Dire warnings of famine in Gaza amid Israeli aid blockade
Israeli strikes killed at least 21 people on Tuesday night, with local health officials reporting that more than half of the casualties were women and children.
Gaza faces a severe risk of famine, with aid groups blaming Israeli restrictions and violence at distribution points, while Israel accuses the groups of echoing Hamas propaganda and says it lets enough aid in.
Ceasefire negotiations are gaining momentum, with a Trump administration envoy set to meet a senior Israeli official to discuss a potential 60-day truce.
Hamas demands a lasting ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal for hostage release, while Israel insists on recovering all captives and defeating Hamas.
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Times
26 minutes ago
- Times
Pro-Palestinian groups announce ‘siege' on Labour MPs
Pro-Palestinian groups are planning to besiege Labour MPs, councillors and staff on Monday to force the party to take an even tougher stance against Israel. The Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) has sent an eight-page booklet of instructions to 'solidarity groups' across the UK to take part in a national day of action against the Labour Party for its 'partnership in Israel's genocide on Gaza'. The document, titled 'Siege on Labour', sets out tactics for how supporters should target the offices of their local MPs, their regional Labour Party headquarters and Labour councillors. It says that now is an 'opportune moment' to 'exacerbate the political crisis in the party' after Sir Keir Starmer's announcement that Britain will recognise a Palestinian state. The document, seen by The Times, dismisses that announcement as 'meagre', arguing that recognition will be only of 'the puppet regime of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank'. In a set of four demands, it says the government must go significantly further. It also demands that David Lammy, the foreign secretary, be immediately sacked and tried as a war criminal atthe Hague. The document vows to make 'Zionism a political crisis for the political class in this country' and calls on its supporters to 'identify and target their weakest pressure points'. Labour MPs, peers and groups campaigning against antisemitism have condemned the plans as a sinister attempt to intimidate elected politicians and their staff, and called on the police to protect them. Luke Akehurst, the Labour MP for North Durham, said: 'These intimidation tactics targeting our offices and staff are completely unacceptable. Harassment by threatening a 'siege' towards elected representatives and their hardworking caseworkers — who serve all constituents in their public service — crosses every line of democratic debate. 'Threats like these disrupt democracy by preventing constituents from being able to safely access their MP — which is everybody's right. 'This bullying does nothing to help Palestinians or Israelis and only serves to undermine the constructive dialogue needed to advance peace. MPs will not be intimidated into abandoning our principled approach to this complex issue.' The PYM is an international group of pro-Palestinian young people who played a key part in the campus protests that targeted universities across the United States last year. The Anti-Defamation League, an international non-governmental organisation founded to combat antisemitism, has warned that the PYM has expressed support for terrorism, including the Hamas-led attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023. Hamas is a proscribed terror group in the UK. Support for it is illegal and carried a maximum of punishment of 14 years in prison. PYM's members have praised as 'martyrs' those who have died in the conflict with Israel. The PYM said it was 'time for us to escalate' to take advantage of public opinion and the establishment of Jeremy Corbyn's new left-wing party. It said: 'The Labour Party is under immense pressure from the public, the media and from their voting base (with the announcement of the new left party) to take a stronger stance on Gaza.' It set out four demands for its 'siege' on Labour politicians and officials, including for Lammy to be tried. Its other demands are a full two-way arms embargo on Israel; an end to RAF reconnaissance surveillance flights over Gaza, which the it claims are 'gathering intelligence for the Israeli Defence Forces'; and for the British government to impose more sanctions and pressure other United Nations countries to do the same to force Israel to allow aid into Gaza. The document says: 'If the Labour Party is committed to facilitating the siege on Gaza, we, the people, declare a Siege On Labour.' The 'toolkit' includes tactics on staging sit-ins, pickets and rallies, and advice on how to 'mobilise widely'. It also suggests 'key messages' to print on posters for bus shelters and buildings and to post on social media. It advises supporters on how to behave after being arrested, instructing them to ignore police officers because 'there is no such thing as a friendly chat with a police officer'. It adds: 'Targeting Labour offices across the country allows us to take mass, co-ordinated, national action against a common target that is directly complicit in the genocide and wields power to grant our demands.' • Undercover with Palestine Action: 'Damage as much as possible' Alex Hearn, the co-director of Labour Against Antisemitism, said the PYM's demands showed that the government could never satisfy the more extreme pro-Palestinian groups. 'This sinister call to escalate and lay siege to Labour Party offices shows that despite the drive to recognise a Palestinian state, there is no pleasing extremists,' he said. 'Dismissing the Palestinian Authority as a puppet regime reveals the pro-Hamas leanings of this group, whose key messages amount to nothing more than disinformation. The danger of appeasement has been exposed.' Lord Walney, a cross-bench peer and the government's former adviser on political violence, said: 'Calling for a 'siege' is designed to intimidate MPs and is totally unacceptable. The threat level facing political representatives has increased greatly since the Gaza conflict began … the fact that the material refers to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank as a puppet state suggests sympathy with Hamas's objectives or foreign state influence. 'I hope my colleagues will be vigilant and police forces will appropriately enforce the boundary between legitimate protest and criminal intimidation.' The PYM also accuses the Labour Party and the government of being 'complicit in the massacres in Gaza' through trade, intelligence-sharing and diplomatic relationship with Israel. The PYM has been approached for comment. The Labour Party declined to comment and said it would not share any information on security advice given to MPs and staff.
