A “Pause” Isn’t a Ceasefire — and a Ceasefire Isn’t an End to the Siege of Gaza


A lasting peace can only be achieved when the legitimate rights and grievances of Palestinians are addressed.

By Michel Moushabeck , 

TRUTHOUT

November 28, 2023

Palestinian children, sitting in a destroyed house, look at ruins during the temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in the village of Khuza'a near the border fence between Israel and the southern Gaza Strip on November 28, 2023.

MOHAMMED TALATENE / PICTURE ALLIANCE VIA GETTY IMAGES

Like many Palestinians, I’ve been glued to the news during the past 50 days following Israel’s senseless, illegal and immoral genocide in Gaza. Our eyes are filled with painful and horrific images showing massive death and devastation wrought on innocent civilians who lost loved ones — entire families in some cases — homes and dreams. I’ve also watched the terror being inflicted by Israeli soldiers and armed settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem that resulted in the death of 240 Palestinians, 52 of them children, with more than 2,959 injured since October 7.

UNICEF recently warned world leaders about the catastrophic impact of the Israeli bombardment on children and families. “Children are dying at an alarming rate — more than 5,000 have reportedly been killed and thousands more injured. Well over 1.7 million people in the Gaza Strip have been displaced — half of them children,” it reported. “They’re running out of water, food, fuel and medicine. Their homes have been destroyed; their families torn apart.” Doctors Without Borders described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as “dire.” The desperately needed aid trucks that have recently been allowed into Gaza are insufficient for dealing with a humanitarian catastrophe of this magnitude.

Pope Francis also spoke about the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza during his Wednesday general audience in St. Peter’s Square on November 22. He said: “We have gone beyond wars. This is not war. This is terrorism.” He made his comments hours after an agreement was reached between Israel and Hamas for a four-day “humanitarian pause” and a reciprocal exchange of women and child hostages/prisoners.

The four-day, Qatar-mediated “humanitarian pause” that allowed for 50 Israeli hostages and 150 Palestinian captives to be reunited with their families was a welcome reprieve from the relentless bombardment for the people of Gaza. Now extended for two additional days, the temporary truce means that 20 more Israeli captives and 60 Palestinian captives will be released. The United Nations secretary general called this short respite “a glimpse of hope and humanity” as he made an appeal to the Israeli government to open extra passage points for the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza. At the moment, aid trucks are only allowed to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt.

This temporary “pause” — or “pauses,” if they continue to be extended for additional days — is not a permanent ceasefire. It will not bring safety to the people of Gaza; nor will it alleviate their suffering or lessen their grief. It is maddening to think that it took six weeks to arrive at this “pause.” Even during this brief “pause,” Israeli soldiers killed at least eight Palestinians in the West Bank towns of Jenin, Al-Bireh and Yatma, south of Nablus. Moreover, Israel intends to resume its attacks when the pause expires; as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated clearly: “We are at war, and we’ll continue the war until we achieve all our goals: to destroy Hamas, return all our hostages, and ensure that nobody in Gaza can threaten Israel.”

Even if the international community’s mounting pressure prevents such a calamity and brings about a permanent ceasefire, it will not end the suffocating siege that caged Palestinians in Gaza for close to 17 years and got us to where we are now. It will not bring safety, security and lasting peace to Israelis and Palestinians; it will not end the 56-year Israeli occupation or the Palestinian resistance to it; and it will not change the apartheid system that privileges one people over another, uses a brutal form of collective punishment, and denies the rights of Palestinians to freedom and equality. In short, it will not change the status quo.

While Israel’s officially declared objective is the destruction of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, many in the Netanyahu government want to see the Gaza Strip emptied of all its inhabitants. In a November 19 article in The Jerusalem Post, Israeli Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel advocated for “the voluntary resettlement of Palestinians in Gaza, for humanitarian reasons, outside of the Strip.” Note how Israel wants you to believe that it is only proposing the transfer of Palestinians out of Gaza to the Sinai desert “for humanitarian reasons” — because Israeli leaders want you to believe that they care deeply about Palestinians’ safety and well-being.

Israeli Forces Have Still Killed Palestinians Amid 4-Day “Ceasefire”

Officials announced on Monday that the pause will be extended by two days.

By Sharon Zhang , TRUTHOUT   November 27, 2023

Will Israel Be Allowed to Proceed With a Second Nakba?

The U.S. and its Western allies fail to see the real plan, which is no longer a secret: the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the transfer of Palestinians to Sinai. It was leaked a few weeks ago and later confirmed by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi when he spoke of the Israeli attempts to pressure Egypt into accepting the 2.3 million Palestinians into Sinai. Ordering half the population of Gaza to be evacuated to the south, as Israel wiped out neighborhoods and flattened buildings, was the first phase of the transfer strategy to depopulate Gaza. Israel has already announced that displaced Palestinians are not allowed to return to their homes in northern Gaza, which has become a near-total wasteland.

Depriving the Palestinians in Gaza of access to food, water, fuel, electricity and medical supplies will undoubtedly cause the death toll to rise to a level far greater than the more than 14,000 deaths caused by Israeli airstrikes since October 8. The humanitarian disaster has reached terrifying levels with a near-total collapse of Gaza’s health care system due to the destruction of Gaza’s medical facilities, forced closure of and evacuation of hospitals, and the severe shortages of medical supplies in others. Squeezing the 2.3 million inhabitants of Gaza — already living in one of the most densely populated places on Earth — into the southern part of the Strip will no doubt expose the population to an array of diseases.

Palestinians Are Being Killed by Starvation, Dehydration and Disease

In a piece published in the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth on November 22, Giora Eiland, a decorated former head of the Israeli military’s Operations and Planning Division and former head of the National Security Council, proposed disease as an effective method of killing the Palestinian people in Gaza. He wrote: “After all, severe epidemics in the southern Strip will bring victory closer and reduce fatalities among IDF soldiers.” The day after Eiland wrote about his proposal, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy published a piece in Haaretz headlined: “Giora Eiland’s Monstrous Gaza Proposal Is Evil in Plain Sight.”

Whatever plan is underway, it will surely be conducted with the full support of the U.S. government and the blessing of President Joe Biden, who said that Israel has the right to resume its assault on Gaza — although he urged the Israeli prime minister to try to minimize civilian casualties. In a Washington Post op-ed, Biden portrayed Israel’s devastating military assault as a war for democracy and erased the context of 75 years of Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation, apartheid and oppression.
Will Israel Resume Its Imprisonment of Palestinians Soon After the Exchange Has Been Completed?

The 150 prisoners that Israel agreed to release as part of its deal with Hamas and the 60 that will be released as a result of the two-day truce extension are only a small fraction of the 7,200 imprisoned Palestinian hostages languishing in Israeli jails. Since October 7, Israel has drastically escalated its raids on Palestinians in the West Bank and arrested more than 3,000, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, an advocacy group. But even if you don’t trust Palestinian sources and only want to believe the figure of 1,850 new arrests reported by The New York Times, you’ll still be able to see how this number compares with the number of hostages Hamas took on October 7 or the small number Israel agreed to release in the hostage/prisoner exchange.

