palestine news and politics

A new USAID Inspector General report released yesterday lays out what has been long obvious: The so-called “humanitarian pier” in Gaza made no practical sense and served no purpose other than generating positive headlines stateside. President Biden pursued the construction of the pier, the report found, despite officials’ concerns about difficult weather in the Mediterranean sea and security challenges in a war zone, as well as worries that it would undermine pushes to reopen land crossings. “Due to structural damage caused by rough weather and high seas, the pier operated for only 20 days and was decommissioned on July 17,” the report states.

Polio was all but forgotten in Gaza until the World Health Organization (WHO) reported in July that the virus had been detected in six environmental samples from Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah in the Gaza Strip.

But by the convention’s final morning, down the hall away from the main stage, hearts were breaking at a press conference held by “uncommitted” delegates. The thirty delegates, representing approximately 740,000 uncommitted Democratic primary voters from Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and a half dozen other states, had been pushing all week for a change in course of the administration’s financial, military, and political support of Israel’s war on Gaza. Many saw themselves as fighting to save the soul of the Democratic Party, which espouses to be the party of democracy and human rights but has enabled a genocidal war.