Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada questions the widespread reporting taking Israel’s claim that it bombed the Palestinian Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza to get a Hamas commander, charging: “The real purpose is to try to scare the population into fleeing. Ethnic cleansing is” Israel’s goal. See regular video updates.

As Secretary of State Blinken testified before Congress, numerous protesters were arrested. See Al Jazeera English livestream.

On Monday, a news conference organized by Portland Jews and Palestinians featured a number of activists and scholars, including Nael Saker, who is from Gaza and has “faced the tragic loss of 39 family members due to the conflict in Gaza.” See audio and video of the news conference. For interviews with any of the participants, contact: William Singer wills@pdxjustice.org.

SAREE MAKDISI, makdisi@humnet.ucla.edu, @sareemakdisi
Makdisi recently wrote the piece “No Human Being Can Exist” which recounts how he used to be invited on programs like the BBC, but no more. He writes: “What we are not allowed to say, as Palestinians speaking to the Western media, is that all life is equally valuable. That no event takes place in a vacuum. That history didn’t start on October 7, 2023. …

“At any moment, without warning, at any time of the day or night, any apartment building in the densely populated Gaza Strip can be struck by an Israeli bomb or missile. Some of the stricken buildings simply collapse into layers of concrete pancakes, the dead and the living alike entombed in the shattered ruins. …”

Makdisi’s books include Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation and Tolerance Is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial. He is professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA. His pieces include “Apartheid” for Critical Inquiry and “The Nakba Is Now” for The Nation.