News Releases

35 Big Corporations Paid More to Top Executives Than Federal Taxes

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A new report from Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies found that 35 major U.S. corporations paid less in federal income tax between 2018 and 2022 than they paid their top five executives. Those companies were all cumulatively profitable during that time period. 

Among those 35 corporations, their total executive compensation over the five-year timespan was $9.5 billion, while their combined federal income tax bills came to negative $1.8 billion, i.e. they received refunds totaling that amount.

The 64 firms in the study paid an average federal tax rate of 2.8 percent. 

WILLIAM RICE; will.rice@americansfortaxfairness.org 
    Rice is a senior writer at Americans for Tax Fairness and a coauthor of the report.

Rice told the Institute for Public Accuracy: “Dozens of big corporations are paying their top five executives more than they are paying in taxes. It resonates with the public as being unfair. 

“The financial reports of these corporations are not clear for anyone who isn’t an accountant. They are very long, have lots of small print, and the information provided is not user friendly. The actual tax returns are [also] not public––they’re private. Corporations complain that [research on corporate taxes from the last 40 years] lacks context, but no corporation has successfully pointed out why the numbers are wrong or supplied their tax returns to show what they’re paying.

“If you include corporations that [paid more to their top executives than they did in federal taxes] in all five years, you’re talking about $15 billion in executive pay. The scale is astounding. They’re not doing anything illegal here, but the way Congress has set up the tax code, even companies that are doing reasonably well get to pay little to no taxes or else get refunds. 

“It’s important that people know about this. One of the ways that large corporations and other wealthy people get away with this is that they live in a totally different world than average Americans or citizens of any other country. [The public] is unaware of the details of how they pay so little in taxes relative to their wealth and income. People have a vague, accurate understanding that the system is rigged against them, but they are busy with their own lives. This is a concrete example of the sense of unfairness.

Rice emphasizes that there are solutions to the problem, however. The corporate tax rate was 35 percent prior to the Trump presidency, when it was cut to 21 percent. In President Biden’s State of the Union address this month, and in the follow-up budget, he proposed “raising the corporate tax to 28 percent and increasing the minimum tax for corporations with more than $1 billion in assets [to 15 percent]. Some of those companies can go years paying very little taxes or none… [Biden] also wants to close the loophole that currently allows companies to deduct salaries of over $1 million.” Those are two main corporate reforms, along with ensuring that offshore profits are taxed at the same rate as domestic profits. 

Rice noted that reforms included in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, like the new corporate minimum tax, were promising but did not go into effect until 2023. “We can expect some changes. Some of these companies are getting caught up in the new rules.” Companies like Duke Energy and Whirlpool were both hit by Biden’s 15 percent minimum tax in 2023. Both those companies make the Americans for Tax Fairness report’s “Terrible 10.” Duke paid top executives over $180 million and received a tax refund of almost $2 billion, while Whirlpool paid top executives over $160 million and paid an effective tax rate of just 7 percent––one-third of the official 21 percent rate.

St. Patrick’s Day and Gaza

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KATHY KELLY, kathy.vcnv@gmail.com, @voiceinwild
Kelly is board president of World BEYOND War and a co-coordinator of the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal.

She just wrote the piece “When Starvation Is a Weapon, the Harvest Is Shame” for The Progressive. She recounts how in the Irish famine, “starving people died with their mouths stained green because, according to historian Christine Kinealy, their last meal was grass. Shamefully, British occupiers profited from exporting out of Ireland food crops so desperately needed. Over a seven year period, beginning in 1845, one million Irish people died from starvation and related diseases. It was a conscious mass killing. …

“Now, in the occupied Gaza Strip, weapons dealers benefit from increasing military shipments to Israel. Palestinians, like the Irish, have resorted to eating mixtures of grass and animal feed. …

“Human Rights Watch says the Israeli government is starving civilians as a method of warfare in the Gaza Strip. Aiding and abetting this war crime, the U.S. government has approved 100 military sales to Israel over the past five months. …

