord or brain. Almost 2,500 people have been injured since the October 2025 ceasefire.

“Of the 2,277 people that have had a limb amputated, less than 25 per cent have been fitted with permanent prosthetics,” Dr Van de Weerdt said, due to a severe shortage of prosthetics in Gaza.

Amputees denied prosthetic limbs

Speaking from Jerusalem, the WHO representative explained that no less than 18 shipments of rehabilitation-related supplies such as wheelchairs or prosthetic limbs are pending clearance to enter Gaza, with waiting times ranging from 130 days to more than a year.

In total, more than 50,000 conflict-related injuries require long-term rehabilitation; no rehabilitation facilities are functional in the enclave.

“Every day that rehabilitation services in Gaza remain under-resourced is a day that preventable disability risks become permanent,” she concluded.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/05/1167488

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

In #EastJerusalem, Palestinians issued demolition orders for structures built without rarely granted permits, are often forced to demolish their own homes to avoid the payment of additional fines and fees. Read more in our latest report: ochaopt.org/content/humani

Act now: Fund People, Not Bombs .... from Jewish Voice for Peace "This week, the Senate will vote on Joint Resolutions of Disapproval to block the sale of U.S. weapons to the Israeli military. In the coming months, it will also vote on a supplemental request by the Trump administration to fund the war on Iran that may be as large as $80-100 billion. Congress must vote to block these bombs to Israel and oppose any funding for the war. "

Jewish Voice for Peace

@jvplive

The Israeli military is expanding its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza under the cover of the so-called “ceasefire,” continuing to bomb families in tents, preventing the entrance of food, water and medicine, and violently displacing Palestinians into an ever smaller part of Gaza

Since the “ceasefire” began in October 2025, Israeli strikes have killed over 832 Palestinians in Gaza in daily shelling. In April alone, 111 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli military in Gaza. At the same time, the Israeli government continues to impose a deliberately engineered malnutrition crisis on Palestinians there.

Meanwhile the Trump administration, in coordination with the Israeli government, is consolidating the genocide through the Board of Peace. Despite the Israeli government failing to uphold key terms of the ceasefire, the Board of Peace is indicating that the Israeli military might resume its assaults on Gaza.

The Israeli government’s land theft is continuing. Although the “ceasefire” agreement required the Israeli military to withdraw behind an agreed-upon yellow line, last week it quietly released new maps showing Israeli forces controlling nearly two-thirds of Gaza, including a newly defined “orange line” that extends well beyond the boundaries set in the October “ceasefire.”

We see the hypocrisy clearly. The US-backed Board of Peace is allowing the genocide to continue, while the Israeli military appears to be exploring options to return to large-scale aerial bombardment, all with the aim of confining Palestinians to a fraction of their land inside of mass detention camps.

We reject this attempt at the complete erasure of Palestinian history and society.The genocide will persist as long as the US continues sending weapons and military aid to the Israeli government. Call on Congress and demand they fund people, not bombs.

https://x.com/jvplive/status/2054192440072921551

JVP Action, our 501c4 organization, is now doing business as JVP; JVP Lab, our 501c3 organization, continues separately and remains focused on our nonpartisan educational and cultural work.

Jewish Voice for Peace: FUND PEOPLE NOT BOMBS

https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/resource/fund-people-not-bombs/?source=social

Act now: Fund People, Not Bombs

As the U.S. and Israeli governments continue to wage an illegal and immoral war on Iran, the Israeli military is continuing its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, accelerating its ethnic cleansing of the occupied West Bank, and raining bombs on Lebanon.

Congress will soon have multiple opportunities to block weapons to Israel and to oppose any more funding for the war on Iran.

This week, the Senate will vote on Joint Resolutions of Disapproval to block the sale of U.S. weapons to the Israeli military. In the coming months, it will also vote on a supplemental request by the Trump administration to fund the war on Iran that may be as large as $80-100 billion. Congress must vote to block these bombs to Israel and oppose any funding for the war.

