Research news from the Ecological Society of America’s journals

Ecological Society of America

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Research published in Ecosphere uses ancient DNA to determine that beaver ponds like this one have existed in what is now known as Grand Teton National Park for thousands of years.

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Credit: Emily Fairfax

The Ecological Society of America (ESA) presents a roundup of five research articles recently published across its esteemed journals. Widely recognized for fostering innovation and advancing ecological knowledge, ESA’s journals consistently feature illuminating and impactful studies. This compilation of papers explores tiger conservation, the effects of invasive grasses on tick populations, plant–fungal networks in the Arctic, collaborations between artists and scientists for conservation and the long-term presence of beavers in Grand Teton National Park.

 

From Ecological Applications:

Protected forests can’t solve a tiger food crisis
Author contact: Robert Steinmetz (roberts@wwf.or.th)

Thailand’s Mae Wong and Khlong Lan National Parks offer dense forest, strong protection from poaching and are situated next to one of Southeast Asia’s last tiger strongholds. Despite these advantages, their tiger population has shown little sign of recovery. New research drawing from 11 years of camera trap monitoring shows that the obstacle to recovery is not protection, but prey scarcity. Tiger density in Mae Wong and Khlong Lan National Parks, while remaining stable, is six times lower than in a neighboring wildlife sanctuary. Researchers found that most adult female tigers at this site were immigrants from nearby parks, and while adult tigers survived relatively well, few cubs remained residents of the parks or made it to adulthood. The culprit was a shortage of large prey like sambar deer and wild cattle. The study suggests that even the safest habitat in Southeast Asia cannot bring tigers back from the brink without enough food to fuel reproduction, and that parks in Southeast Asia need not just protection from poaching but also plenty of prey and opportunities for tigers to roam.

Read the article: Investigating the demography and dynamics of a low-density tiger population in Southeast Asia: What limits recovery?

 

From Ecology:

Invasive grass gives ticks a boost
Author contact: Drew Hiatt (dhiatt@ufl.edu)

New research from the longleaf pine forests of Florida suggests that some invasive plant species may offer more hospitable habitat to lone star ticks than native plants. Lone star ticks are native to the eastern U.S. and are vectors of multiple human pathogens, including the bacteria that cause ehrlichiosis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever and tularemia. Tick survival is known to be strongly influenced by the conditions of the ticks’ immediate surroundings, yet we still lack a clear understanding of how invasive plants might change these conditions and drive vector-borne disease risk. The study compared tick survival and abundance in areas dominated by native plants versus areas overtaken by cogongrass, an invasive species that grows rapidly and is notoriously expensive to mitigate. They found that ticks lived much longer in invaded areas, where the dense cogongrass kept things cool and damp, protecting the ticks from drying out. However, the researchers observed no difference in overall tick abundance between areas dominated by native versus invasive plants, suggesting that prolonged survival in invaded settings does not necessarily translate into higher tick densities. These mixed results point to different mechanisms driving tick populations in each setting, highlighting how invasive plants can have complex implications for disease risk.

Read the article: Mechanistic pathways of tick exposure risk in native and invaded plant communities

 

From Ecological Monographs:

Arctic plant–fungal partnerships are surprisingly flexible in a warming world
Author contact: Bastien Parisy (bastien.parisy@helsinki.fi)

As the Arctic warms at record speed, scientists are investigating how environmental changes affect the underground web of microbes and fungi that form crucial partnerships with Arctic plants. A new study examined thousands of soil and root samples across the Arctic to explore how plants and fungi interact under different environmental conditions. Because fungi help plants access nutrients and shape soil conditions, shifts in these relationships can ripple through whole ecosystems. The findings show that environmental conditions, such as local temperature and soil acidity, are the main drivers that determine which fungal species are present around a plant’s roots, while the identity of the plant itself plays a much smaller role. Arctic fungi appear to form opportunistic partnerships with whatever plant hosts are available, rather than maintaining exclusive relationships. This flexibility may help both plants and fungi cope with rapid environmental change. These results point to a high degree of adaptability among Arctic plants and fungi, which may be an encouraging sign for ecosystem resilience in a rapidly changing climate.