“In Northampton, Massachusetts, six activists are on day three of occupying the office of Representative Jim McGovern. They are demanding he call on the president to immediately halt all weapons shipments to Israel, even if Israel allows humanitarian aid into Gaza. …

“In May of this year, an Irish NGO called AFRI (Action From Ireland) will hold an annual ‘famine walk’ to commemorate when hundreds of desperate people trekked in cold and stormy weather to beg mercy from British officials designated to assess who would qualify for small portions of food or tickets to enter a workhouse. …

“Each year, the organizers of AFRI’s famine walk focus on a place in the world afflicted by famine. ‘This year’s famine walk will focus on the unspeakable horrors being visited on the population of Gaza,’ says AFRI’s coordinator, Joe Murray, ‘with “Irish” President Biden forgetting his history and playing the part of a “Black and Tan” in providing the means to obliterate an entire population.’ …

“People in the United States ought to occupy local offices of every elected official, denouncing all forms of violence, insisting on an immediate end to any support for Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza.”

Israeli Attacks on West Bank and Jerusalem

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See resource list on X/Twitter.

DIMITRI LASCARIS, dimitri.lascaris@proton.me, @dimitrilascaris
Lascaris is a Canadian journalist, activist and lawyer currently in Jenin on the West Bank. Available for a limited number of interviews, he just wrote to the Institute for Public Accuracy: “The Israelis committed an atrocity at a hospital in Jenin this morning. I just interviewed the hospital director and he showed us videotape of the crime. An unarmed Palestinian man was shot in the back as he was running into the hospital to take cover from gunfire.” See his latest articles: “In Jenin Refugee Camp, Israeli Forces Terrorize Palestinian Artists,” “In Jenin, Israeli Soldiers Brutalize Young Men While Using Their Mother as Human Shield,” and “Sheikh Jarrah and Israel’s Kangaroo Courts.”

YAZAN RISHEQ, yazan@grassrootsalquds.org, @grassroots_quds
Risheq is with Grassroots Al-Quds [Arabic for Jerusalem]. He said today: “I believe that ‘existence is resistance.’ Maintaining identity, culture, beliefs and rights in the face of oppressors who always try to erase, and change it, is itself a form of resistance and using knowledge, memorization, heritage, archive, and the potentials of the past, the present and the future as a tool for liberation.” See in-depth interview of Risheq by Israeli activist Miko Peled from April of last year. See from last year during Ramadan: “‘Heinous Crimes’: Global Outcry as Israeli Forces Attack Al-Aqsa Worshipers for Second Night.”

MAZIN QUMSIYEH, mazin@qumsiyeh.org, Skype: mbqumsiyeh
Qumsiyeh is a professor at Bethlehem University. His books include Sharing the Land of Canaan. He is founding director of the Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability. He recently wrote “Impact of the Israeli military activities on the environment” in the International Journal of Environmental Studies.

He addressed long-term Israeli military and settler violence in the West Bank which he has written about extensively and directly confronted, but stressed what is being done to Gaza: “Over one million people also are suffering from the spreading (and curable) diseases associated with the Israeli blockade. …U.S./France/Jordan doing air drops is a sick propaganda stunt. One airdrop cargo is equivalent to one truck. Gaza needs a minimum of 800 trucks of food and medical supplies per day now to avoid full genocide. Over 2,000 trucks are at the borders waiting for weeks.”

How Foreign Intervention Precipitated Haiti’s Current Crisis

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JAKE JOHNSTON, johnston@cepr.net, @JakobJohnston
Senior research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Johnston is author of Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle to Control Haiti, which was released earlier this year.

He said today: “The world has been inundated by sensationalist headlines of Haiti in crisis for the last two weeks. There is no question that, indeed, Haiti is facing an incredibly difficult situation. Yet part of the story has been left out of much of the coverage: the role played by foreign powers in causing this crisis.”

