Saturday, 1 February 2025

 

What a War Requires

Yes, It's About Resources

Dear Readers, Dear Extended Family

I am grateful that this Substack — which, if you read the comment section, is also one that is a home or meeting-place for many of the most interesting and idealistic people on the Internet — has 83,500 plus subscribers. That is almost the subscriber base of The New Republic. It had 737,000 plus views in the last 30 days — 249,000 plus more than the month prior. That is more views than the number of the audience of CNN.

Every reader is equally precious to me. But you all count on me — you tell me this — to do all I can to affect national and even global outcomes. From the messages I receive, leaders from all walks of life do indeed read this Substack — and so it is having some impact on the public discussion and perhaps even on public outcomes. 

But this Substack has only a few more than 4000 paid subscribers.

Why does this matter, more than to my personal finances?

As you know, I believe — I think at this point it is incontrovertible - that a war is being waged upon us, one that will soon become a “hot war.” My husband Brian O’Shea, who cohosts the podcast “Unrestricted Invasion” with JJ Carrell, is documenting the positioning of military-age or gangland-age illegal-immigrant young men, in barracks-type situations in strategic points around the country. This week he went undercover to a budget hotel in Massachusetts, where security and the hotel staff sought to prevent him from filming what was happening inside in relation to scores of illegal incomers. He was subsequently followed by a maroon sedan that pulled up right as he was leaving the hotel; the drivers proceeded to wait til he was his car, and then followed him across three different exits til he shook them off. 

Brian was also confronted by security, and then followed, earlier this year, when he went to document a facility in Brooklyn, Floyd Bennett Field, an area with over 1000 flat acres of land, where illegal immigrants are being housed in military-style facilities. Illegal immigrants are being housed at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, a sensitive strategic location for a possible attack on America, if there ever was one. Illegal immigrants, disproportionately fighting-age men, are being housed for months in hotels in midtown Manhattan, all basic expenses paid and with cleaning services

As they say, wake up and smell the coffee. This is not a domestic policy issue any longer — ie, what are these illegal immigrants getting that your legal immigrant parents or grandparents, your enslaved great-grandparents, did not get? To anyone who has ever been in a combat area, this set of situations depicts what is obviously a military or terrorist set of staging areas. Or, to be conservative, this set of landscapes has all the hallmarks of depicting military or terrorist staging areas. 

Meanwhile, the whips are being brought down on the shoulders of the last standing dissidents in the United States and globally. A Canadian court ordered psychologist and commentator Jordan Peterson to be forced into a re-education program. Literal Marxism. Ethical physician Dr Kulvinder Kaur Gill, who was critical of the mRNA injections, has been hit with a $1 million dollar fine after her libel suit in defense of her reputation, failed. She was forced to mobilize an online donations campaign in order not to lose her house. Under the guise of a credit review, as he points out, researcher and inventor of the mRNA vaccine Dr Robert Malone has been hit with a letter from payment processor Stripe, demanding his bank records. He was told that it will cost $100,000 to fight it. Other dissident voices on Substack, including conservative voices, are being hit in similar ways. 

Governor Hochul declared that National Guard would take on some civil policing roles in New York State, and she is appealing the court decision that prevented her from opening quarantine camps that could detain New Yorkers without trial or even without infection, indefinitely. If she prevails, and if the WHO treaty that declares WHO “pandemic” requirements superior to national or state law prevails in May, the National Guard (or the WHO’s own mercenaries) could show up at any New Yorker’s house, and this is the state where I live; and compel him or her to be transported to a detention facility, and that would be that. 

Why am I presenting all of this to you? Because things are getting very scary and we need your help.

This Substack does not just provide personal income for me. It is the source of funds to meet costs for the independent news and opinion site DailyClout.io and for BillCam when our demands exceed our resources. 

Gloria Steinem says to look at your checkbook to see if you are walking your talk morally, and my checkbook speaks volumes. I had hoped by the age of 61, after decades of training for my profession, honing my craft as a writer, and fighting for humanity and for humane values, that I would be able to look at my checkbook records and see mostly expenses for travel, with other records perhaps of dinners in some lovely restaurants, an occasional nice dress or two, and funds devoted to caring for elderly relatives. 