Read the article: Opportunistic partner choice among arctic plants and root-associated fungi is driven by environmental conditions

 

From Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment:

Artists and scientists join forces to advance conservation goals
Author contact: Ivan Jarić (ivan.jaric@universite-paris-saclay.fr)

A newly published paper explores how collaborations between artists and conservationists can create new opportunities to study and protect nature. The authors show that art can reveal information about biodiversity through historical paintings, poems and Indigenous traditions that record species or environmental changes over time. Art can also inspire new conservation tools and engage the public through games, comics, music and movies. Interactive projects, like the Sonic Kayak, let people explore nature directly: kayaks equipped with underwater sensors both monitor environmental conditions and translate them into real-time sound. In return, conservationists can provide artists with expertise, access to natural materials and guidance on sustainability. The authors show how these partnerships not only spark creativity and insight but also improve public awareness, foster behavioral change and strengthen ecosystem protection. The paper also outlines challenges such as funding limits, cultural differences and the responsible use of artificial intelligence, and calls for more funding and institutional support to expand collaborations between biodiversity conservation and the arts.

Read the article: Bridging worlds: exploring synergies between the arts and biodiversity conservation

 

From Ecosphere:

Beaver occupancy in Grand Teton lakes spans 5,000 years
Author contact: D. Nevé Baker (bakerd@umn.edu)

A new study of ancient DNA preserved in sediment from subalpine lakes in Grand Teton National Park has uncovered thousands of years of beaver history in the region. Researchers found that beavers have been shaping the landscape continuously for at least 5,000 years at Taggart Lake, and intermittently at Jenny Lake for over 7,000 years. Beaver activity coincided with shifts in the local plant communities, including more aquatic plants as well as willows and poplars, suggesting that beavers helped shape and maintain these lakeside habitats. Beavers persisted at Taggart Lake even during late Holocene droughts, suggesting that their intensive ecological engineering may have helped to maintain local wetlands that supported plants and wildlife through periods of stress. Historical trapping and limited pre-colonial records have long obscured understanding of beaver distribution and long-term ecological impacts. Studies such as this one provide insight on the role beavers have played in shaping North American ecosystems over thousands of years, and can guide conservation managers in using beaver activity as a nature-based strategy to buffer the impacts of climate change.

Read the article: Ancient sedimentary DNA shows more than 5000 years of continuous beaver occupancy in Grand Teton National Park

 

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The Ecological Society of America, founded in 1915, is the world’s largest community of professional ecologists and a trusted source of ecological knowledge, committed to advancing the understanding of life on Earth. The 8,000 member Society publishes six journals and a membership bulletin and broadly shares ecological information through policy, media outreach and education initiatives. The Society’s Annual Meeting attracts 4,000 attendees and features the most recent advances in ecological science. Visit the ESA website at https://www.esa.org

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New study reveals how your income may shape your risk of dementia

American Academy of Neurology

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• Your income may be associated with your risk factors for dementia.

• Researchers found that having a lower income was associated with a higher prevalence of dementia risk factors like hearing loss, high blood pressure, depression and physical inactivity.

• For people living below the poverty level, one in five cases of dementia may be associated with vision loss and social isolation in older people.

• After adjusting for income, several risk factors still showed higher prevalence among historically underrepresented groups in clinical research, including diabetes, physical inactivity, obesity and vision loss.

• Researchers say prevention matters—that efforts like improving access to health care and reducing social isolation may reduce dementia risk, though further studies are needed.

MINNEAPOLIS — People with lower incomes and people from racial and ethnic historically underrepresented groups in clinical studies are more likely to have modifiable risk factors for dementia, factors that could be changed to lower their risk, according to a study published  November 12, 2025, in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. While the study found associations across multiple risk factors, it does not prove that income, race or ethnicity cause an increase in dementia risk factors.

“Our findings provide new insight into how people living below the poverty line and those from historically under-resourced groups may bear a higher burden of many modifiable dementia risk factors,” said study author Eric L. Stulberg, MD, MPH, of the Thomas Jefferson University Sidney Kimmel Medical College and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. “By identifying which risk factors are most prevalent in people who have a higher risk for dementia, we can better target potential prevention—whether that means improving access to vision care, supporting social connection, or addressing conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure.”

The study included more than 5,000 people. Participants were assessed for 13 dementia risk factors: low education, alcohol use, obesity, high LDL cholesterol, traumatic brain injury, untreated hearing loss, vision loss, diabetes, untreated high blood pressure, smoking, depression, physical inactivity and social isolation.

Analyses also accounted for age, sex, and race and ethnicity. Stulberg noted that race and ethnicity are socially based constructs and not biological variables.

Researchers divided participants into six income groups. Those in the lowest group had incomes below the federal poverty level. Those in the highest group had incomes more than five times the federal poverty level.