Johnston just put out a backgrounder “Haitian Prime Minister Henry Agrees to Resign as CARICOM Announces Formation of Presidential Council,” which reads in part: “What is clear is that the announcement in Kingston late last night is unlikely to lead to a solution to the current crisis by itself. After criticizing Henry for relying on the support of the U.S. and other foreign powers, an agreement pushed by those same foreign powers is likely to face legitimacy concerns from the moment it forms. Though negotiations have been taking place for the better part of a week, none of the participants or discussions have been made public, leaving the vast majority of Haitians in the dark. Notably, CARICOM set conditions for participation, including accepting deployment of a Kenyan-led intervention force. …

“It was U.S. and foreign support for Henry that pushed the situation to its dire state. But rather than letting a truly Haitian-led process play out, those same foreign powers have opted for a stability pact that, it would seem, is likely to lock in an unsustainable status quo at least in the short term.”

See NPR interview with Daniel Foote, a former American diplomat who resigned in protest over U.S. policy.

What Drug Pricing Reforms Can We Expect in 2024?

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Last month, Congress decided to abandon its attempt to reform pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). Advocates say other drug pricing issues need special attention right now. 

STEVE KNIEVEL; sknievel@citizen.org 
    Knievel is an advocate for Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines program. 

Knievel told the Institute for Public Accuracy: “PBMs have had some pernicious effects on the drug system and on independent pharmacies as well. But as Peter [Maybarduk, Knievel’s colleague at Public Citizen] said [on February 9, during the Senate HELP Committee hearing on drug pricing], ‘the fish rots from the head.’ The drug corporations are the ones who set the prices. They could set different prices if they chose to. PBMs can arguably exacerbate some of these problems, but it’s the drug corporations that have the monopoly power that is the primary basis of our excessive, out-of-control drug prices.”

PBMs “are only a distraction insofar as policymakers allow it to be one,” Knievel added. “It would have been a misstep to only do PBM reform and exclude various other measures to address monopoly abuses. None of those [reforms] were in the cards to be included in a package, even if PBMs were included this time around. 

“Another point that fell by the wayside was the out-of-pocket caps for insulin… Majority Leader Schumer talked about extending that [$35 out-of-pocket monthly cap for insulin] to everyone. We wanted to make sure that the uninsured got low-cost coverage for insulin as well. We were hoping to see PBM reforms, patent abuse reforms, and insulin coverage expansion. But we got none of it. For the foreseeable future, it’s not going to happen. The political realities of an election year are becoming evermore present.”

Right now, one important aspect of progressive drug pricing reform focuses on patents and the Bayh-Dole Act. Bayh-Dole allows government contractors and grantees that make inventions to retain ownership of the patent of that invention; in exchange, the government retains some public interest protections of the patent. For instance, the Federal Trade Commission explains that under Bayh-Dole, “the federal government has the right to ‘march in’ on patents on inventions created using taxpayer funds,” requiring the patent holder to license the federally-funded patent to other applicants. Petitions have previously been sent to agencies like HHS and NIH to exercise march-in rights for prohibitively-expensive drugs like prostate cancer medicines, but this power has never been employed. In pursuit of increasing drug affordability, the Biden administration is currently undergoing an inner-agency review of when march-in rights ought to be employed; in December 2023, the National Institute of Standards and Technology released a draft framework to guide the government’s exercise of march-in rights. In February, the 60-day comment period closed on that draft framework. 

“Once that guidance is finalized and comes out,” Knievel said, “we will be looking for ways that agencies can act upon it and explore what more the administration can do with its executive tools to lower drug prices in the coming year. This is an important piece of our work, because as much progress as we have made through the Medicare drug price negotiation system, there are serious limitations there. By using these sorts of mechanisms [like potential expansions to march-in rights], we can do more to expand access to medicines.”