Every Palestinian family I know has had one or more of its members detained by the Israeli authorities, many of them teenagers accused of throwing stones at Israeli soldiers. About 200 boys, most of them teenagers, were in Israeli detention as of last week, along with about 75 women and five teenage girls, according to Addameer, a Palestinian prisoners’ rights group. Administrative detention, a practice of holding detainees indefinitely without a charge or trial — which Israel claims is an effective counterterrorism measure — is a tool of repression that has long been used by the Israeli state to instill fear among Palestinians and stop them from demanding or exercising their rights. Human rights groups, including Israel’s B’Tselem, and the UN have concluded that Israel’s use of administrative detention is a blatant violation of international law.

Israel is the only developed country in the world that prosecutes minors as young as 12 in military courts. The most common charge is stone-throwing, carrying a 20-year prison sentence. The United Nations estimates that since Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in 1967, it has detained “approximately one million Palestinians in the occupied territory, including tens of thousands of children.”

There Is No Military Solution to the Palestine/Israel Crisis

No matter how superior an army, navy and air force Israel has; no matter how much destruction, devastation and human suffering it can wreak on Palestinian civilians; and no matter how many UN vetoes the U.S. uses to shield Israel from accountability, it will not succeed in suppressing the Palestinian people’s quest for freedom and equality. It will not be able to crush their determination to continue their resistance until their freedom is achieved.

In the absence of justice, there will be protests, riots and intifadas. The tide is turning and Palestinians today have greater support globally — especially among the younger generation — than ever before. I am in awe of thousands of young protesters who are organizing and coming together in this critical moment in Middle East history. The massive protests in major cities and on university campuses around the world have shown us “youth power” in numbers we have not seen before. Palestinians have also received overwhelming support and recognition of the State of Palestine among members of the UN General Assembly, and especially among countries of the Global South. It is only the U.S. (and a handful of allies) that has always used its veto power to prevent any resolution condemning Israeli actions.

The current system of apartheid is not sustainable. The sooner the Israeli government — and its enablers the U.S., U.K. and EU — accept the fact that Israeli safety and security cannot be achieved by military force, the better the chances of a negotiated settlement become. A lasting peace can only be achieved when the legitimate rights and grievances of the Palestinians are addressed. Palestinians will not give up on their aspiration of living in their homes, on their land, in dignity, equality, and without fear.

November 29 is the 46th anniversary of the United Nations’ International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people. On this day in 2012, the General Assembly voted overwhelmingly — 138 in favor to 9 against — to accord Palestine “Non-Member Observer State” status at the United Nations.

In his message issued in advance of tomorrow’s International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people, the UN secretary general said, “[T]his is a day for reaffirming international solidarity with the Palestinian people and their right to live in peace and dignity.” He added:

It is long past time to move in a determined, irreversible way towards a two-State solution, on the basis of United Nations resolutions and international law, with Israel and Palestine living side-by-side in peace and security with Jerusalem as the capital of both States.

The United Nations will not waver in its commitment to the Palestinian people. Today and every day, let us stand in solidarity with the aspirations of the Palestinian people to achieve their inalienable rights and build a future of peace, justice, security and dignity for all.

For over five decades, the United States has acted as an obstacle to peace — denying Palestinians their rights. Since October 7, the U.S. has continued to be a major hurdle to saving lives, refusing to demand an immediate ceasefire. The U.S. can no longer play the role of honest broker in any future negotiations to resolve the crisis and achieve a lasting peace in the region. In order to have a negotiated settlement that would allow Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and security — in a homeland free from apartheid and oppression — this task now needs to be taken up solely by the United Nations.

Copyright © Truthout. 

MICHEL MOUSHABECK is a Palestinian American writer, editor, translator and musician. He is the founder and publisher of Interlink Publishing, a 36-year-old, Massachusetts-based, independent publishing house. Follow him on Instagram: @ReadPalestine.
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Struggle and Solidarity: Writing Toward Palestinian Liberation
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How Corporate Media Helped Lay the Groundwork for Israel’s Genocide in Gaza


Corporate media outlets have treated Palestinian suffering as a nonstory for many decades.

By Andy Lee Roth & Mickey Huff , 

TRUTHOUT

December 2, 2023

A news anchor waits for a broadcast during the third day of the temporary ceasefire on November 25, 2023, in Tel Aviv, Israel.

ALEXI J. ROSENFELD / GETTY IMAGE

Gaza has continued to capture news headlines since the Hamas attacks on October 7 and the beginning of Israel’s increasingly disproportionate military response, which has brought the full might of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to bear on Palestinian civilians and children, prompting serious allegations of war crimes and genocide. “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly,” Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, infamously stated.

But, for decades, U.S. corporate media have treated Gaza’s inhabitants as nonpersons, and daily life in Gaza as non-news. News media omissions often function as tacit permission for abuses of power. Corporate media didn’t create the violent, inhumane conditions in Gaza, but their shameful legacy of narrow, pro-Israel coverage indirectly laid the groundwork for the atrocious human suffering taking place there now.

The corporate media’s extended erasure of Gaza and its inhabitants is certainly rooted in the tacit (and sometimes overt) racism that distorts much news coverage of the Middle East in general and Palestine in particular. For example, Holly Jackson of the University of California, Berkeley, conducted a content analysis of reports published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, from October 7 to October 22, 2023, and found disproportionate coverage of Israeli deaths compared to Palestinian ones and marked differences in the language used to describe those deaths.

But misleading coverage is also a result of corporate news outlets’ relentless, myopic focus on novel, dramatic events rather than long-term, systemic issues. As media critics Robert Hackett and Richard Gruneau noted in The Missing News (2000), for corporate media, “News is about what went wrong today, not what goes wrong every day.”

Corporate Media Outlets Are Obscuring Settler Colonialism in Their Gaza Coverage

It is impossible to accurately grasp the current situation without discussing the concept of settler colonialism. By John Collins , TRUTHOUT October 11, 2023

For decades, Project Censored has highlighted slant, marginalization and outright censorship in mainstream U.S. news coverage of Israel and Palestine — in effect, the long-term buildup to what Alan MacLeod has described as a pro-Israel, anti-Palestine “propaganda blitz” by corporate media since October 7.

Corporate media have failed to cover Israel’s repression of Palestinian media and the efforts of Canary Mission and other Zionist organizations to stifle free speech and to blacklist advocates of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), while censoring efforts to expose the pervasive influence of pro-Israel lobbying. Historically, U.S. corporate media have failed to adequately cover continuing human rights abuses in Palestine, including the detention of Palestinian children; how private corporations profit from Israeli occupation; and the role of the World Bank in funding the West Bank apartheid wall — not to mention U.S. complicity in providing arms used for war crimes. The violence since October 7 has brought new attention to many of these issues, but when Project Censored originally highlighted these stories, each had been either marginalized or altogether silenced by the establishment press.

For decades, U.S. corporate media have treated Gaza’s inhabitants as nonpersons, and daily life in Gaza as non-news.

Notably, each of these stories — which were covered by independent journalists and news outlets — addressed ongoing, systemic issues rather than single, discrete events. The Israeli blockade of Gaza, for example, dates back to 2005-2006, and has been permanent since 2007, when Hamas took political control of the strip. But as exemplified by 2014 reporting about Israel restricting food imports to Gaza — effectively using hunger to coerce Palestinians in Gaza to reject Hamas — the daily realities of state violence and ethnic subjugation are not typically deemed newsworthy by U.S. corporate media outlets.