For each income group, researchers determined the percentage of people who had each risk factor and the percentage of dementia cases that could theoretically be prevented or delayed if those risk factors were eliminated.

Researchers found higher incomes were associated with lower prevalence of each dementia risk factor except obesity, high cholesterol and traumatic brain injury. With each step up in income category representing a 100% higher income above the poverty level, people were 9% less likely to have an additional risk factor in middle age. 

In the lowest group with incomes below the poverty level, vision loss and social isolation stood out. Researchers found 21% of dementia cases could potentially be mitigated if vision loss were addressed, and 20% of cases for social isolation.

Stulberg said, “While our results are exploratory and do not show cause and effect, improving access to vision care and reducing social isolation among older adults could potentially have a major impact in those living below the poverty level.”

After adjusting for income, several risk factors still showed stronger associations among historically underrepresented groups in clinical studies including Black Americans, Mexican Americans and non-Mexican Hispanic Americans, when compared to white Americans. Those risk factors included diabetes, physical inactivity, obesity and vision loss.

“Our results suggest there may be an opportunity to help people reduce their dementia risk factors now, thereby reducing risks among people with lower incomes and historically underrepresented populations in clinical studies, where our study suggests many risk factors are more prevalent,” Stulberg said. “It is exciting to see that even late-life risk factors may be targets for interventions. We hope that future studies evaluate if targeting these late-life risk factors may yield benefits, particularly for people who are living below the poverty level.”

A limitation of the study was that it provided only a snapshot in time and did not follow people over longer periods. In addition, some information was reported by participants, and they may not have remembered or reported the information accurately.

Discover more about dementia at Brain & Life®, from the American Academy of Neurology. This resource also offers a website, podcast, and books that connect patients, caregivers and anyone interested in brain health with the most trusted information, straight from the world’s leading experts in brain health. Follow Brain & Life® on Facebook, X, and Instagram.

The American Academy of Neurology is the leading voice in brain health. As the world’s largest association of neurologists and neuroscience professionals with more than 40,000 members, the AAN provides access to the latest news, science and research affecting neurology for patients, caregivers, physicians and professionals alike. The AAN’s mission is to enhance member career fulfillment and promote brain health for all. A neurologist is a doctor who specializes in the diagnosis, care and treatment of brain, spinal cord and nervous system diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, stroke, concussion, epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, headache and migraine.

Explore the latest in neurological disease and brain health, from the minds at the AAN at AAN.com or find us on Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

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Journal

Neurology

 

Headache disorders affect 3 billion people worldwide—nearly one in every three people, ranking sixth for health loss in 2023

Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation

• Women experienced more than twice the headache-related health loss of men and spent a greater share of their lives with headache symptoms.
• Migraine caused nearly 90% of all disability linked to headache disorders, even though tension-type headache was more common. 
• More than one-fifth of the global headache burden is linked to pain medication overuse, highlighting major opportunities for safer pain management and improved access to care. 
• No meaningful change in headache burden over the last 30 years was observed, suggesting that root causes remain untouched. 

SEATTLE, Wash. – Nov. 12, 2025 – Headache disorders affected almost 3 billion people worldwide in 2023—nearly one in every three people, a figure unchanged since 1990—and ranked sixth among causes of health loss, according to new research to be published in The Lancet Neurology. The analysis is part of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2023 study and estimated health loss from migraine, tension-type headache, and medication-overuse headache from 1990 through 2023. 

The study was led by researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). The study examined the health loss resulting from headache disorders, and how long people have headache across different ages and sexes. Health loss was measured in years lived with disability (YLDs), which captures the total time people spend living with health conditions that limit daily activities and overall well-being. Drawing on population-based studies worldwide, the analysis provides the most comprehensive picture to date of how headache disorders affect daily life and overall health. 

Headache disorders rank among the world’s most disabling conditions, disproportionately affecting women. 

In 2023, headache disorders accounted for an age-standardized rate of 541.9 YLDs per 100,000 people, ranking sixth among all causes of disability globally. The burden of headache disorders was more than twice as high among women as men, with rates of 739.9 and 346.1 YLDs per 100,000, respectively. Across every age group, women consistently spent more time experiencing headache symptoms than men. 

“Our analysis shows that headache disorders have remained unchanged in three decades," said Yvonne Xu, co-author and research scientist at IHME. “And women experience significantly higher levels of headache-related disability because they have headaches more frequently and for longer durations than men. Recognizing this is essential for improving how we prevent and manage headache disorders worldwide.” 