Knievel noted that there is “insufficient public recognition about the benefits of the law that are already kicking in right now. As much as I’m profuse about the limitations of the law, it does go a long way. Progressives need to know about the progress we’ve made. We haven’t had wins like this in years—maybe ever—against Pharma. We can’t be overly jaded about what we haven’t gotten. If we sit back, Pharma is going to roll over us and take it all back.” 

Report: Israel Tortured False Confessions Out of UNRWA Staff

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Reuters reports: “UNRWA report says Israel coerced some agency employees to falsely admit Hamas links.”

CHRISTOPHER GUNNESS, cgunness@outlook.com
Gunness is a former spokesperson for UNRWA. He said today: “These allegations are shocking but unsurprising. Numerous UN reports attest to the fact that the Israelis have subjected Palestinians to these abhorrent violations on a very large scale for decades as a routine instrument of occupation. What’s new is that the Israelis are doing this to force confessions from UNRWA staff that they were involved in the October attack. This further undermines the original Israeli claims against UNRWA.” See his recent interviews on CBC News and Al Jazeera.

Canada and Sweden are restoring their funding of UNRWA. Nearly 50 members of the U.S. Congress have called for a restoration of the U.S. government funding of UNRWA.

In the suit brought by South Africa, The ICJ on Jan. 26 ordered: “Israel must take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” Hours later, Israel made its charges regarding UNRWA and the U.S. government and other donors then halted funding.

The U.S. similarly used tortured false confessions about Iraq and Al Qaeda working together that it presented to the UN, see piece from last year by Sam Husseini: “Twenty Years Ago: How Powell Used Tortured ‘Evidence’ for War Against Iraq.”

See B’Tselem page on torture by Israel.

Gunness was on the IPA news release “UK Channel 4 Finds Israeli Documents ‘Provide No Evidence’ in Charges Against UNRWA,” which contains background on the relief agency.

See Doctors Without Borders statement: “U.S. plan for temporary pier in Gaza a ‘glaring distraction.’

Groups Denounce Israel’s Use of Starvation as Genocide

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Hundreds of organizations from over 50 countries have signed on to a letter denouncing the use of starvation as a tool of genocide.

The following are available for interviews:

Fuad Abu Saif, Union of Agricultural Work Committees, based in Ramallah, fuad@uawc-pal.org
Pawel Wargan, Progressive International, pawel.wargan@progressive.international
Dr. Karameh Hawash-Kuemmerle, Doctors Against Genocide

The letter states that the groups, which represent hundreds of millions of people, “vehemently denounce the Israeli occupation’s use of starvation as a tool of genocide in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli occupation’s systematic destruction of Palestinian food systems, deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, and obstruction of humanitarian aid constitute egregious violations of international law and fundamental human rights principles.

“We call on all states and international institutions to undertake any and all action possible including sanctions and arms embargoes to bring an immediate end to the obstruction of humanitarian, life sustaining, and life-saving supplies to Palestinians in Gaza, to investigate all state and non-state actors who have directly and indirectly participated in the obstruction and/or destruction of supplies to Gaza, and we ask that the campaign to de-fund UNRWA be investigated as a possible act toward furtherance and facilitation of starvation and/or genocide.

“The deliberate withholding of essential resources, including food, with the intent of starving the Palestinian population of Gaza constitutes a gross violation of international law, human rights, and the principles of justice and humanity. Article II (c) of the Genocide Convention defines as genocide ‘Deliberately inflicting on [a national, ethnical, racial or religious] group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.’ The Israeli occupation’s deliberate destruction of Palestinian food systems and obstruction of humanitarian aid by Israel clearly fall within the ambit of this definition. These actions also flagrantly violate the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which safeguards the rights of civilians during times of armed conflict, and constitute crimes against humanity, as recognized under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. …

“The disruption and destruction of Palestinian food systems by the Israeli occupation exacerbate the dire situation in Gaza and are not merely intended to starve the population in the short term. The current deliberate targeting by Israel of agricultural lands, livestock, and fishing boats (a genocidal intensification of 75 years of brutal settler colonial occupation that has denied Palestinians their right to self-rule) further undermines the ability of Palestinians to access and produce food, and is intended to ensure their ongoing poverty and malnutrition, and deny them the fundamental right to food sovereignty.” The letter was initiated by the International Coalition to Stop Genocide in Palestine.