Reuters
26 minutes ago
- Reuters
France starts airdrops of humanitarian aid into Gaza
PARIS, Aug 1 (Reuters) - France on Friday started to air-drop 40 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza as it urged Israel to allow full access to the area which it said was slipping into famine. "Faced with the absolute urgency, we have just conducted a food airdrop operation in Gaza. Thank you to our Jordanian, Emirati, and German partners for their support, and to our military personnel for their commitment," President Emmanuel Macron wrote on social media platform X. "Airdrops are not enough. Israel must open full humanitarian access to address the risk of famine," he added. Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot earlier in the day had told broadcaster franceinfo that France was sending four flights carrying 10 tonnes of humanitarian aid each to Gaza from Jordan. A global hunger monitor said on Tuesday that a famine scenario was unfolding in the Gaza Strip, with malnutrition soaring, children under five dying of hunger-related causes and humanitarian access severely restricted. France participated six times in the European humanitarian airlift set up in mid-October 2023 by the European Union to Jordan and Egypt to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, Macron's office said. The European airlift enabled the organisation of more than 60 flights carrying over 3,350 tons of humanitarian cargo, with most of the donations in-kind transiting through Egypt and Jordan, according to Macron's office. Part of this aid has still not entered Gaza due to a lack of agreement from the Israeli authorities, the president's office said.
The Guardian
26 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Why the US is burning $10m worth of birth control
There are few better metaphors for the receding status of American women than one offered up by the Trump administration at a medical waste disposal facility outside Paris this week: rather than distribute nearly $10m worth of birth control, which had been purchased by USAID and was destined to be given to women in low-income countries, primarily in Africa, the Americans decided to burn it. The incinerated contraceptives included 900,000 birth control implants, 2m doses of injectable long-acting birth control, 2m packs of contraceptive pills, and 50,000 IUDs. The medicine is just the latest in the far-reaching fallout from cuts made by the so-called 'department of government efficiency,' or Doge, a project in which Elon Musk and a group of his very young, overwhelmingly male acolytes unilaterally slashed congressionally appropriated funding to government programs they did not like. The cuts have been devastating for non-profits that work to improve women's health and safety worldwide. Sarah Shaw, an associate director at the global family planning group MSI Reproductive Choices, says that the cuts will put women at risk as they strain their health with unplanned pregnancies and seek out illegal abortions; other women who are denied access to birth control will lose out on the opportunities for education, professional development or remunerative work that can help them escape abuse, rise out of poverty, pursue their talents and ambitions and better provide for the children they already have. When MSI attempted to buy the contraceptives, the administration would only accept full price, which the organization couldn't afford, she said. Several non-profits, including MSI, had offered to pay to ship and repackage the supplies, according to another representative. But the Trump administration refused, partially due to federal rules the prohibit the US from providing such goods to groups that perform, provide referrals for or offer education about abortions. In addition to the cost of purchasing the contraceptives, American taxpayers will now be on the hook for about $167,000 for the cost of burning them. It's just the latest in a series of signs that the Trump administration is turning against the provision of birth control, particularly the safe, effective and woman-controlled hormonal methods that have been a cornerstone of healthcare policy for decades and which were a precondition of women's advancement in work and education over the past 60 years. In April, the Trump administration abruptly announced that it was suspending a large swath of the domestic service grants distributed under Title X, the program meant to help low income Americans access birth control, STD treatment and other sexual and reproductive healthcare. Of the 86 Title X grants awarded for fiscal year 2024, nearly 25% were 'temporarily withheld', mostly based on highly suspect allegations that the grant-receiving institutions – including 13 Planned Parenthood affiliates – had failed to comply with Trump executive orders banning things like DEI programs. Eight states now receive zero Title X dollars: California, Hawaii, Maine, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee and Utah. Alaska, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania have also lost most of their contraception funding. The domestic cuts – along with the exclusion of Planned Parenthood clinics from Medicaid reimbursements – mean that American women, too, are now facing dramatically greater obstacles to accessing birth control. Clinics that relied on Title X funding are now set to close: 11 Planned Parenthood clinics already have, including in Democratically controlled states like California. Planned Parenthood says that cumulatively, the cuts could lead the organization to close about 200 of its 600 clinics nationwide – a devastating cut to abortion providers in particular that will make a wide range of reproductive services inaccessible to women regardless of where they live. But the Trump administration is not merely forcing these programs for women's health and dignity go up in flames. They are redirecting them to better suit their preferred cultural outcome: one in which women's lives, ambitions and talents are all subordinated to the task of childbearing. The New York Times reported last month that the White House is redirecting Title X funds that once went to birth control to instead fund an 'infertility training center' and programs in something called 'restorative reproductive medicine'. If Title X's original aim was to help American women control their fertility so as to build healthier families and to enable them to pursue other aims – like learning or work – in the new administration's version, the program exists mainly to encourage women to have more children. But the switch should not be seen as a genuine investment in infertility, an often devastating condition with which many Americans struggle. Because the new Title X priorities do not, by and large, direct more money to IVF. Trump promised, on the campaign trail, to make IVF free. But the procedure, which has opponents on the Christian right, is not included in the administration's new priority of 'restorative' reproductive medicine, a practice that avoids controversial fertility treatments; instead, doctors seek the 'root cause' of a woman's infertility, which may involve telling them they can conceive with proper diet and exercise. In government, money allocation is a statement of values. With its dramatic cuts to contraceptive funding at home and abroad, the Trump administration is making its values clear. It does not value women's health; it does not value their dignity, their control over their own lives, their aspirations, their earning potential, their desire to be freed from ignorance, or poverty, or the abuse they suffer under the hands of husbands and fathers. It does not value their ability to control their own bodies, and by extension, it does not value their ability to enter the public sphere. It does not value their dreams, their gifts, their hard work or invention or aspiration to anything other than making babies. American women, like women everywhere, depend on birth control to live lives of freedom and to pursue their dreams. But because of the Trump administration, those dreams are going up in smoke. Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