Migraine and medication overuse drive most of the global burden from headache disorders. 

Although tension-type headache is nearly twice as prevalent as migraine, migraine accounts for about 90% of headache-attributed YLDs. In 2023, migraine alone caused an estimated 40.9 million YLDs globally, with an age-standardized rate of 487.5 YLDs per 100,000. Tension-type headache accounted for 54.4 YLDs per 100,000, showing that migraine, though less common, is far more disabling and drives most of the overall burden of headache disorders. While the highest rates of disability from migraine were seen in North Africa and the Middle East, closely followed by high-income regions such as Europe and North America, the burden remains high worldwide. 

Medication-overuse headache, defined as the worsening of an existing headache due to excessive use of medication (e.g., pain medication) mainly used to treat migraine or tension-type headache, further amplifies this burden. While this condition affects relatively few, its impact on population-level disability is substantial because of the high individual burden. For migraine, medication overuse accounted for 22.6% of YLDs in men and 14.1% in women, while for tension-type headache, it contributed 58.9% and 56.1%, respectively. Overall, medication overuse was responsible for more than one-fifth of all headache-related disability globally.  

“Our findings show that a large part of the global headache burden is preventable,” said Andreas Kattem Husøy, lead author and post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Neuromedicine and Movement Science at NTNU and Norwegian Centre for Headache Research (NorHead). “Integrating headache services into primary care, especially in low- and middle-income countries where effective treatments remain scarce, could reduce lost productivity and improve quality of life for hundreds of millions.” 

Improved care and education are key to reducing the global burden of headache disorders. 

Headache disorders remain one of the most common and disabling health conditions worldwide. The burden is unevenly distributed by sex and further intensified by overuse of pain medication, a preventable cause of long-term pain and disability. Although effective and affordable treatments are available, access to appropriate care and education on safe medication use remain limited in many settings. 

The findings highlight an urgent need to strengthen prevention, management, and access to care for headache disorders worldwide. With greater awareness and coordinated action, much of the global burden of headache disorders can be prevented. 

For interviews with the authors, please contact IHME’s Media Team at ihmemedia@uw.edu. 

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Journal

The Lancet Neurology

Article Publication Date

12-Nov-2025

Who Really Owns America? The Banks, The Billionaires, And The Deep State – OpEd

November 12, 2025 
By John and Nisha Whitehead

As President Trump floats the idea of 50-year mortgages, Americans are being sold a new version of the American Dream—one that can never truly be owned, only leased from the banks, billionaires, and private equity landlords who profit from our permanent state of debt.

Which begs the question: who owns America?

Is it the government? The politicians? The corporations? The foreign investors? The American people?

While the Deep State keeps the nation divided and distracted by circus politics—the bread and circuses of empire—the police state’s stranglehold on power ensures the continuation of endless wars, runaway spending, and disregard for the rule of law.

Meanwhile, America is literally being bought and sold right out from under us.

Consider the facts.

Homeownership—the cornerstone of middle-class stability—is being transformed into a lifetime rental agreement. Cars, homes, and even college degrees have become indentured commodities in a debt-driven economy where the average American family serves as collateral for Wall Street’s profits.

This is not accidental.

It’s the natural evolution of an economy built to enrich the few at the expense of the many.

The American Dream has been repackaged as a subscription service—an illusion of ownership propped up by 0% down payments, predatory interest rates, and fine print that lasts a lifetime.

What used to be called “buying” is now simply renting from the future.

We’re losing more and more of our land every year to corporations and foreign interests. As individual Americans struggle just to make rent, corporations and foreign investors are quietly buying the country piece by piece. Foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land has surged to more than 43 million acres—millions added in just the last few years. Meanwhile, large institutional landlords and single-family rental operators have amassed hundreds of thousands of houses across the country. Corporations now hold vast portfolios, converting would-be first-time buyers into permanent tenants. The result is a nation where more of our soil and shelter are controlled by entities whose primary allegiance is to shareholders—not communities.

The same dynamic plays out across industries.

We’re losing more and more of our businesses every year to foreign corporations and interests.Brands that once defined American enterprise—U.S. Steel, Budweiser, Jeep and Chrysler, Burger King, 7-Eleven—now fly international flags. Chinese companies and investors are also buying up major food companies, commercial and residential real estate, and other businesses. Global conglomerates have bought up the names we grew up with: U.S. Steel (now Japanese-owned); General Electric (Chinese-owned); Budweiser (Belgium); Burger King (Canada); 7-Eleven (Japan); Jeep, Chrysler, and Dodge (Netherlands); and IBM(China). The American economy has become a franchise of the world’s oligarchs.