Like the violence that’s made headlines since October 7, the erasure of Palestinians by establishment news outlets in the United States is nothing new. To assess how U.S. news readers have been “encouraged to think about Palestinians,” historian Maha Nassar, the author of Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World, examined 50 years of editorials, staff columns and guest opinion pieces published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic and The Nation. Nassar found that the most prominent U.S. news outlets “hosted thousands of opinion pieces on Israel-Palestine over 50 years,” but “hardly any were actually written by Palestinians.” For example, less than 2 percent of the 2,490 opinion pieces that The New York Times published from 1970 to 2019 were authored by Palestinians. As a result, Nassar observed, “readers’ views were shaped by columnists whose copious opinion pieces about Palestinians ranged from the annoyingly condescending to the outright racist.”

From the opinion section to headline news reports, Western news outlets have failed to adhere to basic journalistic standards in covering the violence in Gaza and the West Bank since October 7. News reports marred by egregious examples of mistranslation and failures to convey the context of events exemplify this failure. “Terms such as ‘unprovoked attack’ often ignore prior events,” the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association cautions in its media guide for newsrooms that seek to provide accurate and critical coverage of Israel and Palestine.

“Take note of when reporters tell you the latest violence ‘started,’” Peter Hart of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting advised back in 2012, “They’re picking a starting point for a reason.” Nevertheless, corporate news outlets continue to present timelines that position Israel as responding to Palestinian violence. This conventional frame reinforces biased distinctions between “worthy” and “unworthy” victims.

Corporate news outlets tend to ignore or provide only intermittent and superficial coverage of news about journalism itself. Coverage of violence in Gaza since October 7 has unfortunately followed this pattern. The corporate press have not adequately covered the killing of reporters in Gaza and the West Bank. Nevertheless, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reports that Israel’s war on Gaza has taken a “severe toll” on journalists. As of November 30, preliminary investigations by CPJ documented at least 57 journalists and media workers among those killed since the current phase of conflict erupted on October 7. Another 11 journalists were reported injured, three reported missing, and 19 reported arrested. The CPJ report duly noted that the IDF informed Reuters and AFP that it “cannot guarantee” the safety of their journalists operating in Gaza.


Western news outlets have failed to adhere to basic journalistic standards in covering the violence in Gaza and the West Bank since October 7.

U.S.-based journalists have faced different threats. Alan MacLeod reported that CNN, The Hill and the Associated Press have all fired staff members for crossing red lines by advocating for a free Palestine or characterizing Israel as an apartheid state. As Truthout reported, MSNBC dropped Mehdi Hasan’s show after he stood out as one of the only news anchors on a major broadcast outlet to publicly oppose Israel’s brutality. Previously, Truthout reported, Israel had considered barring Al Jazeera journalists from covering Israel’s war on Palestinians. Condemnation by press freedom advocates appears to have forestalled this aim, but Israel has throttled the flow of information about events in Gaza in other, more sweeping ways.

On October 13, the nonprofit organization Access Now reported that Israel was imposing an internet blackout on the Gaza Strip, which the global digital rights organization called out as “an attack on human rights.” As a result of the “near-complete blackout” of all communications, “access to information has become scarce, directly impacting the capacity to document atrocities perpetrated on the ground,” Access Now reported.

On October 27, as Israel prepared for a ground invasion of Gaza, Access Now issued a joint statement with the Arab Alliance for Digital Rights calling for an “immediate reversal” of the ongoing “total communications blackout.” The statement noted that Israeli airstrikes had targeted telecommunication installations, “destroying two of the three main lines for mobile communication” and “leaving 11 internet service providers operating in Gaza now completely shut down due to infrastructural damage.” As Project Censored has previously reported, based on past work by Global Access and other digital rights organizations, internet shutdowns often provide cover for atrocities.

Although establishment press outlets, including The Washington Post and The New York Times, have covered Israel’s communications blackout of Gaza, there have been two basic problems with this reporting. First, there was a lag of nearly two weeks between the first alarms sounded by digital rights groups and the newspapers’ coverage. Second, and perhaps more damning, is that even that tardy coverage has used language that diminishes the blackout’s consequences. The Washington Post’s October 30 report, for example, ran with a headline saying that internet disruptions “caused problems in Gaza over the weekend.” As if the issue were interrupted Netflix streams, rather than access to emergency services and trustworthy information.

While Biden administration officials claim the U.S. is “unable to exert significant influence” on Israel, even as the U.S. simultaneously maneuvers to undertake a next round of arms deals with Israel “in complete secrecy” without congressional oversight, the American public continues to be left in the dark — not only about the extent and balance of violence in Gaza, but also the United States’ role in “supporting a military that experts say has been committing war crimes in Gaza and beyond.”

As Israel’s assault on Gaza escalates without respect for international law, this is grim, deadly business. Though it may seem inconsequential, bolstering support for truly independent news outlets that provide diverse, critical and trustworthy reporting in the public interest has never been more important or, potentially, consequential. Compared with corporate news outlets, independent news outlets — including Truthout, where you’re reading this article — not only employ more inclusive definitions of who and what count as “newsworthy,” they also act as powerful checks on the official narratives and atrocity propaganda peddled, with disturbing regularity, by their corporate counterparts.

ANDY LEE ROTH is associate director of Project Censored, a news watch organization that promotes independent journalism and critical media literacy education. With Mickey Huff, he co-edited Project Censored’s newest yearbook, State of the Free Press 2024, to be published by The Censored Press and Seven Stories Press on December 5, 2023.

MICKEY HUFF is the director of Project Censored, a news watch organization that promotes independent journalism and critical media literacy education. With Andy Lee Roth, he co-edited Project Censored’s newest yearbook, State of the Free Press 2024, to be published by The Censored Press and Seven Stories Press on December 5, 2023.
Media’s Selective Moral Outrage Manufactures Consent for Palestinian Genocide

Western support for Israel is not merely about Israel itself but is also about setting a new international norm.

By Jamil Khader ,

TRUTHOUT

October 18, 2023

Supporters of Palestine demonstrate outside of BBC Alba to condemn the recent fighting in Gaza on October 14, 2023, in Glasgow, Scotland.

JEFF J MITCHELL / GETTY IMAGES

In a viral post on X, former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis ignited an intense debate about selective condemnation and moral outrage surrounding Israel’s massive bombardment of Gaza, which the Palestinian envoy to the United Nations described as “nothing less than genocidal.” Varoufakis stated:

I condemn every killing with equal passion. What I refuse to do is to join the ritualistic condemnation of one side whose very purpose is to take the side of a state cynically, intertemporally and brutally imposing Apartheid over many decades. This is no different to 1981 when as Anti-Apartheid demonstrators in London we were being pushed by the British media to condemn the [African National Congress] for necklacing (a horrible practice indeed) – a condemnation sought by those who sought to undermine the Anti-Apartheid struggle at a time, lest we forget, Nelson Mandela was branded by the US, UK & Israeli gvts a terrorist.

In the case of the anti-apartheid struggle in the 1980s, necklacing was an extrajudicial killing that became notorious in South Africa. Varoufakis highlights the complexities and ethical dilemmas that often arise in resistance movements, particularly when they are up against oppressive regimes.

His statement was condemned by liberals and some leftists as antisemitic because he allegedly refused to “condemn the killing of babies just because they are Jews.” Varoufakis, however, points out that the call to condemn Hamas in a one-sided statement was not simply a call to denounce violence. It was a strategic move designed to delegitimize the broader struggle for freedom in Palestine.

Varoufakis’s post criticizes the selective moral outrage that often characterizes public discourse on what some refer to as complex geopolitical issues. However, as Israel’s military offensive has morphed into a genocidal war and Israel’s “moral high ground” dwindles, selective expressions of moral condemnation have taken on a political meaning that manufactures public consent and provides cover for Israel’s violations of international law.

