It has always been one of the goals of this newsletter to present a variety of items, about different topics, and not only serious articles about the problems facing us, but also hopeful and sometimes lighthearted or funny items. We recognize that a steady diet of serious and depressing articles can be demoralizing, and actually make it more difficult for us to summon the energy to act constructively.

If achieving some kind of balance is the goal, this newsletter must be judged a failure. We are in the midst of a genocide. What else can this newsletter be about? We can’t look away, we can’t turn away. This newsletter, almost all of it, is about Gaza.

We wish it didn’t have to be.

Ulli Diemer

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Caitlin Johnstone writes:

“Gaza isn't starving, it is being starved. It is not a mystery how to get food into Gaza. You just drive the food on in and give it to people. They've got roads and gates right there.

The organizations, funding and delivery systems to feed Gaza are all 100 percent fully available (at no cost to Israel, by the way). They're just not being allowed to provide aid because the goal is to remove all Palestinians from Gaza via death or displacement. The people of Gaza are starving because the west is helping Israel starve Gaza. It really is that simple.”

Read more

Keywords: Gaza - Hunger

In Gaza, movie events provide a spark of light and a screen of hope amid the trauma of displacement.

Read more

Keywords: Cinema - Palestinians

They came at dusk: a woman and two children.

Not walking, exactly. Drifting, as if carried not by their own will but by a force more ancient and merciless than gravity. The kind of force that drives insects toward flame or the lost toward confession.

One of the children pulled a basket behind, its wheels scraping over the stones like bones. Neither spoke. Their silence was not shy, but inherited. The kind passed from womb to womb in times of war.

The woman looked at me, not as one human to another, but as someone standing trial on Judgment Day, stripped of all defense.

“Is this a clinic?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have medicine?”

“Yes.”

“Is it free?”

“Yes.”

She entered, as if even the floor needed permission to bear her weight.

She sat before me. Her presence was not loud, but unbearable. She did not look tired, but ancient, like someone who had traveled not just for days but through time itself, through the centuries of betrayal that humanity has inflicted upon itself.

I said nothing. She said nothing. The silence held.

Then she whispered, “My feet and back hurt.”

What a simple phrase. And yet it carried the weight of exile.

My feet and back hurt.

Of course they did.

She had been carrying two children, a basket, and the unspoken grief of the earth.

“Is this new?” I asked.

“No, habibi. It’s from walking. We’ve been walking a long time.”

Walking. Such a gentle word for such a violent act. She had walked over corpses and rubble, over forgotten treaties and abandoned neighborhoods. She had walked across the graves of promises.

And I, me, a doctor. What could I do? Open a drawer? Offer a pill? I could not suture history. I could not anesthetize the world’s cruelty.

So I gave her painkillers. Like a priest sprinkling water on a burning house. And vitamins, why not? A placebo for the soul, perhaps more for mine than hers.

She stood, nodded, and left.

I should have returned to my notes, to the work. But I sat there, staring at my hands. Those impotent, trembling hands. I wondered if I had just witnessed something sacred or something obscene.

Then she returned.

In her hands was a bundle of arugula. Earth still clung to the roots.

“This is for you,” she said.

I refused. My pride would not allow it. But pride dies in the presence of grace.

She insisted. “It’s from my heart,” she said. “We’re farmers. From Beit Lahia. We picked it before we left. I still have some.”

And in that moment, I saw her. Not the woman, but the truth.

So I took it. Not for the leaves, but to protect what little dignity remained in the world.

She left again.

But she had left something behind. A scream without sound. A sermon without words.

And in that clinic, surrounded by antiseptics and broken instruments, I, the doctor, broke.

Not from pity. But from the unbearable truth that someone who had nothing still found a way to give everything.

Ezzideen Shehab is a 28-year-old doctor in Gaza.

Read more

Keywords: Gaza - Health Care Access

In today’s fractured media landscape, some of the best reporting, writing, and analysis is being produced by individuals who are not directly affiliated with any media organization, though they may contribute to various outlets as freelancers. Most have their own websites, blogs, podcasts, or channels, or publish on platforms such as Substack.

Connexions regularly spotlights alternative media (for a partial list see here); however in this issue we focus on individuals.

The individuals listed here express a wide diversity of views. You may agree with some of their views; you may vehemently disagree with others. Inclusion on this list is not an endorsement. It is simply a judgment that they sometimes have things to say that are worth reading or hearing.