We’re digging ourselves deeper and deeper into debt, both as a nation and as a populace. Debt has become America’s most profitable export. Washington borrows trillions it cannot repay; Wall Street packages our futures into products it can sell; and households shoulder record balances. The national debt (the amount the federal government has borrowed over the years and must pay back) has surged to more than $38 trillion under President Trump, “the fastest accumulation of a trillion dollars in debt outside of the COVID-19 pandemic.” In a nutshell, the U.S. government is funding its existence with a credit card, spending money it doesn’t have on programs it can’t afford. In this economy, debt has replaced freedom as our national currency.

The Fourth Estate—the supposed watchdog of power—has largely merged with the corporate state. Independent news agencies, which were supposed to act as bulwarks against government propaganda, have been subsumed by a global corporate takeover of newspapers, television and radio. A handful of corporations now control most of the media industry and, thus, the information dished out to the public. Likewise, with Facebook and Google having appointed themselves the arbiters of disinformation, we now find ourselves grappling with new levels of corporate censorship by entities with a history of colluding with the government to keep the citizenry mindless, muzzled and in the dark.

Most critically of all, however, the U.S. government, long ago sold to the highest bidders, now operates as a shell company for corporate interests. Nowhere is this state of affairs more evident than in the manufactured spectacle that is politics. Elections change the faces, not the system. Members of Congress do far more listening to donors than to citizens, so much so that they spend two-thirds of their time in office raising money. As Reuters reports, “It also means that lawmakers often spend more time listening to the concerns of the wealthy than anyone else.”

In the oligarchy that is the American police state, it clearly doesn’t matter who wins the White House, if they all answer to the same corporate shareholders.

So much for living the American dream.

“We the people” have become the new, permanent underclass in America.

We’re being forced to shell out money for endless wars that are bleeding us dry; money for surveillance systems to track our movements; money to further militarize our already militarized police; money to allow the government to raid our homes and bank accounts; money to fund schools where our kids learn nothing about freedom and everything about how to comply; and on and on.

This is no way of life.

It’s tempting to say that there’s little we can do about it, except that’s not quite accurate.

There are a few things we can do—demand transparency, reject cronyism and graft, insist on fair pricing and honest accounting methods, call a halt to incentive-driven government programs that prioritize profits over people—but it will require that “we the people” stop playing politics and stand united against the politicians and corporate interests who have turned our government and economy into a pay-to-play exercise in fascism.

Unfortunately, we’ve become so invested in identity politics that label us based on our political leanings that we’ve lost sight of the one label that unites us: we’re all Americans.

The powers-that-be want us to adopt an “us versus them” mindset that keeps us powerless and divided. Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the only “us versus them” that matters is “we the people” against the Deep State.

The American Dream was meant to promise opportunity, not indentured servitude.

Yet in the American Police State, freedom itself is on loan—with interest.

We can keep renting our lives from the powerful few who profit from our compliance, or we can reclaim true ownership—of our persons, our labor, our government, and our future.

For as long as we still have one, the choice is ours.

John and Nisha Whitehead

John W. Whitehead is an attorney and author who has written, debated and practiced widely in the area of constitutional law, human rights and popular culture. He is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.

Winter Is Coming To Gaza – OpEd

November 12, 2025 
By Kathy Kelly

The most urgent task, to end genocide, requires truthful coverage about Israel’s war crimes.

On Saturday, 8 November, 2025, Dan Perry wrote in The Jerusalem Post about Israel’s projected lifting of the media blockade on Gaza. Perry laments that Israeli censorship has left all reporting of the atrocity in the hands of Palestinians, who refuse to be silent. To date, Israel has assassinated over 240 Palestinian journalists.

Perry writes: “The High Court ruled last week that the government must consider allowing foreign journalists into Gaza but also granted a one-month extension due to the still-unclear situation in the Strip.” He asserts that Israel had and has no motive for excluding foreign journalists save concern for their own protection.

He makes two appeals: first, the duplicitous demand that Israel should use the one-month reprieve to cover up the evidence of atrocities: “Soon, journalists and photographers will enter Gaza… They will find terrible sights. Hence, Israel’s urgent task: to document retrospectively, to finally prepare explanations, to show … that Hamas operated from hospitals, schools, and refugee camps.” In other words, bury the truth with the bodies.

