In anticipation of an Israeli ground invasion, thousands of Gazans are now fleeing the northern half of the tiny enclave, already devastated by sixteen years of brutal siege.

Destruction in Gaza

Israel’s imminent invasion comes in response to last weekend’s horrific assault on Israeli communities east of its Gaza ghetto. In the wake of that attack, the Israeli military ordered Gaza’s 1.1 million northern residents to get out. Tens of thousands are now trying to do so.

Thirteen hundred Israelis perished in last weekend’s terrorist attack by Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants. Most were civilians. A hundred and fifty were taken hostage. Three hundred soldiers were killed, including high-ranking officers.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, over 2300 Gazans have been killed by retaliatory Israeli strikes, including 700 children. Seventy died in an airstrike on Friday, including children, in the course of heeding Israeli evacuation demands. Ten thousand have been wounded.

In a news release this past Friday, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons declared that Israel’s evacuation order — after cutting off food, water, electricity and fuel to Gaza, then dropping 6000 bombs, some of them reportedly white phosphorus munitions – constitutes ‘forcible transfer’ and ‘collective punishment,’ crimes against humanity under international law.

Nothing new for the people of Gaza. Three-quarters of the enclave’s 2.3 million residents are already refugees, or the descendants of refugees driven from their villages by Zionist militias between late 1947 and 1949. The lovely Israeli communities brutally invaded by Palestinian militants last weekend lie on or near the ruins of those villages — an irony mainstream media has ignored.

The GPM spoke about the unfolding situation in Gaza and Israel with Michael Lynk. Lynk is Associate Professor of law at Western University, in London, Ontario, specializing in labour, human rights, disability, constitutional and administrative law. Between 2016 and 2022, Lynk served as ‘UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967’.

Listen to our conversation in today’s podcast. Click on the play button on top, or go here.

Listen to our complete conversation here:

In search of ways to describe the world today, songwriters and poets are never at a loss for words. It’s a crazy mixed up world … Well fed masters reap the harvests of the polluted seeds they’ve sown … The gambling man is rich and the working man is poor … Everybody’s crying ‘peace on Earth’ — just as soon as we win this war.

In search of a scholarly explanation for the world’s woes, I spoke with Radhika Desai. Desai is Professor in the Department of Political Studies and Director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group at the University of Manitoba, Canada, and Convenor of the International Manifesto Group.

Listen to our conversation in today’s podcast. Click on the play button on top, or go here.

Listen to our complete conversation with Radhika Desai here:

Thanks to Dan Weisenberger for his wonderful guitar instrumentals.