More Than 1,000 Gazan Children Are Dead. How Can We Even Begin to Mourn?

In my career as a Gazan American physician, I’ve delivered 1,000 babies. Israel has killed that many children in a week.

By Dana Elborno , TRUTHOUT

October 17, 2023

Selective moral posturing is primarily mobilized as a smokescreen for Israel’s territorial expansion as well as Western neo-imperial agendas, in which the settler-colonial Jewish apartheid ethnocratic state occupies a central position.
The Perverted Ethics of Moral Posturing

In an article in London Review of Books published in the aftermath of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, the Jewish American philosopher Judith Butler argues that selective moral outrage obscures the pain and suffering of other victims as well as the structural injustices that give rise to violence in the first place. They (Butler) maintain that contextualizing violence is not the same as relativizing or downplaying violence.

Butler addresses the ethics of selective condemnation within the limits of Western media’s framing of the Palestinian struggle for freedom. They criticize the way certain selective discourses are used to dehumanize Palestinians, arguing that this language perpetuates colonial racism and makes it easier to justify violence against those who are portrayed as “less than human.”

Butler’s point is that selective condemnation is not a genuine expression of ethical principles, because it does not ask for a nuanced understanding of what exactly is being condemned. They maintain that educating ourselves about “the history of colonial violence” in Palestine should not threaten our moral position.

The manipulation of photos of Palestinian victims by Hollywood celebrities and the use of AI-powered apps to express solidarity with the very forces responsible for Palestinian victimization are glaring examples of the absurdity and perversity of these selective expressions of moral indignation. The fact that Jamie Lee Curtis and Justin Bieber were under the “mistaken belief” that the images they posted were from Israel just shows the extent to which these condemnations rely on ignorance.

The layers of irony here are hard to miss. It’s not only that, as Butler suggests, morally indignant people ought to understand the “political formations” that they oppose; they should critically examine the formations they support. Moreover, their gimmick inadvertently shows the truth of “false equivalence” in the Palestinian struggle for freedom that Israeli hasbara tries to distort through messages about symmetry between Israel, the most powerful military power in the Middle East, and the Palestinian people.

Finally, Israeli lies about Hamas “decapitating babies” must be read not only in the context of antisemitic blood libel accusations used against European Jewry; they should also be read in relation to the lies about Iraqi soldiers, who were falsely accused of snatching “babies out of incubators” in Kuwaiti hospitals. These lies helped build public support for the United States’ invasion of Kuwait in 1991 and the destruction of Iraq in the Gulf War.

Politicizing Condemnation: The New Nakba

Butler’s ethical position should be supplemented by Varoufakis’s insistence on politicizing these ritualistic condemnations. For one, Butler seems to demand a clear moral position without ambiguity. But there is a clear difference between Varoufakis and Butler on the tension between political diversity and violence. While Varoufakis seems to accept violent forms of resistance within emancipatory movements, Butler recognizes the diversity of Palestinian groups while envisioning a future where groups like Hamas could be “dissolved or superseded by groups with non-violent aspirations for cohabitation.”

More importantly, Varoufakis seems to suggest that ritualistic condemnations are not primarily about upholding ethical or legal standards, but rather serve to further Israel’s geopolitical aims and Western neo-imperial hegemony. In the context of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, such righteous condemnation is meant to not only overshadow the broader struggle against systemic injustice and oppression; it also functions as a smokescreen for Israel’s territorial expansion.

It has become clear that Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza is a part of the Zionist settler-colonial project and Israeli territorial expansion grounded in a protracted ethnic cleansing and displacement. This is not, as some believe, a war between extremists on both sides, or an attempt to resolve the internal contradictions in the settler-colonial apartheid state that resulted from the rise of a messianic Zionist settler movement.

Zionism is project hell-bent on wiping “human animals” from the earth and occupying their land. Israel’s emergency government includes extremists who have been calling for another Nakba. As Knesset member Ariel Kallner made clear, there is “one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of [19]48.” Meanwhile, Israeli President Isaac Herzog blamed all Gazans for the Hamas attack, bringing to the forefront Israel’s disdain for the value of indigenous civilian life in Palestine.

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza is clearly expansionary. In settler-colonial logic, “self-defense” is code word for territorial expansion. In a recent interview, Israeli Minister Gideon Sa’ar said Gaza “must be smaller at the end of the war” and that “whoever starts a war against Israel must lose territory.” He explained that “they do have to pay the price of loss,” in order to “impose a security cordon” and tighten the siege on the Gaza Strip.

Moreover, these colonial expansion plans have been accompanied by evacuation orders that aim at emptying Gaza of its Indigenous inhabitants. Last week, Israel ordered 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza to flee south. This evacuation must be understood in the context of Israeli policies of population transfer, displacement and ethnic cleansing that aim to eradicate the Indigenous population and replace it with settlers.

The political analyst Talal Awkal drew parallels between the mass exodus of Palestinians in 1948 and 2023, calling both events a Nakba, “You look at those pictures of people without cars, on donkeys, hungry and barefoot, getting out any way they can to go to the south.” He added, “They are displacing an entire population from its homeland.”

There are already voices in Israel calling for razing Gaza and creating a natural reserve in its place. This is a form of settler-colonial greenwashing at its best. Only a settler colonizer can advocate for environmental preservation while calling for the erasure of an Indigenous people. Clearly, in this fascist ideology, neither the Indigenous “human animals” nor their animals are deemed fit for such natural reserves.
Western Hegemony and Rewriting International Law

In this context, ritualistic condemnation becomes a tool not only to advance Israel’s Zionist settler-colonial project but also Western interests, in which Israel’s military and surveillance technology are instrumental. It reveals the geopolitical interests that often underlie moral posturing on the international stage.

It’s enough to contrast the reactions of European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to Israel’s attack on Gaza and to the Russian invasion of Ukraine to see how these geopolitical interests shape selective moral condemnations. Amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, von der Leyen labeled Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure that aim to “[cut] off men, women and children of water, electricity and heating” despite the cold winter “war crimes” and “acts of pure terror.” The same actions by Israel were endorsed and supported.

Further, the viciousness of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza is meant to compensate for its humiliation by rehabilitating its mythic military aura as an impregnable fortress in the eyes of neocolonial powers and the subsidiary regimes that have become dependent on it. David Lloyd, a founding member of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, put it correctly when he wrote:


[Israel’s] desperate descent into extremism and settler rage belongs with the supremacist logic that founded the Zionist state: a settler colonial enterprise, grounded in the assumption of racial superiority and unsustainable without a perpetual demographic war against its indigenous population, necessarily resorts to ever more brutal and unconcealed outrages in order to sustain its supremacy.

Israel, as journalist and author Antony Loewenstein shows, has been exporting its advanced militarized counterinsurgency methods, surveillance technologies and ethnocratic ideology to countries around the world, which use them in turn to repress dissidents, refugees and oppressed communities. These technologies are usually first tested in the occupied Palestinian territories before they are exported to the world in exchange for money and political support in international organizations.

More importantly, Israel’s military actions, supported by Western powers, serve as a signal to other global actors who dare defy the international hegemonic order. This includes both regional players in the Arab world and international actors like Iran and North Korea.

For this reason, Israeli commentators and Western observers and officials have framed Israel’s genocidal war within Samuel Huntington’s defunct “clash of civilizations” paradigm. Underlying this rhetoric is a fearmongering campaign based on Islamophobia and the racialized representation of Palestinians and Muslims in general as “human animals.”

