Shocking statistics

Shocking statistics on the 450th consecutive day of the genocide on the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Government Media Office published an update on the most important statistics (deemed reliable even by the UN, WHO and even USA). PLEASE READ and disseminate that Israeli occupation forces (with US tax money and munitions and to a lesser extent other countries) did this:

- Dropped 88,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip (more than dropped on Vietnam, and four times the explosive power of a Hiroshima-size nuclear bomb in an area of a mere 360 sq km or 250 square mile)

- Committed 9,973 massacres (killing many people at one time by bombing or shelling; 70% women and children)

- 56,714 killed and missing persons: 45,514 reached hospitals (Ministry of Health recorded), 11,200 missing persons did not reach hospitals (under rubble or bodies missing). Those killed and documented include:
*1,413 Palestinian whole families gone (no surviving members) while 3,467 Palestinian families had only one surviving family member, and the number of members of these families is 7,941 martyrs. (Ministry of Health).
*17,818 children killed (most under age of 5 years, 238 infants were born and killed n the period of the genocide).
*12,287 women killed
*1068 from the medical staff (Ministry of Health).
*94 civil defense/first responders and 728 police officers (civil)
*201 journalists (higher than those killed in WWII)
*520 exhumed from seven mass graves on grounds of targeted hospitals.

-The numbers do not include those dying from lack of food, medicine, water, from diseases and from cold. Specifically
+ 44 children were recorded starved to death, many hundreds are not recorded
+ Six infants died from hypothermia in tents, many hundreds are not recorded
+ Data do not include deaths among the 12,500 cancer patients (largely lacking treatments)
+ Data do not include deaths or debilitation from infectious diseases: 2,136,026 cases of such diseases due to displacement forcing unsanitary conditions including hepatitis, polio, skin diseases, lung disorders, intestinal disorders (Ministry of Health)

+ + Data do not include deaths or debilitation from chronic disease patients (350,000 patients such as diabetes) due to the occupation preventing the entry of medicines or allowing operation of facilities like kidney dialysis

-108,189 wounded and injured arrived at hospitals including 399 journalists and media professionals), 12,650 wounded need to travel abroad for treatment. (Ministry of Health)

-21 displacement centers (declared “safe zones”) targeted by the Israeli occupation (only 10% of the area of ​​the Gaza Strip is claimed by the Israeli occupation to be "humanitarian areas")

-35,060 children live without their parents or without one of them (orphans).

-12,125 women lost their husbands during the genocidal war.

-More than 60,000 pregnant women lack of OB/GYN healthcare (risk)

-Nearly 10,000 were abducted and incarcerated without trial including 331 medical, 43 media, and 26 civil defense personnel. Over 30 died under torture in Israeli prisons (3 medical personnel executed in prison by torture)

-2 million displaced people in the Gaza Strip. 110,000 tents were worn out and became unfit for the displaced.

-Infrastructure including most buildings were destroyed intentionally (in most cases after Israeli infantry occupied them). This includes

*135 schools and universities completely and 353 schools and universities partially destroyed (12,780 students were killed during the war): 756 teachers and educational employees in the education sector were killed by the occupation during the war. 148 scientists, academics, university professors and researchers were executed by the occupation. 785,000 students were deprived of education by the Israeli occupation.
*823 mosques were completely destroyed and 158 mosques were severely destroyed by the occupation and need to be restored.
*3 churches targeted and destroyed.
*19 cemeteries were completely or partially destroyed by the occupation out of 60 cemeteries. 2,300 bodies were stolen by the occupation from several cemeteries in the Gaza Strip.
*161,600 housing units completely destroyed and 194,000 housing units are partially destroyed
*162 health care facilities targeted by the occupation (most clinics and hospitals destroyed and/or rendered out of service).
*136 ambulances targeted

*213 government civil headquarters
*206 archaeological and heritage sites.
*3,130 kilometers of electricity networks.
*125 number of underground electricity distribution transformers destroyed.
*330 kilometers of water networks destroyed.
*655 kilometers of sewage networks destroyed.
*2,835 kilometers of road and street networks destroyed.
*42 community facilities, playgrounds and sports halls destroyed.
*717 water wells destroyed by the occupation and put out of service.
*This is 86% destruction rate in the Gaza Strip. $37 billion is the initial direct economic losses of the genocide war

*This does not include the environmental damage; some of it not repairable and some areas of Gaza are now uninhabitable for decades to come….see our research papers on this such as this one: https://www.palestinenature.org/research/Impact-of-the-Israeli-military-activities-on-the-environment.pdf

From Bethlehem, Palestine

All souls wondering
find peace in the place of birthing

I, a lost soul, find it here in Bethlehem
A holy place cursed now by mayhem
Palestine where the first humans out of Africa ventured

Settling a land of beauty and bounty, Canaan they called
Our fore fathers and mothers first domesticated animals and plants
and prospered in peace and harmony respecting the Gods and even the ants
Where the Shepherds heard angels sing
And in a manger was born a savior king
Where a prophet told us this is the last vanguard
one who ascended to heaven and told us to be on guard
Where ancestors invented laws and the alphabet
and a fertile crescent they created with their sweat
Where they managed to transcend adversity
and respected biological and human diversity
Cultural and natural heritage were well guarded
they dwelled under one God (Al-Ela) regarded