The groups, including the large global peasant movement La Via Campesina, are calling for various actions including for Saturday, March 9 to be a global day of fasting in solidarity with the people of Gaza.

Fuad Abu Saif said: “This is not just a matter of law; it is a test of our collective humanity. Let us come together to demand an immediate halt to this brutality, to ensure that food and hope flow freely into Gaza once again.”

Pawel Wargan said: “This week, Israeli forces in Gaza massacred starving people as they lined up to receive the paltry humanitarian aid that is allowed through the blockade — another grim episode in the long, wretched history of Zionist colonialism in Palestine. In Gaza, Zionism and its imperialist backers are striking at the very foundations of humanity. That is why it is imperative for progressive forces to mobilize — with love, courage, and organization more powerful than the inhumanity that threatens to crush the world in its death march.”

See recent Democracy Now segment: “What I Witnessed in Gaza Is a Holocaust: Palestinian Writer Susan Abulhawa.”

Biden “Greenlight” to Israel as South Africa and Nicaragua Appeal to the World Court

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FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle@illinois.edu
Boyle is professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. Boyle’s books include The Bosnian People Charge Genocide (1996) Palestine, Palestinians and International Law (2009) and World Politics, Human Rights and International Law (2021). He was just on the Rachel Blevins Show and has recently been on FlashpointsDemocracy Now and MSNBC.

He said today: “As many have noted, Biden administration rhetoric is meaningless as it arms and backs Israel. In fact, by saying that Israel needs to have a plan in place for civilians before going into Rafah, as it has been doing, the Biden administration is effectively giving Israel a greenlight to do just that. That plan seems to include camps that have been built by Egypt. What Blinken’s trips to the Mideast have been about isn’t about making peace, they have almost certainly been about hatching a scheme whereby the Israelis force Palestinians into Egypt and the Egyptian government — which hates the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas — runs the camps and other corrupt Arab governments fund the illegal scheme.

“Clearly, with the Israelis rejecting a permanent ceasefire, an increasing threat to peace is quite possible.

“Seeing such threats, South Africa has just returned to the International Court of Justice, stating ‘in light of the new facts and changes in the situation in Gaza — particularly the situation of widespread starvation — brought about by the continuing egregious breaches of the’ Genocide Convention by Israel ‘and its ongoing manifest violations of the provisional measures indicated by’ the ICJ on Jan. 26.” [See PDF of South Africa’s application, filed on Wednesday.]

Boyle represented Bosnia and Herzegovina at the ICJ and the South African application quotes his second request for provisional measures of protection: “The extreme gravity of the situation facing Palestinian men, women, children and babies, and the existential risk the Palestinian people in Gaza as a part of the Palestinian national or ethnical group face as a result of Israel’s genocidal military campaign demands further action by the Court. To this end, the Court is reminded of the application for additional provisional measures made by Bosnia in 1993 in the Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide … case. The written application entreated: ‘Make no mistake about it: This will be the last opportunity that this Court shall have to save both the people and State of Bosnia and Herzegovina from extermination and annihilation by means of genocide by the Respondent. God will record your response to our Request for the rest of eternity.'”