The Israeli TV Channel13 has been using an “Israel Now, the West is Next” disinformation campaign, with deep fake imagined attacks on major European cities. Moreover, an opinion piece in Ynetnews equates Israel’s war with “the war of the Free World.” The op-ed claims that Israel is at the forefront of the battle between the free world and the Jihadist movement, and calls for unity in defeating the “axis of evil” led by Iran. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham toed this same line by claiming that, “They [Iran and Hamas] want to destroy the Jewish state. We’re in a religious war and I unapologetically Stand with Israel.”

Republican presidential candidates also wasted no time in weaponizing this Islamophobic language. Republican presidential hopefuls Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy want to crack down on Muslims in ruthless campaigns, with comments amounting to if it could happen to Israel, it could happen here. This kind of rhetoric has already claimed the life of a 6-year-old Palestinian boy in Illinois.

One-sided Western support for Israel is not merely about Israel itself but, as journalist and author Jonathan Cook writes, is also about setting a new international norm. By backing Israel’s actions, Western politicians are implicitly endorsing a new set of rules that could benefit their states in the future. While the killing of civilians on both sides is a violation of international law, Israeli leaders’ declarations reveal genocidal intent as defined by Article 6 of the Rome Statute. International law does not permit Israel to commit war crimes against civilians in retaliation for Hamas’s actions.

Rewriting international law serves a dual purpose: First, it provides Israel with the latitude to conduct military operations as it sees fit. Second, it offers Western nations a cover to sidestep international legal restrictions that they themselves might wish to avoid in the future.

Any progress in the Palestinian struggle for freedom requires confronting the role of the Western powers, especially the U.S., in enabling Israeli hegemony and the destruction of the Palestinian people. In a telling move, according to HuffPost, the U.S. State Department sent a memo discouraging diplomats from using from using three specific phrases: “de-escalation/ceasefire,” “end the violence/ bloodshed” and “restoring calm.”

The Western plans for a new Middle East are clearly based on the disappearance of the Palestinians or their absorption in neighboring countries. However, as Cook and Loewenstein aptly put it, the battlefield extends beyond the geographical confines of Israel and Gaza. Underlying the geopolitical scene is the pervasive excrementalization of racialized bodies under the necro-capitalist regime. It is a larger struggle against divisive necro-capitalist ideologies that categorize humanity and “human animals,” the mournable and ungrievable, the privileged and the “worst-off.” If we allow these ideologies to prevail, as Cook writes, “they’ll make Palestinians of us all.

JAMIL KHADER Ph.D., is dean of research and professor of English at Bethlehem University.

CENSORED & BANNED IN AMERIKA

MSNBC Drops Mehdi Hasan’s Show as He Speaks Out for Palestinian Rights

Hasan has been one of the only news anchors on a major broadcast outlet speaking up against Israel’s brutality.

By Sharon Zhang , TRUTHOUTPublishedNovember 30, 2023

Journalist Mehdi Hasan during an interview with host Seth Meyers on December 5, 2018.

LLOYD BISHOP / NBCU PHOTO BANK / NBCUNIVERSAL VIA GETTY IMAGES

MSNBC announced to staff on Thursday that the network is canceling Mehdi Hasan’s weekend show, delivering a major demotion to one of the most prominent and outspoken left-leaning news hosts on a major broadcast outlet on the air.

According to Semafor, which cited two sources familiar with the move, Hasan’s show on the network and on its streaming service, Peacock, has been canceled. “Mehdi Hasan Show” writer Adam Weinstein also confirmed the news on social media. Instead, Semafor reported, Hasan will only appear on air as an analyst or when filling in for another host. The network is expanding host Ayman Mohyeldin’s show to fill in the time slot.

Hasan, who formerly worked for Al Jazeera English and The Intercept, has hosted the “Mehdi Hasan Show” since 2020. He has gained a strong following as a candid and forthright host and interviewer, and clips of him interrogating or debating public figures, often right-wing ones, have frequently gone viral, with fans noting his powerful ability to persuade.

Lately, and in years past, Hasan has been vocal in his criticism of Israel’s military and its apartheid against Palestinians — and of U.S. wars in the Middle East — in a media landscape that is otherwise relentlessly jingoistic, Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian.

Since Israel’s current genocide in Gaza began in October, Hasan has been highlighting the horrific conditions faced by Palestinians in Gaza; challenging Israeli officials on propagandist lies; criticizing the Israeli military strategy for its potential to stoke further violence from Hamas forces against Israelis; and even gesturing toward the accuracy of the word “genocide” and “apartheid” to describe Israel’s ongoing massacre in Gaza and decades-long oppression of Palestinians, which corporate media outlets have strayed far away from in other reporting.

Corporate Media Outlets Are Obscuring Settler Colonialism in Their Gaza Coverage

It is impossible to accurately grasp the current situation without discussing the concept of settler colonialism. By John Collins , TRUTHOUTOctober 11, 2023

“You accept that right, you’ve killed children?” Hasan asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu adviser Mark Regev in a particularly revealing interview earlier this month.

“No I do not,” Regev said. “First of all, you do not know how those people died.”

MSNBC also quietly and briefly took Hasan’s show off the air following Hamas’s attack in October, while taking two of its other Muslim anchors, Mohyeldin and Ali Velshi, out of their anchor roles temporarily. This sparked accusations of Islamophobia among MSNBC leaders from critics.

The reported cancellation of Hasan’s show has similarly caused outrage, with left-wing commentators saying that Hasan was both a unique on screen talent and a critical voice on the left and on the topic of Gaza in the sphere of corporate media.

“[MSNBC], make this make sense,” wrote human rights lawyer Noura Erakat. “[Mehdir Hasan]’s program has felt like an oasis on air and more needed than ever. His program with Mark Regev was a whole class on journalistic method. He should be amplified, not shut down.”

“It is bad optics for MSNBC to cancel [Mehdi Hasan]’s show right at a time when he is vocal for human rights in Gaza with the war ongoing,” wrote Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California). “MSNBC owes the public an explanation for this decision. Why would they choose to do this now?”

Criminalization of First Amendment-Protected Pro-Palestinian Speech Is Spreading

As Israel ramps up its genocide of Palestinians, the critical voices that most need to be heard are being silenced.  By Huma Yasin ,   TRUTHOUT   November 14, 2023

Several commentators pointed out the similarity to MSNBC’s 2003 firing of host Phil Donahue, whose prime-time show was canceled after internal documents criticized Donahue for his strong anti-war viewpoints as the U.S. was embarking on its war in Iraq. In an interview with Democracy Now! in 2013, Donahue explained that MSNBC executives would not tolerate anti-war voices on air.

“Well, I think what happened to me, the biggest lesson, I think, is the — how corporate media shapes our opinions and our coverage. This was a decision — my decision — the decision to release me came from far above. This was not an assistant program director who decided to separate me from MSNBC. They were terrified of the antiwar voice. And that is not an overstatement,” he said.

“And if you’re General Electric, you certainly don’t want an antiwar voice on a cable channel that you own; Donald Rumsfeld is your biggest customer,” Donahue continued. “So, by the way, I had to have two conservatives on for every liberal. I could have Richard Perle on alone, but I couldn’t have Dennis Kucinich on alone. I was considered two liberals. It really is funny almost, when you look back on how — how the management was just frozen by the antiwar voice. We were scolds. We weren’t patriotic. American people disagreed with us. And we weren’t good for business.”