But a dark storm came with strangers
whose quest for “manifest destiny” endangers
who said the land belonged not to first nation
but to a chosen people from Europe by dictation
Crusaderism
Zionism
Millions do suffer
while the rich get richer

We can’t sleep thinking of Khalid Nabhan, a most gentle kindred
one year after Reem & Tareq (grandchildren) were martyred
Soul of my soul he repeatedly stated
Now they are eternally united

We get paralyzed thinking of friends sacrificed
Zionists aided by blackmailed politicians make people de-huanized
villified
terrified

Might is right they declare
Of a higher power they are not aware

Living under apartheid we wonder
When our turn to be killed or injured and ponder
Whether we lived with enough grace and dignity?
Whether we made the right choices & fostered unity?

Did we spend enough time with good people, family, friends, activists?
Did we waste some time trying to convince racists or hanging with pessimists?
Mistakes made (we all do)- but have from our lessons, learned?
egos subdued, sometimes, and only then is respect earned!

How do we learn not to look away from suffering?
to offer a kind word, food, shelter to those enduring….
a genocide, ecocide, educide, medicide, and omnicide
and massacres of the truth – a veriticide.

We reread the beginning…ethnic cleansing
and today’s millions of candles shining
For human rights we strive
and we keep hope alive
In every street, in every corner, and in every heart
People united for a freedom, a road they chart
In our thousands in our millions
we are all Palestinians

They will never break the spirits
of 15 million Palestinians
let alone billions who stand together tall
For a better future for ALL

May 2025 be the year of peace

Genocide and coloniality

In my talks about the importance of the genocide and its connectivity around the globe (yes it is an existential issue for all humanity) now averaging three talks a day, I am very frequently asked about the future. To answer pragmatically and logically requires a sober assessment of our current situation and the variables that could help or hinder a positive change towards a sustainable future. You do not have to be a researcher to realize that our species is in deep trouble. Even casual observers of our human condition can see and feel global climate change, raging wars, accelerating genocides, the destruction of our environment, invasive species, and much more. Further, even common people realize that the way we have been going (rampant capitalism, autocracies, racism, coloniality and colonialism) is not sustainable and it is critical to change direction. Even an isolated and uneducated person living in one of the thousands of metropolitan areas can intuitively understand what they are up against. They see prices of everything rising including housing, can see and feel changing climates, can see catastrophe of neighbors (e.g. genocide in Gaza, hurricanes, climate change, fires etc). 

Tens of millions of people are “climate refugees” fleeing areas no longer habitable while tens of millions of others are “political refugees” fleeing wars. Inequality is at an all-time high. The richest 1% now manage 50% of global wealth. The meetings of conference of parties (COP) for 29 years for climate change produces more blah blah blah while our planet is in critical condition. Bandaids do not help a patient with arterial bleeding. The COP meeting at capitals of states like the UAE and Azerbaijan and chaired by oil industry chiefs is like holding conventions to stop rape led by rapists or to stop piracy chaired by pirates. Western hypocrisy gone viral as makers of war and genocide appoint themselves as brokers of “peace” (read pacification of indigenous people) and guardians of a world order that clearly is functioning only to push us like lemmings off a cliff. You are excused if you get depressed about this bleak picture of our world. 29 COP meetings on climate change failed to achieve even their own inadequate targets and 17 COP meetings on biodiversity failed to put even a slow down on the loss of global biodiversity. Half the world coral reef systems are already gone and there is now more plastics in our oceans than there are fish. We all should be alarmed at what we scientists have been warning about for decades and now is coming at an accelerated pace; see for example this though this does not cover colonial and military impact, see for example our study on Israel’s war people of Palestine and its impact. The reasons for this bleak state of the world are obvious and revolve around the short-term interests of some members (99%) of people and of all the other millions of species that inhabit our planet. In short it is unfettered greed! Of course, this greed existed throughout our human history (as is opposition to it). Yet, the scale of damage and the stakes have never been so much higher than they are now as everyone now realizes. Collective action by common people is working to address some of this including more reliance on clean energy, reducing waste etc. Yet, the elites empowered by coloniality (consumerism and unfettered capitalism and militarism that benefit few) march on largely unhindered. In fact, they seem to get their way as evidenced by Trump and Netanyahu and their like-minded global genocidal companions. 

As Farhana Sultana noted that for us to decolonize global systems is a large undertaking because “coloniality maintains the matrix of power established during active colonization through contemporary institutional, financial, and geopolitical world orders, and also through knowledge systems” (her chapter in the book “Not too late: Changing the climate story from despair to possibility”). I would add to that is that coloniality also ensures support of active colonization as is being done in Palestine and Western Sahara as well as support for subjugation of the masses and of racism evident o the global north as pertaining to people of the global south. But this decade is critical and people living now must rise-up. Martin Luther King Jr wrote in his letter from Birmingham jail: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in the inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever effects one directly, affects all indirectly.” This has never been truer than today. The urgency of action and our woven destiny beckons us all to work together. At stake is nothing less than our humanity and civilization and the only home we know: planet earth.