Tell Congress to FUND PEOPLE, NOT BOMBS.

Abby Martin exposes the media's role in normalizing genocide.... & The Empire Files premiered its highly anticipated film about the devastating impact our environment and planet are experiencing due to the United States military-industrial complex. Titled “Earth’s Greatest Enemy,”

The Empire Files’ Martin Is a Force To Be Reckoned With...

In a world in which media consolidation has given the average American fewer options to choose from, independent outlets have become all the more important. Without them, the narrative—which is already tilted in the neoliberal order’s favor—would be wildly skewed, giving the government and their corporate allies free rein to abuse an ostensibly democratic system.

Social media and the internet in general, for all its faults, have enabled independent reporters and activists to push back against conventional wisdom, whether they’re correcting the record about an ahistorical narrative or something timely and newsworthy that’s so obviously one-sided.

One such journalist is Abby Martin, the indefatigable, unrelenting, probing, and uncompromising reporter who for more than a decade has helped shine a light on the excesses and wide-ranging abuses of the U.S. empire.

While there are plenty of journalists similarly confronting American hegemony with thought-provoking coverage and analysis, Martin, to her immense credit, takes the time to visit regions systematically crushed by Western influence, such as Palestine and Venezuela.

To say Martin is fearless would be wholly insufficient. Her coverage of colonialism and criticisms of the United States has not won her any favors from a government that often dismisses alternative journalism as enemy-influenced propaganda.... READ MORE https://www.unftr.com/blog/progressive-spotlight-abby-martin

Ounka

@OunkaOnX

Abby Martin just exposed the media's role in normalizing genocide.

"Palestinians telling their own stories, dictating their own narratives for the first time. That's why we see the urgency to censor their voices and to consolidate these narratives on social media.

Israel's supporters often say Gaza's suffering is quote unquote tragic, but complex. Is complexity the new weapon of obfuscation in genocidal politics? This is the propaganda that's made it so overly difficult to talk about this issue, but it's the most simple issue in the world. It's the most clear cut issue in the world. It's an occupation that is illegal. And this occupying force is besieging a population in a ghetto and committing genocide against them.

In what reality would 2.3 million Jewish people be allowed to be caged inside of an Arab nation, half children, cut off their electricity and water and then indiscriminately bomb them for two years? In what reality in our world would that be allowed to be possible? It is only the nature of anti-Islam, anti-Muslim bigotry that has made this justified.

This is the most documented atrocity of our time. And it is a disgrace that it took a genocide for people to wake up"

https://x.com/i/status/2054417058868367414

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=abby+martin

Journalist Abby Martin’s new documentary takes aim at one of the world’s largest polluters: the U.S. military

On Oct. 18 [2025], The Empire Files premiered its highly anticipated film about the devastating impact our environment and planet are experiencing due to the United States military-industrial complex. Titled “Earth’s Greatest Enemy,” it follows journalists Abby Martin and Mike Prysner who spent years researching, studying, and traveling the world to report on the effects of the military's massive carbon footprint.... READ MORE https://thesouthlander.com/abby-martin-earths-greatest-enemy/

Monday, May 11, 2026

My Sister Najah (AY) By Mike Odetalla of Beit Hanina, Palestine

Mike Hanini Odetalla

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My Sister Najah (AY)

By Mike Odetalla

As a small boy growing up in our village of Beit Hanina, Palestine, I was a mischievous child with an insatiable curiosity and an irrepressible desire to roam. The hills that encircled our village were my kingdom, and escaping the watchful eyes of my family became an art form that might well have made Harry Houdini proud.

I was the youngest of five children—two brothers and two sisters, all much older than I was. The sibling closest to me in age was my sister Najah, who was six years older. Because of that, and perhaps because she was the most patient, my mother often entrusted her with the daunting task of watching over me whenever she left the house.