The brain can exhibit signs of consciousness long after the heart stops, study finds

HENCE THE TIME OF THE TIBETAN BARDOS

2023/11/25


A study examining individuals who survived cardiac arrest revealed that approximately one-third reported memories and perceptions during this period, suggesting consciousness. Some recounted regaining consciousness during or after cardiopulmonary resuscitation, while others described dream-like or transcendent experiences related to death. Importantly, the research team also found that the brain can exhibit signs of activity even after the heart has ceased to beat. The study was published in Resuscitation.

Cardiac arrest is when the heart suddenly stops beating. It is typically caused by an electrical disturbance in the heart that disrupts its normal pumping rhythm. When this happens, the blood flow to vital organs, including the brain, stops. This can result in unconsciousness and death if not promptly treated. Cardiac arrest differs from a heart attack, which is caused by a blockage in the blood vessels supplying the heart muscle.

In the United States, between 350,000 and 750,000 people experience cardiac arrest annually, with only about 10% surviving. Although individuals in cardiac arrest typically appear unconscious, about one-third of survivors report conscious experiences during this period. Previous studies have been inconclusive in determining whether these experiences reflect actual awareness of their surroundings.

Study authors Sam Parnia and his colleagues wanted to examine the cognitive experiences of survivors of cardiac arrest. They wanted to categorize the types of experiences reported, but also establish electroencephalography biomarkers that would show whether and when a person in cardiac arrest is emerging from coma and becoming conscious. The authors of this study hoped that this would help them determine when such a person is experiencing lucid cognitive activity as well.

The research team identified 567 patients who suffered cardiac arrest in 25 hospitals. During resuscitation, they placed a tablet computer and headphones on the patients, displaying images and playing sounds (e.g., words for fruits like apple, pear, and banana), to test for post-arrest memory recall.

Of these individuals, medical staff were able to restore circulation in 213 of them, but only 53 or a bit over 9% survived long enough to be discharged from the hospital. Survivors of cardiac arrest were more often male than female and younger. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation lasted 26 minutes on average, but individual duration varied a lot.

Interviews were conducted with 28 survivors about their conscious experiences during cardiac arrest. Eleven reported memories and perceptions indicative of consciousness, despite showing no external signs of consciousness like groaning or moving. These experiences included emerging from coma during or after resuscitation, and dream-like or transcendent experiences.

The experiences reported by these 11 individuals could be grouped into four categories: 1.) emerging from coma during or 2.) after resuscitation, 3.) dream-like experiences, and 4.) recollections of death. An additional 126 survivors were interviewed, revealing similar experiences, plus delusional misinterpretations of medical events. For instance, the sensation from an intravenous line was misinterpreted as burning in hell.

Participants who emerged from coma during resuscitation typically described the impact of the procedure on their bodies. They talked about feeling electrodes, pain, pressure, bouncing from chest compressions or hearing conversations by clinicians during this period. Those who emerged from coma after resuscitation typically talked about memories from the intensive care unit.

Individuals who recalled experiences of death talked about perceptions of separation from the body, often with a recognition that they have died, having visual awareness of the situation from the perspective of people doing the resuscitation, doing a purposeful and educational reevaluation of their life and returning to a place like home. These experiences were typically completed with a decision to return to their bodies.

Dreamlike experiences included visions of rainbows, fish, igloo, humanoid beings, wooden houses and other themes. However, researchers could not identify commonalities in these experiences and they did not seem to follow a story arc.

The researchers also conducted a substudy involving brain monitoring using EEG, or electroencephalography, a method used to record the electrical activity of the brain. EEG data were collected from 85 subjects during CPR, but only 53 of these had interpretable EEG data due to issues like electrical interference and motion artifact.

The EEG data showed various patterns. Predominantly, there was an absence of cortical brain activity (suppressed EEG) in 47% of the data/images. Seizure-like (epileptiform) activity was observed in about 5% of the data/images. Importantly, signs of near-normal or physiological EEG activity consistent with consciousness were also observed, including delta and theta activity in 22% and 12% of the data/images respectively, alpha activity in 6%, and beta activity in 1%.

In a subset of patients, brain activity returned to normal, or nearly normal, from a flatline state during CPR, as indicated by the presence of gamma, delta, theta, alpha, and beta waves associated with higher mental function. This occurred in nearly 40% of the patients and was observed up to 35–60 minutes into CPR. This is the first report of such biomarkers of consciousness during cardiac arrest and CPR.

“While unrecognized, people undergoing cardiac arrest may have consciousness, awareness and cognitive experiences despite absent visible signs of consciousness. Although systematic studies have not been able to absolutely prove the reality or meaning of patients’ experiences and claims of awareness in relation to death, it has been impossible to disclaim them either. The recalled experience surrounding death now merits further genuine empirical investigation without prejudice,” the study authors concluded.

The study sheds light on possible conscious experiences of individuals undergoing cardiac arrest. However, it should be noted that the results are based only on experiences of individuals who survived cardiac arrest while remaining in sufficiently good health to give interviews. In addition, none of the 28 interviewed survivors recalled the images presented during cardiac arrest, and only one recalled the sounds.

The paper, “AWAreness during REsuscitation – II: A multicenter study of consciousness and awareness in cardiac arrest”, was authored by Sam Parnia, Tara Keshavarz Shirazi, Jignesh Patel, Linh Tran, Niraj Sinha, Caitlin O’Neill, Emma Roellke, Amanda Mengotto, Shannon Findlay, Michael McBrine, Rebecca Spiegel, Thaddeus Tarpey, Elise Huppert, Ian Jaffe, Anelly M. Gonzales, Jing Xu, Emmeline Koopman, Gavin D. Perkins, Alain Vuylsteke, Benjamin M. Bloom, Heather Jarman, Hiu Nam Tong, Louisa Chan, Michael Lyaker, Matthew Thomas, Veselin Velchev, Charles B. Cairns, Rahul Sharma, Erik Kulstad, Elizabeth Scherer, Terence O’Keeffe, Mahtab Foroozesh, Olumayowa Abe, Chinwe Ogedegbe, Amira Girgis, Deepak Pradhan, and Charles D. Deakin.

© PsyPost

Forensic anthropologists work to identify human skeletal remains and uncover their stories

The Conversation
November 24, 2023 

Crime scene tape (Shutterstock.com)

A seasoned deer hunter is shocked when his hound dog trots up with a human femur clenched between its teeth. A woman veers off her normal urban walking path and happens upon a human skull. New property owners commission a land survey that reveals a set of human remains just below a pile of leaves.

These examples are real cases handled by coroners’ offices where we have assisted as forensic anthropologists.

What happens after someone inadvertently discovers a human body? How are human skeletal remains identified? It can be a major effort, requiring collaboration across law enforcement, forensic anthropologists and death investigators to uncover the identities of the unidentified dead and help bring justice to people who were victims of foul play.

There are nearly 15,000 open cases in the United States involving unidentified people, according to the Department of Justice’s National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, a centralized database and resource for unidentified, missing and unclaimed people. This is an underestimate, though, because there is no universal reporting requirement across agencies. Many practicing forensic anthropologists work hard to alleviate what’s routinely referred to as the “nation’s silent mass disaster” – the crisis of so many missing and unidentified individuals.