But my primary expenditure is not for any of that. Most of the money I earn goes to scrambling to meet the extraordinary and unpredictable costs that running a war from the trenches of DailyClout can involve, and many of these high costs arise unpredictably. Remember, too, that those who use their own resources to oppose and harass us and me personally, include one of the biggest companies in the world, not to mention the United States government, including its justice arm — and state governments. One of our legal letters is against the Justice Department. One of our lawsuits is against the Biden administration, including the CDC.

Though we are doing impressively well as a startup helmed by three people, and punching far above our weight, we have, as you know, bills that can top six figures for the various lawsuits we are waging on your behalf. 

To keep a dissident news startup — one that also crafts draft bills and passes them, as nonprofits cannot do, which activity involves traversing a minefield of FEC restrictions — so scrupulously kosher that it can’t be brought down by government tripwires, is itself a legal bill for tens of thousands.

Though we are a lean machine, our technical costs are substantial. Our API, the feed from which our legislative technology that lets you see, share and act on any bill, costs thousands of dollars per quarter. Our developers have created tools — the latest being the extraordinary game changer LegiSector, at https://www.legisector.com (due to suppression, you need to cut and paste the whole url in order to see it) — that sweep away all obfuscation from state and federal legislation, and allow you to pass, share or stop bills from the ease of your own desktop, or even from your handheld. This is also a tens of thousands of dollars a year commitment. As we push to launch this revolutionary tool, Google appears to be suppressing it so thoroughly that it is difficult for us to let the world know that everything has changed now, as interviewers who have covered this tool are telling me, when it comes to legislative transparency. We need a marketing campaign in the tens of thousands to break through this censorship by another one of the biggest companies on Earth. 

It is my sleepless nights, no one else’s, that are involved in trying to figure out how. 

Then there are the fights to protect the reputation that allows me to lead this company and its mission and tools, forward; I was forced to spend tens of thousands on a lawsuit against Twitter for suppressing my (accurate, important) warnings about harms to women from the mRNA injections. My co-plaintiff? President Donald Trump. (Sadly I do not have the resources for legal representation, that my co-plaintiff does.) 

The point of all of the above is that staying credible, meaning fighting the constant government- and nonprofit-sponsored attacks on the credibility of my and my company’s reputations; staying on the right side of all government regulations, so that no harm can come to me or the company; fighting in the courts so that a precedent can be set to protect all Americans from the government leaning on private companies to destroy them — fighting Google’s algorithms with creative workarounds; fighting laws that constantly seek to imprison or bankrupt us — all of this, at times, as you know because I have shared it with you before, can take a terrible financial and psychic/energetic toll. 

It is tempting to just walk away and, to paraphrase Voltaire, “cultivate my own garden.”

But to stay in these trenches and achieve it at all, all that so many of you tell me you are counting on, requires a robust and reliable stream of resources if we are to stay alive in this culture of lies and erasures. 

Think about the lives we have saved. Maybe yours or your loved ones. Think about whether anyone else’s technology lets you see and act on any state or Federal bill, or protect your investments; with both BillCam and LegiSector offering free searches. 

Think about whether anyone else is soliciting citizens’ input on draft model bills, hiring lawyers, drafting and passing them, in the way we do. Remember, nonprofits can give you a tax deduction, but they cannot lobby. They must stop short of actual political action with legislation and legislators. The fact that we aren’t a nonprofit allows us to lobby and draft and pass bills — a superpower — but makes it much harder for us to raise donation funding.

Think about this Substack, for that matter. Did my writing help to balance and reassure you in this nightmarish struggle? Did it inform you of important issues that could affect your family? Did you find community and spiritual strength here?

What would your world be like without my voice, or without DailyClout’s voice and tools and advocacy?

There would be a lot more darkness, and you and your family’s position and knowledge base would be weakened. I do not think that is too strong a statement. 

If you want these voices and institutions to keep fighting this war, mine but also others’, there is no alternative but to support them with, dare I say it, your actual money. 

I know that many people cannot afford $8 a month. But many of the 83,000 subscribers who are now free, could afford to upgrade to the status of paid subscriber. And the difference between 4 per cent of my readers being paid subscribers and eight per cent being paid subscribers, is the difference between a precarious and easily extinguished position on the battlefield, versus a more secure one that can continue winning victory after victory for you.