My mother’s instructions were simple and direct: “Keep an eye on your brother and make sure he does not leave.”

Najah did her best, but I was determined.

I would wait patiently for the slightest distraction. Then, with my homemade slingshot clutched in one hand, I would slip outside, climb over the patio, leap onto the wall that separated our home from the neighbors’, and within moments I would be scaling the steep hill that rose behind our house.

Those hills were my paradise.

There, I flew homemade kites that danced against the blue Palestinian sky. I explored ancient caves that seemed filled with mystery and adventure. I stalked birds with my slingshot, imagining myself a great hunter. To a little boy, those hills were not merely part of the landscape—they were a vast and wondrous playground where I experienced some of the happiest moments of my childhood.

Eventually, my mother would return home and ask Najah the inevitable question.

“Did your brother give you any trouble?”

Unaware that I had vanished, Najah would answer confidently, “No, he is inside playing.”

But when my mother stepped into the house and found it empty, she knew immediately where I had gone.

Turning to my sister, she would scold her and issue a command she had repeated many times before:

“Go find your brother. And don’t hit him.”

Both Najah and I understood that the first part of the order would be obeyed. The second part was open to interpretation.

As Najah climbed the steep hill, her anger grew with every step. Not because she hated me, but because she knew she was the one who had gotten into trouble for my latest escape. Along the way, she would inevitably break off a thin switch from a nearby tree, preparing to administer justice.

At the top of the hill, she always knew exactly where to find me.

She would seize me by the ear, scold me fiercely, and swat me on the backside with the switch, paying little heed to our mother’s instructions.

The truth is, her punishment never hurt very much.

But I had learned a strategy of my own.

The moment she struck me, I would let out dramatic wails and sobs as though I were suffering unbearable agony. My exaggerated cries had the desired effect. Panic would spread across Najah’s face as she imagined what our mother would do if she believed that real harm had come to me.

In desperation, she would quickly begin negotiations.

“Please stop crying,” she would plead. “I will buy you a piece of Silvana chocolate if you promise not to tell Mother.”

Silvana chocolate was among the finest bribes a child could receive.

The tears would dry almost instantly.

We would then descend the hill together, our secret safely preserved between us, both of us knowing that the same adventure would likely be repeated again before long.

As the years passed, childhood gave way to adulthood. Life carried us to different places and eventually to different states. Yet distance did nothing to diminish the bond between us. In many ways, it strengthened it.

Whenever we were together, our conversations inevitably drifted back to those magical days in Palestine—to the hills of Beit Hanina, my daring escapes, and the cherished Silvana chocolates that sealed our conspiracies.

We laughed until tears filled our eyes.

What I did not fully appreciate as a child was that behind Najah’s scolding, her switch, and even her exasperation, there was a love as steadfast as the hills themselves. She protected me, worried about me, and carried the burden of responsibility placed upon her by our mother.

She was not merely my older sister.

She was my guardian, my accomplice, my confidante, and eventually my closest friend.

Ten years ago, my beloved sister Najah returned to her Creator.

With her passing, I lost far more than a sister.

I lost a treasured part of my childhood, the keeper of our shared memories, and one of the people who loved me most deeply in this world.

Yet whenever I close my eyes, I can still see her climbing that hill, a switch in one hand and determination in her stride, pretending to be angry while her heart overflowed with love.

And somewhere in that memory, I am once again a little boy in Beit Hanina—running free beneath the Palestinian sky, with my sister always finding her way to me.

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10165969600031977&set=pcb.10165969600286977

Mike Hanini Odetalla with his beloved sister

FOUR YEAR AGO Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian Christian journalist, was assassinated by an Israeli sniper while covering the events taking place in the Jenin. Shireen was, and still is, an icon of the free Palestinian voice. May she rest in peace, and may her memory live forever. شيرين أبو عاقلة، شهيدة الحق.

