Red Eye On the News . . . November 1, 2023

U.S. bombs dropped by Israeli jets rain down on children
France24, 10/15–Israel's strikes on the Gaza Strip have led to an "unprecedented human catastrophe" in the Palestinian territory, the United Nations agency supporting Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said Sunday. "Not one drop of water, not one grain of wheat, not a litre of fuel has been allowed in the Gaza Strip for the last eight days," Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of UNRWA, told journalists. More than 1,000 people are missing under the rubble of buildings that were destroyed by Israeli air strikes in Gaza, the Palestinian civil defence team said on Sunday. Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip have killed at least 2,450 people since Hamas's bloody attack on southern Israel last week, the Gaza health ministry said Sunday.

Palestinian medical workers experience raw lessons of capitalism
Al Jazeera, 10/14–Dr Nisreen al-Shorafa has gotten barely 10 hours of sleep over the past seven days. The 30-year-old surgeon runs the emergency room at Al Awda Hospital in Tal al-Zaatar, between Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun, and she cannot recall a time when she has worked harder. Dedicated completely to helping save the people who survived the relentless Israeli bombing, she has pushed herself beyond what she thought she could do. On Saturday, the hospital started receiving warning calls from the Israeli military. The message was stark and ominous: The hospital had to be evacuated because it would be bombed. “I’ll bet they [Israeli army] are proud of themselves, threatening to bomb the hospital,” said resident nurse Asala al-Batsh. “They insisted that everyone and everything move. All hospital personnel, all the patients, including those in the ICU, and the bodies in the morgue.” After trying to explain to the Israeli army on the phone the inhumanity and impossibility of moving everyone out of the hospital and southward, the team gave up. “We decided not to leave,” al-Shorafa said…The Palestinian Ministry of Health has urged the international community to intervene several times, but no response or assistance has come.

Capitalism climate crisis worsens
The Guardian, 10/5–At least 43 million child displacements were linked to extreme weather events over the past six years, the equivalent of 20,000 children being forced to abandon their homes and school every single day, new research has found. Floods and storms accounted for 95% of recorded child displacement between 2016 and 2021, according to the first-of-its-kind analysis by Unicef…The rest – more than 2 million children – were displaced by wildfires and drought. In absolute terms, China, the Philippines and India dominate with 22.3 million child displacements – just over half the total number – which the report attributes to the countries’ geographical exposure to extreme weather such as monsoon rains and cyclones and large child populations, as well as increased pre-emptive evacuations. In August 2022, unprecedented floods submerged a third of Pakistan underwater, causing billions of dollars in damage and displacing around 3.6 million children – many of whom went months without access to proper shelter, safe drinking water and sanitation.

Liberals remind us that they attack immigrants, too
Gothamist, 10/1– A top advisor to Mayor Eric Adams on Sunday called for the federal government to “close the borders” in order to prevent more migrants from coming to New York City. “We need the federal government, the Congress members, the Senate and the president to do its job: close the borders,” Adams’ senior advisor Ingrid Lewis-Martin said during an interview on PIX11. “And until you close the borders, you need to come up with a full-on decompression strategy where you can take all of our migrants and move them throughout all of our 50 states.” Lewis-Martin’s comments marked an escalation in the rhetoric from the mayor’s office surrounding the city's migrant crisis…Lewis-Martin said more than 61,000 migrants remain under the city’s care. The call to “close the borders” resembled comments made by several right-wing members of Congress who threatened to shut down the federal government if strict border policies were not included in a new funding bill.