And I will tell you, speaking both as a writer and on behalf of a dissident company, without your financial support it is not only materially unsustainable to fight on, but emotionally unsustainable, as the battles grow more serious and more costly. Without your help, over time, the strain of trying to figure out, during many months, how to pay our lawyers, as well as our API invoices and our developers and our travel to statehouses to lobby for freedom for you, will simply become too great.

We need your help in spiritual and emotional as well as in material ways.

You should support us not as a charity but because our our approach works. Because of our draft Five Freedoms bill, which passed in 33 states in 2021, you do not have vaccine passports in the US, and kids went back to school earlier than they might have done. Our Election Integrity bill, which you all shared, has cosponsors in Wyoming, was introduced and defeated in Maine (but a successor has been tapped to re-introduce it in the Fall), and three other states, Michigan, Alabama and North Dakota, have citizens and legislators acting to push it forward. The Pfizer Papers comes out in May. The manuscript, which Amy Kelly and I edited, is 500 pages long. We edited 96 reports from the WarRoom/DailyClout Pfizer Documents Research Team, who in turn had reviewed 450,000 pages of internal Pfizer documents. They revealed the greatest crime against humanity in history in exhaustive detail, affecting people and governments worldwide. Their work is cited or used without citation by dozens of other freedom advocates, and legislators. And booster uptake is now down to 4%; Pfizer’s profits ground to pre-2016 levels. 

We saved, together, with your help, what may turn out to be millions of lives and countless unborn babies.

But to continue, I need your help; seriously; now just now but into the future.

If you can afford, it, and if the above is meaningful to you at all, do please upgrade your subscription from free to paid. 

The war is here, and you need warriors fighting for you, who are not barefoot in the snow, but who have warm clothing, and weapons, and ammunition.

 

GAZA: 10/7 like 9/11, Was it a False Flag?

VT's Claudio Resta Asks The Tough Question

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If 10/7 just like 9/11 had been a possible deceptive false flag operation this time orchestrated by Israel’s Deep State, it could have been very useful for the Israeli establishment, as well as for the US and UK to achieve various objectives of their international politics in the current foreign political situation.

Especially now that the war in Ukraine seems to be turning towards a defeat of the US, UK, and NATO coalition supporting Zelensky against Russia.

This Israeli possible false flag operation, obviously not recognized by all as such, could serve Israel to introduce the Police State, and the curfew, as well as to strengthen the Netanyahu government.

Furthermore, such a possible false flag could sabotage the peace between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and reverse Qatar’s policy, hospitable to terrorists/Palestinian patriots (a linguistic dilemma).

This possible false flag could be very useful for the Israeli establishment, the point of justifying possible new wars in the Middle East against Countries that are not friends of Israel, or more simply selective attacks against installations of such Countries.

To my eyes it is precisely the representation that the mainstream mass media give of the event that underlines the analogy with 9/11, obviously directed by those (Jews) who have control of the capital of these media, implicitly suggesting that this attack must necessarily be followed by retaliation of the type of the one that followed 9/11 pushes me to think about the false flag conspiracy to justify all the objectives described above, and let me repeat them again, because of their paramount importance:

  • to introduce the Police State and curfew in Israel
  • to strengthen the  Netanyahu government by transforming it into a dictatorship
  • to sabotage the peace between Saudi Arabia and Iran
  • to reverse Qatar’s politics, hospitable to terrorists/Palestinian patriots
  • to justify possible new wars in the Middle East against Countries that are not friends of Israel, or more simply selective attacks against installations of such Countries.

Welcome (back) to the time of hybrid warfare!

Where the real aggressor, not the apparent one, combining kinetic operations with subversive efforts, within an informal and undeclared war commitment, intends to avoid the attribution of responsibility and remain in the field of plausible deniability, masking his covert and deceptive identity…


VT Condemns the ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINIANS by USA/Israel

$280+ BILLION US TAXPAYER DOLLARS INVESTED since 1948 in US/Israeli Ethnic Cleansing and Occupation Operation
150B direct "aid" and $ 130B in "Offense" contracts
Source: Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C. and US Department of State.