☧ Milad ܝܠܕܐ

@PalCatholic

Four years ago, the martyr of truth Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian Christian journalist, was assassinated by an Israeli sniper while covering the events taking place in the Jenin.

Shireen was, and still is, an icon of the free Palestinian voice.

May she rest in peace, and may her memory live forever. شيرين أبو عاقلة، شهيدة الحق.

https://x.com/PalCatholic/status/2053746402149200161

Committee to Protect Journalists

@pressfreedom

Journalists are civilians under international humanitarian law.

Facilities and equipment utilized for reporting and disseminating news are also civilian structures.

They must be respected and protected.

Journalists are #NotATarget.

https://x.com/pressfreedom/status/2053460647375929597

Committee to Protect Journalists

@pressfreedom

Shireen Abu Akleh’s family issued a public statement affirming that they “will not stop” pursuing “justice for Shireen through all available avenues,” to mark the fourth anniversary of her murder.

The family is “deeply disappointed by the lack of meaningful action from both the current and previous United States administrations.”

CPJ and Abu Akleh’s family demand the FBI provide transparency into its stalled investigation and bring those responsible to justice.

Read the statement: cpj.org/?p=587113

#JusticeForShireen

A vigil organized for slain Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh outside the Washington, D.C., offices of Al Jazeera English on August 18, 2022. (Photo: Chris Sheridan/Al Jazeera English)

May 7, 2026

To mark the upcoming fourth anniversary of the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, on May 11, 2026, the Abu Akleh family issued a public statement affirming that they “will not stop” pursuing “justice for Shireen through all available avenues.”

Abu Akleh was murdered while covering an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) operation in the West Bank town of Jenin on May 11, 2022, despite wearing a clearly marked “Press” vest. Her killing is part of a wider pattern of journalist deaths by Israeli military fire in which no one has been held accountable.

Read the statement below:

Four years have passed since the Israeli killing of our beloved Shireen Abu Akleh, a dedicated journalist, a fearless truth-teller, and a voice for the voiceless. Yet, despite the passage of time, justice remains elusive.

Shireen was a Palestinian-American journalist who was deliberately targeted by an Israeli sniper while carrying out her professional duty, wearing a press vest, clearly identified as a journalist. Her killing was not only a tragic loss for our family, but also a grave attack on press freedom and the fundamental right to report the truth.

Over the past four years, we have witnessed a persistent failure to hold those responsible accountable. No one has been brought to justice, neither for her killing nor for the attack on her funeral. This ongoing impunity sends a dangerous message that journalists can be targeted without consequence.

We have seen that pattern repeated in Gaza and Lebanon for more than two years now. At least 260 journalists and media workers have been killed by Israel’s military since 2023.

We are deeply disappointed by the lack of meaningful action from both the current and previous United States administrations. Shireen was a U.S. citizen and the government has so far failed to act on behalf of its own citizens. That status should have triggered a clear, forceful obligation from the U.S. government to pursue accountability with the same urgency it would for any American killed abroad. The lack of progress in the FBI investigation into Shireen’s killing further demonstrates the government’s failure to deliver justice.

Despite repeated calls for accountability and transparency, concrete measures have not been taken to ensure justice for Shireen. This lack of support has only compounded our pain and strengthened the culture of impunity.

Accountability is not only about justice for Shireen; it is about protecting journalists everywhere. Without accountability, the targeting of journalists will continue, and the truth itself will remain under threat.

As a family, we reaffirm today what we have said from the very beginning: “we will not stop”. We will continue to pursue justice for Shireen through all available avenues, until those responsible are held accountable.

Shireen’s voice echoes through us as we resolve, again, to remember and carry forth her spirit and legacy, and to make our ceaseless demand for justice.

Justice for Shireen is justice for all.

https://cpj.org/2026/05/cpj-shares-statement-from-shireen-abu-aklehs-family-4-years-after-journalists-murder/

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