A specialized branch of anthropology

Anthropology is the holistic study of human culture, environment and biology across time and space. Biological anthropology focuses on the physiological aspects of people and our nonhuman primate relatives. It considers topics ranging from the evolutionary history of our species to the analysis of ancient and modern skeletal remains. Forensic anthropology is a further subspecialty that analyzes skeletal remains of the recently deceased within a legal setting.


In field school courses, future forensic anthropologists learn from models about what can be gleaned from skeletal discoveries. Katherine Weisensee, CC BY-ND

Forensic anthropologists are trained in identifying human skeletal remains. They use scientific techniques to identify deceased people whose faces are unrecognizable – often referred to as “Jane and John Does.” Forensic anthropologists’ skills allow them to interpret from skeletons the trauma and disease a person suffered in life, as well as estimate when that person died.

One of us is employed as a postdoctoral research fellow as well as a forensic anthropologist and deputy coroner through a county coroner’s office; the other is a university professor who responds to local forensic scenes on an as-needed, consulting basis. The realities of forensic anthropology casework are often misrepresented by crime and mystery movies and shows, but our positions reflect how a lot of practicing forensic anthropologists are employed in the United States.

Outside of local work, forensic anthropologists travel to sites of political violence, mass disasters such as the tragedies of 9/11 or the collapse of the Surfside condo building in Miami, and events like the devastating fires in Maui. Normal procedures for handling deaths can quickly become overwhelmed during crises; burial of the dead can take priority over identification, as has been occurring in Gaza.
Scientific tools to identify the unidentified

The complex decomposition process begins as soon as someone dies. Environment, weather, trauma, clothing and location of the death, among other variables, can all complicate how quickly a body decomposes. In cases of advanced decomposition or extreme circumstances such as fires or building collapses, the deceased may no longer be recognizable. That’s a situation in which local law enforcement might want to contact a forensic anthropologist, if possible, to collaborate on figuring out the person’s identity and possibly the circumstances around their death.

A forensic anthropologists’ primary toolkit involves observing subtle variations in features of the skeleton to create a biological profile: an estimation of the individual’s age at death, biological sex, height during life and any potentially unique skeletal characteristics, such as healed trauma or tooth loss that may have been visible during life. Forensic anthropologists assess the entire skeleton, with an emphasis on the skull, pelvis and long bones.

Information learned from the skeleton is then uploaded to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System so it can be compared with missing person records. The goal is to develop leads on the person’s identity. An estimated time of death can also provide a useful point of comparison.

For example, consider a case in upstate South Carolina that one of us assisted on. Human remains were discovered in someone’s yard after a dog dragged several bones out of a creek. Our assessment revealed that the size and shape of the bones were consistent with this Jane Doe being a middle-aged woman. This information allowed local investigators to quickly narrow the pool of missing people in the area who fit that description. Ultimately, they were able to identify this unknown person.

Missing person records can vary at the county and state levels, though, and not all missing people are even reported. These bureaucratic challenges can complicate our attempts to match up information learned from the skeleton with the database.


A forensic artist may create a 3D scan of a skull as a starting point to reconstructing what the person looked like during life. 

Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images


In the absence of a match, the next step in the identification process can involve a forensic facial reconstruction. Based on the forensic anthropologist’s assessment, along with any clothing found associated with the decedent, a forensic artist will create a 2D or sometimes 3D facial reconstruction. Law enforcement can release the image to the public through a press release, which may generate leads about who the person was.

DNA can provide other valuable clues, but submitting samples for analysis can be cost-prohibitive. If funding and resources are available, we submit samples from bone or teeth to a lab that can then generate a genetic sequence from the skeletal remains.

Even with a clear sequence, though, the unknown DNA sample must be matched either to a sample collected during life or from a close relative in order to be useful for determining identity. It can take weeks, months or even years to get the unknown sequence back and compare it with known individuals. If no match is found, genetic genealogy may suggest leads through potentially related individuals – but this investigative field is still emerging.

In each step toward identification, there are many logistical and bureaucratic barriers that contribute to an enormous backlog of unidentified people in county morgues and coroners’ offices. Many cold cases remain unsolved for decades, and the process is further compounded in cases involving undocumented people. Despite these hurdles, forensic anthropologists remain committed to returning names to the unidentified.

Madeline Atwell, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice, Clemson University and Katherine Weisensee, Professor of Anthropology, Clemson University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

What is fentanyl and why is it behind the deadly surge in US drug overdoses? 

A medical toxicology 

The Conversation
November 24, 2023

A Drug Enforcement Administration chemist checks confiscated powder containing fentanyl at the DEA Northeast Regional Laboratory on Oct. 8, 2019 in New York.

 - DON EMMERT/Getty Images North America/TNS


Buying drugs on the street is a game of Russian roulette. From Xanax to cocaine, drugs or counterfeit pills purchased in nonmedical settings may contain life-threatening amounts of fentanyl.

Physicians like me have seen a rise in unintentional fentanyl use from people buying prescription opioids and other drugs laced, or adulterated, with fentanyl. Heroin users in my community in Massachusetts came to realize that fentanyl had entered the drug supply when overdose numbers exploded. In 2016, my colleagues and I found that patients who came to the emergency department reporting a heroin overdose often only had fentanyl present in their drug test results.

As the Chief of Medical Toxicology at UMass Chan Medical School, I have studied fentanyl and its analogs for years. As fentanyl has become ubiquitous across the U.S., it has transformed the illicit drug market and raised the risk of overdose.

Fentanyl and its analogs

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that was originally developed as an analgesic – or painkiller – for surgery. It has a specific chemical structure with multiple areas that can be modified, often illicitly, to form related compounds with marked differences in potency.


Fentanyl’s chemical backbone (the structure in the center) has multiple areas (the colored circles) that can be substituted with different functional groups (the colored boxes around the edges) to change its potency. 

Christopher Ellis et al., CC BY-NC-ND

For example, carfentanil, a fentanyl analog formed by substituting one chemical group for another, is 100 times more potent than its parent structure. Another analog, acetylfentanyl, is approximately three times less potent than fentanyl, but has still led to clusters of overdoses in several states.

Despite the number and diversity of its analogs, fentanyl itself continues to dominate the illicit opioid supply. Milligram per milligram, fentanyl is roughly 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine.
Lacing or replacing drugs with fentanyl




Drug dealers have used fentanyl analogs as an adulterant in illicit drug supplies since 1979, with fentanyl-related overdoses clustered in individual cities.

The modern epidemic of fentanyl adulteration is far broader in its geographic distribution, production and number of deaths. Overdose deaths roughly quadrupled, going from 8,050 in 1999 to 33,091 in 2015. From May 2020 to April 2021, more than 100,000 Americans died from a drug overdose, with over 64% of these deaths due to synthetic opioids like fentanyl and its analogs.

Illicitly manufactured fentanyl is internationally synthesized in China, Mexico and India, then exported to the United States as powder or pressed pills. China also exports many of the precursor chemicals needed to synthesize fentanyl.

Additionally, the emergence of the dark web, an encrypted and anonymous corner of the internet that’s a haven for criminal activity, has facilitated the sale of fentanyl and other opioids shipped through traditional delivery services, including the U.S. Postal Service.

During the 2023 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping reached an agreement to combat fentanyl trafficking.

Fentanyl is driving an increasing number of opioid overdose deaths.

Fentanyl is both sold alone and often used as an adulterant because its high potency allows dealers to traffic smaller quantities but maintain the drug effects buyers expect. Manufacturers may also add bulking agents, like flour or baking soda, to fentanyl to increase supply without adding costs. As a result, it is much more profitable to cut a kilogram of fentanyl compared to a kilogram of heroin.