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How to protect ourselves from Trump’s Palestine advocacy crackdown

Eli Gerzon  The Electronic Intifada Podcast  31 January 2025

From US President Donald Trump’s administration to Harvard University, powerful institutions are set to further oppress and criminalize those who speak out in support of Palestinian rights.

“ It’s going to start with international students. But it’s not going to stop there,” Abed Ayoub, national executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), told The Electronic Intifada Livestream this week.

In a week that witnessed the triumphant return of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to north Gaza, the program also included fascinating new footage of resistance operations in the previous 16 months.

We also discussed whether the Trump administration is likely to hold Israel to the ceasefire deal through all its phases – potentially leading to the lifting of Israel’s nearly two-decade siege on Gaza.

You can watch the whole program in the video above.

On Wednesday, the Trump administration issued an executive order setting the stage to deport foreign students engaged in Palestine activism – under the guise of combating anti-Semitism and cracking down on supporters of Hamas, which the US government deems a “terrorist” organization.

This followed an order Trump signed on 20 January which could deny US visas to those deemed to have the wrong ideology.

The latest order portends a broad, politically motivated crackdown. According to the White House, Trump’s order empowers the Department of Justice to “quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation and investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities.”

ADC is calling the measure “a serious and unconstitutional threat to the civil liberties of all Americans.”

Universities align with Trump

The attack is not just coming from the government, but also from universities buckling under pressure from Israel lobby groups, according to Ayoub.

Harvard University has just agreed to implement the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, a document concocted and promoted by Israel and its lobby that conflates criticism of Israel with anti-Jewish bigotry.

It has become a primary tool for suppressing and punishing Palestine solidarity activism under the pretext of fighting anti-Semitism.

Harvard recently settled two lawsuits on behalf of Zionist students who claimed that  campus Palestine solidarity protests during Israel’s genocide in Gaza were a source of so-called anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Know and protect your rights

Israel supporters are constantly looking for new ways to suppress supporters of Palestinian rights.

But these Trump executive orders will “add a criminal component,” Ayoub warned. The Trump administration will now try to use low-level offenses, such as trespassing or graffiti, as an excuse to deport international students essentially because of their political views and activism.

Ayoub shared practical advice for those now under more threat than before.

If the police or FBI come to your door, do not talk to them, Ayoub advised. Instead you can just ask them for their card and tell them you may be in touch through a lawyer.

”Don’t fall into the trap of thinking these guys are your friends,” Ayoub said.

ADC runs a 24-hour legal advice hotline that provides individuals with guidance on a broad range of issues including immigration changes, workplace discrimination and school-based harassment.

Individuals can also call it if they are approached by authorities and ADC will work to connect them with lawyers on call in their area.

Ayoub provided other practical advice in the interview, especially when entering the United States.

But Ayoub says students and others on visas should not necessarily withdraw from engagement.

For example, students on visas should avoid acts of civil disobedience that could get them arrested, such as blocking highways, but might continue to advocate for human rights in other ways.

“Be vigilant, not alarmist,” he said.

Palestinians return home as aid flows into Gaza

Since the start of the ceasefire, much more vital aid is reaching people in Gaza, Nora Barrows-Friedman reported in her news brief.  

The World Food Program says it delivered more food in the first four days of the ceasefire than it did in an average month previously since the start of the Israeli attack.

Amid joyous scenes and celebrations, half a million forcibly displaced Palestinians returned to their homes in the north after Israeli forces withdrew from much of the so-called Netzarim Corridor – a strip of land dividing the north of Gaza from the south – according to the  Gaza government media office.

In some areas the devastation is so extreme that landmarks have been destroyed and people cannot even find where their homes used to be.

In southern Lebanon, people are also returning home despite Israel not withdrawing from the area on Sunday as it agreed to under the ceasefire agreement with the Lebanese government and Hizballah.

Naim Qassim, the Lebanese resistance group’s secretary general, said that Israel has violated the ceasefire in Lebanon 1,350 times – while Hizballah has upheld it.

Meanwhile, Israel is increasing its aggression against Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank on the pretext of pursuing resistance fighters there.