Boyle also notes that Nicaragua has recently brought suit at the ICJ against Germany. The Nicaraguan application states: “In 2004, well before the most recent assault of Israel against the Gaza Strip, the Court had reaffirmed that Palestine was an occupied territory and that the Palestinian people had a right to self determination. The Court also recalled that all States had the obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining that situation. [PDF of 2004 ICJ ruling] Germany ignored this obligation then and has compounded this breach by continuing to aid and assist Israel after the most recent and even grosser violations of peremptory norms of general international law and conventional obligations. …

“Germany has provided political, financial and military support to Israel fully aware at the time of authorization that the military equipments would be used in the commission of great breaches of international law by this State and in disregard of its own obligations. In particular, the military equipment provided by Germany enabling Israel to perpetrate genocidal acts and other atrocities, included supplies to the front line and warehouses, and assurances of future supplies such as ammunition, technology and diverse components necessary for the Israeli military.” [See PDF of Nicaraguan application.]

Boyle added that he “expects that the ICJ will shortly call for an expedited hearing on the Nicaragua case. I expect Nicaragua will get some sort of provisional measures. It’s noteworthy that this is being done by Nicaragua — my teacher, colleague and friend, Abram Chayes successfully represented Nicaragua in its suit against the U.S. government in the 1980s which was used by the solidarity movement to stop the U.S. attack on Nicaragua then.

“Such legal action is difficult for Nicaragua or any other state to take against the U.S. government now since it has a reservation on Article 9 of the Genocide Convention granting the ICJ powers to adjudicate disputes. Other states backing Israel, like Canada, Britain and other European states, as with Germany, are vulnerable to such suits.”

“Claims of Mass Rape by Hamas Unravel Upon Investigation”

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ARUN GUPTA, arun.indypendent@gmail.com, @arunindy
The latest piece by investigative reporter Gupta was just published by YES Magazine: “Claims of Mass Rape by Hamas Unravel Upon Investigation.” His piece “American Media Keep Citing Zaka — Though Its October 7 Atrocity Stories Are Discredited in Israel” was published last month by The Intercept.

Gupta said today: “For more than three months the media and Israeli civil organizations have recycled the same allegations of sexual violence to claim Hamas committed mass rape on Oct. 7. They have treated unsubstantiated allegations of rape as solid proof. But there is zero forensic evidence, zero photo evidence, and no survivor testimony. These dodgy rape claims are being explicitly used by Israel as cover for its total war on Palestinians.

“The Israeli military sent in untrained Zaka volunteers into massacre sites instead of soldiers specially trained to collect human remains and preserve evidence. Once inside, Zaka reportedly turned the sites into a war room for donations, used corpses as fundraising props, and spread accounts of atrocities that never happened. In exchange, the Israeli government got Zaka volunteers to spread fake atrocity stories throughout the media, giving Israel legitimacy to carry out total war against Palestinians.”

For his investigative report published Wednesday by YES Magazine, Gupta interviewed the author of Physician for Human Rights Israel paper widely cited as proof of rape on Oct. 7. In reality, Gupta states, “Hadas Ziv acknowledged numerous problems with the PHRI paper. She admitted many sources had credibility problems, she did not review all available evidence, she was unaware sources had fabricated atrocity stories, and conceded there could be other explanations for instances of sexual violence that she cited. …

“In addition, the PHRI, the controversial New York Times Dec. 28 investigation on Oct. 7 sexual violence, and 10 other media investigations rely on 12 individuals for nearly all claims of rape. Of those 12 individuals, eight fabricated other Oct. 7 atrocities, and all but one are connected to Israeli military and police. Even if you consider all claims credible, they are unsubstantiated claims: There is no photo evidence, no forensic evidence, and no survivor testimony. …

“What’s even more disturbing than media abandoning basic evidentiary standards, these dodgy claims have buried actual gender-based and sexual violence that Israel is committing against Palestinian women and girls, as documented by U.N. experts and women’s groups. The media have the ability to correct their utterly biased reporting, but it is an open question if they are willing to challenge powerful forces to do so.”