Aurelien

https://aurelien2022.substack.com/

The author describes his site as “a newsletter devoted not to polemic, but to trying to make sense of today's world.” “This newsletter tries to distill a lifetime of experience and reflection into something that people can read and benefit from.”

Jonathan Cook

https://www.jonathan-cook.net/

An award-winning British journalist, Cook was based in Nazareth for 20 years until 2021. He mainly writes about Israel/Palestine, and about the role of media propaganda in justifying and enabling Israeli apartheid, human rights abuses and genocide. In addition to his longer articles, which appear in a number of media as well as his own site, he also writes a blog.

Alastair Crooke

https://strategic-culture.su/contributors/alastair-crooke/

Crooke is a former British diplomat and founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum. In addition to writing articles, he also appears as a guest on a number of anti-establishment interview programs.

Dialogue Works (Nima R. Alkhorshid)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkF-6h_Zgf9zXNUmUB-MzTw

Video channel “dedicated to dialogue and peace.” Alkhorshid is a respectful interviewer who asks questions and then allows his guests to respond without interrupting them or arguing with them. The focus is international affairs.

Yves Engler

https://yvesengler.com/

Engler is a Montreal-based activist and author who mainly writes about Canadian foreign policy. A frequent critic of Israeli human rights abuses, he has been criticized for at times seemingly failing to understand the difference between Jews and Zionism.

Chris Hedges

https://chrishedges.substack.com/

Journalist and author who covers US foreign policy, economic realities, and civil liberties in American society. Hedges is one of the prominent and well-respected independent journalists who has been progressively deplatformed and censored. He writes: “The electronic media is in the hands of a half dozen corporations that impose a uniformity of opinion and ban the views of us who decry the crimes of empire, the permanent war economy, the apartheid state of Israel, our money saturated political process and social inequality. Whistleblowers, the life blood of investigative journalism, have been virtually silenced.” His site includes articles as well as audio interviews.

Michael Hudson

https://michael-hudson.com/

An economist and expert on economic history. Books include Killing the Host and Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire. His site includes articles as well as audio interviews with other commentators; audio interviews are usually accompanied by a written transcript.

Larry Johnson

https://sonar21.com/

Johnson is a former CIA officer and intelligence analyst. He writes and talks (on a number of non-mainstream videocasts) about U.S. foreign policy, global affairs, and related topics. Since October 2023, he has been strongly and consistently critical of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and American support for Israel.

Caitlin Johnstone

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/

Johnstone says “I write about the end of illusions because from my point of view all of the major problems our species now faces are born of a misperception of what’s really happening. On a collective level human behavior is being driven by propaganda and the systems it manufactures consent for, and on an individual level we’re being driven by the delusion of ego.” Many of her articles are about what is happening in the world right now, focusing especially on Israel’s genocide in Gaza and on U.S. imperialism.

Dimitri Lascaris

https://reason2resist.substack.com/

Dimitri Lascaris is a Canadian lawyer and journalist whose reporting focuses on Western government criminality. Mostly video interviews with guests holding progressive views.

Aaron Maté

https://www.aaronmate.net/

Independent journalist from Canada. According to Wikipedia, “Maté currently works as a reporter for The Grayzone, a fringe far-left news website and blog.” Coming from Wikipedia, that is definitely reason to follow Mate’s work, and the Grayzone.

Moon of Alabama

https://www.moonofalabama.org/

Bernard, the author of nearly all the articles on the site, took the name from a line in Bertolt Brecht’s Alabama Song, “Oh, moon of Alabama.” Much of the commentary is about Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and the Russia-Ukraine war, including NATO’s role in that war.

Craig Murray

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

Murray is a former British ambassador, historian, and human rights activist. A recent article, “You cannot negotiate with the Zionist West”, gives the flavour of his analysis: “The attempt to gaslight the public with abject lies about Iran’s nuclear weapon capability is so blatant a repeat of the Iraqi WMD scam that I am astonished they dare to try it.... You can have watched or listened to hundreds of hours of BBC broadcasting on the current war on Iran, and never have heard once that Israel possesses nuclear weapons. The levels of propaganda are truly extreme.”

Naked Capitalism (Yves Smith and colleagues)

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/

Naked Capitalism bills itself as providing “Fearless commentary on finance, economics, politics and power.” The analysis is well-informed and excellent, and the animal pictures which enrich the site are fun.

Yanis Varoufakis

https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/

Anti-capitalist Greek economist who writes about politics, international affairs, and economics. Barred from Germany because of his support for Palestinians.

Find out more

Keywords: Alternative News Sources - Media Bias

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Issue edited by Ulli Diemer

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