A leader on the front lines

In his report this week, contributing editor Jon Elmer covered the second prisoner exchange mandated by the ceasefire deal, which took place on 25 January.

Nearly 200 Palestinian prisoners were released in exchange for four Israeli female soldiers who were handed over to Red Cross officials in Palestine Square, a symbolic location in the heart of Gaza City.

Videos of the exchange showed fighters with the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, carrying weapons captured from Israeli soldiers and other “symbols of [Israeli] defeat,” as Elmer explained.
Elmer also discussed the huge significance of the dismantling of the Netzarim Corridor, a large area of Gaza where Israel had appeared to be preparing for an indefinite military occupation.

Elmer analyzed footage from the last operations by resistance fighters before the ceasefire, as well as clips from a new Al Jazeera documentary featuring never-before-seen footage of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar on the front lines with Qassam fighters, until he was killed in October 2024.

As this week’s program was going out, breaking news came that Hamas had announced that Muhammad Deif, its legendary military commander in Gaza, long a target of Israel, had been killed during the genocide.

Elmer shared the story of the Gilboa Prison escape.

In 2021, six Palestinians managed to dig their way out of the prison using spoons.

They successfully traveled to Jenin but were eventually recaptured. One of the leaders of the escape, Zakaria Zubeidi, was just released as part of the prisoner exchange.

The Livestream hosts discussed the latest mixed messages from the Trump administration, and how long it will take to rebuild Gaza.

Ali Abunimah and associate editor Asa Winstanley highlighted indications that Washington is going to hold Israel to the ceasefire deal even while sending extremely pro-Israel public messaging.

The complex three-phase ceasefire deal gives Hamas maximum leverage, according to Elmer, making it difficult for Israel to only take what it wants while reneging on the elements most important to Palestinians.

“The way that Hamas has negotiated, the [Israeli] soldiers should not be returned if there is going to be a blockade,” on Gaza, Elmer observed.

You can watch the program on YouTubeRumble or Twitter/X, or you can listen to it on your preferred podcast platform.

Tamara Nassar produced and directed the program. Michael F. Brown contributed pre-production assistance and this writer contributed post-production assistance.

Past episodes of The Electronic Intifada Livestreamcan be viewed on our YouTube channel.

 

Swiss official who jailed journalist Ali Abunimah is fanatical pro-Israel activist

Mario Fehr, the Swiss security official who ordered the arrest of Ali Abunimah, is a rabidly pro-Zionist politician who falsely branded the Palestinian American journalist as “an Islamist Jew-hater.” In the past, Fehr has taken pride in banning Palestine solidarity demonstrations.

The Swiss official who ordered the arrest of renowned Palestinian-American journalist Ali Abunimah justified doing so on the false and defamatory basis that Abunimah is “an Islamist Jew-hater.” Mario Fehr, the head of Zurich’s Department of Security, made the bogus accusation in a recent comment to the Swiss publication NZZ, which also falsely characterized Abunimah as an “Islamist” and an “extremist.”

Swiss authorities detained Abunimah on Jan. 25, after they initially allowed him entry into Switzerland following an hour-long interrogation. Abunimah was deported on Jan. 27 after two nights, during which Swiss officials refused to tell him whether he was being charged with a crime. According to the Swiss newspaper NZZ, officers in Zurich successfully petitioned federal police for an arrest warrant after realizing Abunimah had travelled to the country in order to deliver a speech at an event organized by the Zurich Palestine Committee. Fehr explained the arrest by stating, in reference to self-described “non-religious person” Ali Abunimah: “We do not want an Islamist Jew-hater who calls for violence in Switzerland.”

It’s unclear how Fehr came to adopt this patently false claim, but the article in NZZ gives a hint. In painting the secular Abunimah as a jihadist, the story’s authors relied on a leader of a little-known group called “Never Again Is Now,” (NAIN) which characterizes itself as “the only non-profit organization in Switzerland dedicated exclusively to combating antisemitism,” says it “demands the uncompromising enforcement of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism,” and claims: “we… defend Israel against anti-Zionist agendas.”