Ralph Nader Estimates 200,000 Palestinians Killed in Gaza

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RALPH NADER, via Info@csrl.org, @RalphNader
Available for a limited number of interviews, Nader just wrote the piece “Stop the Worsening UNDERCOUNT of Palestinian Casualties in Gaza,” which states: “Since the Hamas raid penetrated the multi-tiered Israeli border security on October 7, 2023 (an unexplained collapse of Israel’s defensive capabilities), 2.3 million utterly defenseless Palestinians in the tiny crowded Gaza enclave have been on the receiving end of over 65,000 bombs/missiles plus non-stop tank shelling and snipers.

“The extreme right-wing Netanyahu regime has enforced its declared siege of, in its genocidal words, ‘no food, no water, no electricity, no fuel, no medicine.’

“The relentless bombing has destroyed apartment buildings, marketplaces, refugee camps, hospitals, clinics, ambulances, bakeries, schools, mosques, churches, roads, electricity networks, critical water mains — just about everything.

“The U.S.-equipped Israeli war machine has even uprooted agricultural fields, including thousands of olive trees on one farm, bulldozed many cemeteries and bombed civilians fleeing on Israeli orders, while obstructing the few trucks carrying humanitarian aid from Egypt.

“With virtually no healthcare left, no medications, and infectious diseases spreading especially among infants, children, the infirm and the elderly, can anybody believe that the fatalities have just gone over 30,000? With 5,000 babies born every month into the rubble, their mothers wounded and without food, healthcare, medicine and clean water for any of their children, severe skepticism about the Hamas Health Ministry’s official count is warranted.

“Netanyahu and Hamas, which he helped over the years, have a common interest in lowballing the death/injury toll. But for different reasons. …

“The Health Ministry is intentionally conservative, citing that its death toll came from reports only of named deceased by hospitals and morgues. But as the weeks turned into months, blasted, disabled hospitals and morgues cannot keep up with the bodies, or cannot count those slain laying on roadsides in allies and beneath building debris. Yet the Health Ministry remains conservative and the ‘official,’ rising civilian fatality and injury count continues to be uncritically reported by both friend and foe of this devastating Israeli state terrorism. …

“Then came the December 29, 2023, opinion piece in The Guardian by the Chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, Devi Sridhar. She predicted half a million deaths in 2024 if conditions continue unabated.

“In recent days, the situation has become more dire. In the March 2, 2024, Washington Post, reporter, Ishaan Tharoor writes: ‘The bulk of Gaza’s more than 2 million people face the prospect of famine — a state of affairs that constitutes the fastest decline in a population’s nutrition status ever recorded, according to aid workers. Children are starving at the fastest rate the world has ever known. Aid groups have been pointing to Israel restricting the flow of assistance into the territory as a major driver of the crisis. Some prominent Israeli officials openly champion stymying these transfers of aid.’

“Tharoor quotes Jan Egeland, chief of the Norwegian Refugee Council: ‘We must be clear: civilians in Gaza are falling sick from hunger and thirst because of Israel’s entry restrictions.’ ‘Life-saving supplies are being intentionally blocked, and women and children are paying the price.’

“Martin Griffiths, the United Nations lead humanitarian officer, said ‘Life is draining out of Gaza at terrifying speed.'”

Nader cites other sources and then writes: “Yet, and get this, in this article, the Post still stuck with the ‘more than 30,000 people in Gaza have been killed since the ongoing war began.’

“Just like the entire mass media, many governments, even the independent media and critics of the war would have us accept that between 98 percent and 99 percent of Gaza’s entire population has survived — albeit the sick, injured and more Palestinians about to die. This is lethally improbable!

“From accounts of people on the ground, videos and photographs of deadly episode after episode, plus the resultant mortalities from blocking or smashing the crucial necessities of life, a more likely estimate, in my appraisal, is that at least 200,000 Palestinians must have perished by now and the toll is accelerating by the hour. …”

Nader is author of many books including Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile, Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State and most recently, The Rebellious CEO: 12 Leaders Who Did It Right.

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