Secondly, that since in this conflict Israel did absolutely nothing that it could have wished to hide, it should learn not to impose absolute media blackouts so likely to arouse suspicion.

I sense a cold, hard winter within the souls of people in league with Dan Perry’s perspective.

Now, a cold, hard winter approaches Gaza. What do Palestinians in Gaza face, as temperatures drop and winter storms arrive?

Turkish news agency “Anadolu Ajansi” reports “Palestinians in the Gaza Strip continue to endure hunger under a new starvation policy engineered by Israel, which allows only non-essential goods to enter the enclave while blocking essential food and medical supplies. …shelves stacked with non-essential consumer goods disguise a suffocating humanitarian crisis deliberately engineered by Israel to starve Palestinians.”

“I haven’t found eggs, chicken, or cheese since food supplies started entering the Gaza Strip,” Aya Abu Qamar, a mother of three from Gaza City, told Anadolu. “All I see are chocolate, snacks, and instant coffee. These aren’t our daily needs,” she added. “We’re looking for something to keep our children alive.”

On November 5th 2025 the Norwegian Refugee Council sounded this alarm about Israeli restrictions cruelly holding back winter supplies. NRC’s director for the region, Angelita Caredda, insists: “More than three weeks into the ceasefire, Gaza should be receiving a surge of shelter materials, but only a fraction of what is needed has entered.”

The report states: “Millions of shelter and non-food items are stuck in Jordan, Egypt, and Israel awaiting approvals, leaving around 260,000 Palestinian families, equal to nearly 1.5 million people, exposed to worsening conditions. Since the ceasefire took effect on 10 October, Israeli authorities have rejected twenty-three requests from nine aid agencies to bring in urgently needed shelter supplies such as tents, sealing and framing kits, bedding, kitchen sets, and blankets, amounting to nearly 4,000 pallets. Humanitarian organisations warn that the window to scale up winterisation assistance is closing rapidly.”

The report notes how, despite the ceasefire, Israel has continued its mechanized slaughter and its chokehold on aid.

In Israel’s +972 Magazine, Muhammad Shehada reports: “With the so-called ‘Yellow Line,’ Israel has divided the Strip in two: West Gaza, encompassing 42 percent of the enclave, where Hamas remains in control and over 2 million people are crammed in; and East Gaza, encompassing 58 percent of the territory, which has been fully depopulated of civilians and is controlled by the Israeli army and four proxy gangs.” This last, a reference to four IDF-backed militias put forward by Israel as Hamas’ legitimate replacement.

If ever tallied, the number of corpses buried under Gaza’s flattened buildings may raise the death toll of this genocide into six figures.

The UN estimates that the amount of rubble in Gaza could build 13 Giza pyramids.

“The sheer scale of the challenge is staggering,” writes Paul Adams for the BBC: “The UN estimates the cost of damage at £53bn ($70bn). Almost 300,000 houses and apartments have been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN’s satellite centre Unosat…The Gaza Strip is littered with 60 million tonnes of rubble, mixed in with dangerous unexploded bombs and dead bodies.”

No one knows how many corpses are rotting beneath the rubble. These mountains of rubble loom over Israelis working, in advance of global journalism’s return, to create their counternarratives, but also over surviving Gazans who, amidst unrelenting misery, struggle to provide for their surviving loved ones.

Living in close, unhygienic quarters, sleeping without bedding under torn plastic sheeting, and having scarce access to water, thousands of people are in dire need of supplies to help winterize their living space and spare themselves the dread that their children or they themselves could die of hypothermia. The easiest and most obvious solution to their predicament stands enticingly near: the homes held by their genocidal oppressors.

In affluent countries, observers like Dan Perry may tremble for Israel’s reputation, eager to rush in and conceal Israel’s crimes, clothing them in self-righteous justifications. These are of course our crimes as well.

Our own hearts cannot escape the howling winter unless we take, far more seriously, the hell of winter and despair to which we continue to subject Palestinians living in Gaza.

There is no peace in Gaza. May there be no peace for us until we fix that.


Kathy Kelly

Kathy Kelly (Kathy@vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Kelly is an American peace activist, pacifist and author, as well as one of the founding members of Voices in the Wilderness. She has been arrested more than sixty times at home and abroad, and written of her experiences, including among targets of U.S. military bombardment.