NZZ quoted one of the group’s board members, Thomas Patzko, as stating “Abunimah and his platform are a mouthpiece for Hamas.” The outlet cited NAIN while insisting that Abunimah “delegitimizes the victims of the terrorist attack on October 7, specifically women and children” – a reference to Abunimah’s factual statement that “there is no credible evidence of a single rape on October 7.”

It’s not yet apparent whether these false accusations by Swiss media or the Zionist group led directly to Abunimah’s deportation. But at some point prior to Abunimah’s scheduled address, “the Zurich [regional] police had become aware of Abunimah’s planned appearance,” NZZ reported. “They had submitted a request to Fedpol for an entry ban,” the outlet wrote, adding “this request was granted” by “the responsible government councilor and security director Mario Fehr.”

What is clear, however, is the Zurich security chief’s allegiance to the Zionist narrative. At a “Rally in solidarity with Israel” on Oct. 10, 2023, Fehr openly stated that “the fate of Israel and its inhabitants is close to my heart” before rattling off a comprehensive list of pro-Israel talking points, ranting about Iran and quoting notoriously racistIsraeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, while demanding the Swiss government cease funding any development projects in Palestine.

“Hamas and its main sponsor Iran have always called for the destruction of Israel and the Jews. The fact that official Swiss foreign policy believed in the illusion that it could seriously negotiate with these terrorists is naive and shameful. – Anyone who rapes women, kills old people, kidnaps children, dehumanizes the dead, takes countless peaceful people hostage is not a negotiating partner – he is a rapist, a murderer, a terrorist. Golda Meir was right: ‘You cannot negotiate peace with somebody who has come to kill you.’ Peace will not be possible with Hamas and its accomplices!”

Minutes later, Fehr launched into a tirade about those who “somehow try to explain that Israel is actually to blame,” complaining: “These relativists should simply spend their next trip to the Middle East in Gaza.” Though he conceded that “many Palestinian civilians are also suffering and are affected,” Fehr insisted that “the responsibility for this lies solely with the Hamas terrorists,” stating flatly: “Israel is not to blame for this escalation.”

Ultimately, Fehr insisted the Swiss “Federal Council must suspend development cooperation with Palestine (like the EU) until it is clear who the money is really going to benefit” because “there is currently no negotiating partner on the Palestinian side.” 

“Anyone who sees it differently is allowing money to flow to terrorists,” he claimed.

In an interview with NZZ one month after the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, Fehr claimed that “the rampant anti-Semitism” had become “unbearable” in Switzerland, a trend he said was borne out by pro-Palestinian protests, and which he attributed to the presence of Arabs:

“We see from Palestine demonstrations that anti-Semitism is more widespread in certain cultural circles. Particularly in parts of the Arab world, children learn to hate Jews and Israel from an early age. We have to be careful that we don’t give this hatred any room here.”

Fehr criticized authorities in Switzerland for allowing pro-Palestinian protests to take place and said he had demanded they ban such events in areas under his jurisdiction, asserting that “anti-Israel demonstrations that are increasingly being hijacked by extremists.”

“Their goal is the annihilation of Israel and all Jews. The danger that Islamists from Germany or other countries will now move to Switzerland and spread their hatred is real. A large Palestine demonstration took place in Bern last Saturday, and the next one has been planned and approved for this weekend in the city of Zurich. I think that is negligent.”

“I have emphatically insisted to the head of municipal security to not authorize any more Palestine demonstrations in the current dangerous situation,” he stated.

Asked whether regional police under his command would “continue to support the Zurich city authorities, even though the city allows such demonstrations,” Fehr replied simply: “We will protect Jewish institutions as before – with all the means at our disposal.”

 

A visual guide to the destruction of Gaza

Buildings reduced to rubble around the al-Shifa hospital in April 2024. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images (source)

Satellite imagery, video footage and graphics show how Gaza has been left in ruins by Israeli forces

by Emma Graham-Harrison, reposted from The Guardian, January 18, 2025
Graphics and video by Paul Scruton, Lucy Swan, Tural Ahmedzade, Finbarr Sheehy and Laure Boulinier

Israel’s war in Gaza has killed tens of thousands of people and laid waste large swathes of the territory. Schools and hospitals have been destroyed, and aid flows into the territory have fallen sharply.