Unfortunately, fentanyl’s high potency also means that even just a small amount can prove deadly. If the end user isn’t aware that the drug they bought has been adulterated, this could easily lead to an overdose.

Preventing fentanyl deaths

As an emergency physician, I give fentanyl as an analgesic, or painkiller, to relieve severe pain in an acute care setting. My colleagues and I choose fentanyl when patients need immediate pain relief or sedation, such as anesthesia for surgery.

But even in the controlled conditions of a hospital, there is still a risk that using fentanyl can reduce breathing rates to dangerously low levels, the main cause of opioid overdose deaths. For those taking fentanyl in nonmedical settings, there is no medical team available to monitor someone’s breathing rate in real time to ensure their safety.

One measure to prevent fentanyl overdose is distributing naloxone to bystanders. Naloxone can reverse an overdose as it occurs by blocking the effects of opioids.

Another measure is increasing the availability of opioid agonists like methadone and buprenorphine that reduce opioid withdrawal symptoms and cravings, helping people stay in treatment and decrease illicit drug use. Despite the lifesaving track records of these medications, their availability is limited by restrictions on where and how they can be used and inadequate numbers of prescribers.

Naloxone can rapidly reverse an opioid overdose.

Other strategies to prevent overdose deaths include lowering the entry barrier to addiction treatment, fentanyl test strips, supervised consumption sites and even prescription diamorphine (heroin).

Despite the evidence supporting these measures, however, local politics and funding priorities often limit whether communities are able to give them a try. Bold strategies are needed to interrupt the ever-increasing number of fentanyl-related deaths.

This article was updated on Nov. 16, 2023 to note developments regarding fentanyl at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

Kavita Babu, Professor of Emergency Medicine, UMass Chan Medical School

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Viruses: Their infection tactics determine if they can jump species or set off a pandemic

The Conversation
November 24, 2023

Coronavirus illustration. (Shutterstock.com)

COVID-19, flu, mpox, noroviral diarrhea: How do the viruses that cause these diseases actually infect you?

Viruses cannot replicate on their own, so they must infect cells in your body to make more copies of themselves. The life cycle of a virus can thus be roughly described as: get inside a cell, make more virus, get out, repeat.

Getting inside a cell, or viral entry, is the part of the cycle that most vaccines target, as well as a key barrier for viruses jumping from one species to another. My lab and many others study this process to better anticipate and combat emerging viruses.

How viruses enter cells

Different viruses travel into the body in various ways – via airborne droplets, on food, through contact with mucous membranes or through injection. They typically first infect host cells near their site of entry – the cells lining the respiratory tract for most airborne viruses – then either remain there or spread throughout the body.

Viruses recognize specific proteins or sugars on host cells and stick to them. Each virus gets only one shot at putting its genome inside a cell – if their entry machinery misfires, they risk becoming inactivated. So they use several mechanisms to prevent triggering entry prematurely.

After the virus binds to the cell, specific molecules on the cell’s surface or within the cell’s recycling machinery activate viral coat proteins for entry. An example is the SARS-CoV-2 spike that COVID-19 vaccines target. These proteins need to modify the cell membrane to allow the viral genome to get through without killing the cell in the process. Different viruses use different tricks for this, but most work like cellular secretion – how cells release materials into their environment – in reverse. Specialized viral proteins help merge the membranes of the virus and the cell together and release the viral core into the interior of the cell.

This animation depicts HIV fusing its membrane with a cell in order to release its contents inside.

At this point, the viral genome can enter the cell and start replicating. Some viruses use only the cell’s machinery to replicate, while others carry along portions of their own replication machinery and borrow some parts from the cell. After replicating their genomes, viruses assemble the components required to make new viruses.

Two central questions scientists are studying about viral entry are how your body’s defenses can disrupt it and what determines whether a virus from other species can infect people.

Immune defenses against viruses

Your body has a multilayered defense system against viral threats. But the part of your immune system called the antibody response is generally thought to be most effective at sterilizing immunity – preventing an infection from taking hold in the first place as opposed to just limiting its scope and severity.

For many viruses, antibodies target the part of the virus that binds to cells. This is the case not just for current COVID-19 vaccines but also the majority of immunity against influenza, whether from vaccines or from prior infection.

However, some antibodies target the entry machinery instead: Rather than preventing the virus from sticking, they prevent the virus from working altogether. Such antibodies are often harder for the viruses to escape from but are difficult to reproduce with vaccines. For that reason, developing antibodies that inhibit cell entry has the been the goal of many next-generation vaccine efforts.


This diagram shows how four different classes of antiviral drugs inhibit HIV. One stops viruses from entering cells, and three inhibit different viral enzymes. 

Thomas Splettstoesser/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Species-hopping and pandemics

The other key question researchers are asking about viral entry is how to tell when a virus from another species poses a threat to people. This is particularly important because many viruses are first identified in animals such as bats, birds and pigs before they spread to humans, but it’s unclear which ones may cause a pandemic.

The part of viruses that stick to human cells varies the most across species, while the part that gets the virus into cells tends to stay mostly the same. Many researchers have thought that viruses changing in ways that bind better to human cells, like influenza viruses that bind to cells in the nose and throat, are some of the most important warning signs for pandemic risk.

However, coronaviruses – the family of viruses containing SARS-CoV-2 – are prompting re-examination of that idea. This is because several animal coronaviruses can actually bind to human cells, but only a few seem to be able to transmit well between people.

Only time will tell whether researchers need to broaden their pandemic prevention horizons or if their current prioritization of risky viruses is correct. The one grim reality of pandemic research, like earthquake research, is that there will always be another one – we just don’t know when or where, and we want to be ready.


Peter Kasson, Professor of Molecular Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, University of Virginia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Climate change worsened Chinese extreme heat and flooding event in 2020: study

Agence France-Presse
November 30, 2023 6:24AM ET

This aerial photo taken on July 28, 2020 shows a flooded playground along the Yangtze River in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province 

Man-made global warming exacerbated an incident of extreme flooding and heat in eastern China in 2020, according to a study released Wednesday, which highlighted the need to prepare for increasingly intense episodes of such weather in the country.

Researchers said that warming created by human activity caused an increase in rain that summer by around 6.5 percent, and increased heat by around one degree Celsius (33.8 degrees Fahrenheit).

Record rains fell in June and July around the lower part of the Yangtze River during the monsoon, causing the deaths of more than 100 people and billions of dollars in damage, said the study published in the journal Science Advances.

At the same time, extreme heat hit the south of the country, putting pressure on health care and energy systems, as well as on agriculture and infrastructure.

These simultaneous heat and precipitation phenomena are physically interconnected, and commonly occur at the same time in that part of the world, but in 2020 they were exceptional, the researchers said.

To determine the impact of warming linked to human activity, scientists modeled the weather conditions leading up to and during the events, based on measurements in the real world.

They then constructed a scenario simulating conditions as they might have been without human-caused warming, by adjusting humidity levels, air and ocean temperatures. They finally compared the two models to determine the role of human influence.

The researchers also warned about future weather events, noting that by the end of the century, precipitation in the region could increase by 14 percent compared to 2020, and that the season could be 2.1 degrees Celsius warmer.

The results of the study "underscore the necessity of preparing for more intense spatially compounding flood-heat hazards over eastern China," the researcher said, since they "could lead to increased economic damage and loss of life.