As Israel and Hamas reach a deal to pause the war for an initial six weeks, here is a visual assessment of the toll so far on the Palestinian people and the infrastructure they rely on.

Deaths, injuries and displacement

More than 46,000 Palestinians have been killed inside Gaza by Israeli attacks, according to health officials in the territory. Most of the dead are civilians, and the total represents about 2% of Gaza’s pre-war population, or one in every 50.

Another 110,000 have been wounded, over a quarter of whom now live with life-changing injuries including amputations, major burns and head injuries.


Palestinian deaths
Guardian graphic. Source: WHO, Palestinian ministry of health. Note: data to Jan 17, 2025 (source)

About 1.9 million people have been displaced since the war began, amounting to 90% of the population, with many of them forced to move repeatedly. Hundreds of thousands are living in tent cities and severely overcrowded shelters with poor sanitation and access to little clean water.


tent camp for displaced Palestinians
A tent camp for displaced Palestinians in Khan Younis, photographed on January 4. Photograph: Abdel Kareem Hana/AP (source)

The Israeli military says its fight is against Hamas and not Gaza, that its bombardment is proportional to threats and that it makes every effort to warn citizens of imminent attacks.

Aid flows

Gaza has long relied on a flow of trucks carrying food, fuel and medical aid to function. But over the course of the war, Israeli controls drastically limited the number of trucks entering the territory. Alongside the destruction of agricultural production this has led to widespread hunger and malnutrition.

In November 2024, the UN said aid and commercial shipments into Gaza were at the lowest levels since October 2023, and an international watchdog said famine was probably “imminent” in the northern Gaza Strip.


supplies to Gaza chart
Guardian graphic. Source: UNRWA. Note: includes commercial and aid trucks. Data to January 16, 2025 (source)

Israel says it does not limit aid shipments and blames shortages on logistics failures by aid agencies, or Hamas theft of food aid.

Building damage

Israel’s campaign of intense aerial bombing and mass demolitions has leveled swathes of Gaza, and left whole neighborhoods barely habitable.


Damage analysis
Guardian graphic. Source: Damage analysis of Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite data by Corey Scher of CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University (source)

Nine in 10 homes in the territory have been destroyed or damaged, the latest UN figures show. Schools, hospitals, mosques, cemeteries, shops and offices have been repeatedly hit. Israel says strikes only target Hamas fighters and claims the fighters shelter in buildings and use civilians as human shields.


Damage analysis of Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite
Guardian graphic. Source: Damage analysis of Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite data by Corey Scher of CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University (source)

Satellite imagery taken this month of Rafah in the south – once considered a “safe” city – shows large portions of neighborhoods adjacent to the border almost completely demolished.


Gaza satellite photo January 3
January 3. Guardian graphic. Source: Planet Labs (source)

This drone footage from June last year shows heavily damaged and destroyed buildings in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north. An Israeli campaign conducted in three waves has left the camp an unrecognizable wasteland of rubble.


This footage from August shows UN cars driving through what used to be a neighborhood in the north.


This footage shows al-Dahra street in the southern city of Khan Younis before the start of the war and again in April of last year.


Israeli forces have repeatedly bombed, besieged and attacked hospitals in Gaza. Earlier this month the World Health Organization said there had been 654 attacks on health facilities recorded since the start of the war.

Almost every school building in Gaza has been damaged or destroyed, and none are in operation. These composite images show the impact of the war on just three schools:

damage to Gaza schools
Guardian graphic. Source: Planet Labs (source)

Among the destroyed educational institutions is the Israa University in Gaza City, which was blown up by the IDF last year.


Emma Graham-Harrison is the Guardian’s senior international affairs correspondent. She was previously based in Kabul, Beijing and Madrid, and has reported from across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas. She has won multiple awards including the Society of Editors’ foreign correspondent of the year, for investigative reporting on the Cambridge Analytica Scandal and for uncovering civilian casualties in Iraq 

Additional credits —
Paul Scruton: graphic artist
Lucy Swan: graphics editor
Tural Ahmedzade: deputy news graphics editor
Finbarr Sheehy: graphic artist
Laure Boulinier: multimedia journalist

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