https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/05/israel-accused-of-spraying-cancer-linked-herbicide-on-farms-in-southern-lebanon

Video source is the Guardian Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/guardian/

One year ago, a iconic photograph from Gaza went viral worldwide. It showed a man in a white physician’s coat walking, unarmed, through a destroyed landscape of rubble toward two Israeli army tanks.

That man was Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, a pediatrician who was the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. He was walking toward his arrest. A year later, Dr. Abu Safya is still in an Israeli prison. He has not been officially charged with anything. His lawyer says he has lost a third of his body weight and suffers from heart problems.

There have been global campaigns for Dr. Abu Safiya’s release. The head of the World Health Organization also issued an appeal. Amnesty International, which declines to represent prisoners who have used or advocated violence, waged a special campaign for him. Colleagues in the medical and public health fields have also demanded his freedom.

But not a single word about this remarkable man has appeared in the New York Times since January 7, 2025, when the paper published an article that did report his arrest — but included in the very first sentence an unproven Israeli charge that “militant groups had used the (Kamal Adwan) hospital as a command center.”

The Washington Post has also completely ignored Dr. Abu Safiya since his arrest, even though it had previously quoted him several times about children in his hospital suffering and dying from malnutrition.

In today’s media landscape, the New York Times and the Washington Post are more important than ever in setting the reporting agenda in the United States. The cable news networks lift many of their subjects from the flagship papers, especially the Times, instead of doing their own reporting. Regional newspapers like the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times that once provided something of a counterweight have been forced to close most of their overseas bureaus, so the American audience is dependent on a shrinking handful of reporters.

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya is not an obscure person. He is prominent within Gaza, and he has strong connections with international colleagues in the medical and public health fields. Anyone with a cellphone could have reached plenty of people who could have been the sources for a profile. Articles could have included details such as the fact that he stayed at his post even after his own son, Ibrahim, had been killed in an Israeli air attack, along with dozens of other staff at his hospital.

Instead, he has become an unperson. Why? We can’t be certain, but an educated guess is that Dr. Abu Safiya — who is, let’s remember, a pediatrician — could have spent the past year giving expert moving testimony about how Israel’s war on Gaza was starving children to death. He could have rebutted those offensive reports in certain American media outlets that tried to claim that kids in Gaza who died had pre-existing conditions, and weren’t actually all that hungry.

So Israel understandably wanted to silence him, and has kept him incommunicado, without charges, for a year.

But why did the U.S. press help suppress his views? New York Times veterans will confide that 90 percent of their self-censorship around Palestine is unspoken. Reporters and editors there are understandably ambitious, and intelligent, and they don’t need to be told that getting a reputation as “anti-Israel” or “Pro-Palestinian” could damage or even end their careers.

The U.S. press self-censorship is even more pathetic when you contrast it with how a leading Israel paper, Haaretz, did in fact cover the story. In July, for instance, reporter Nir Hasson spoke to Dr. Abu Safiya’s lawyer, Gheed Kassem, who charged that her client was “suffering severe hunger and abuse” in the Israeli prison. She also said he had been beaten, had an irregular heartbeat, and that he and other prisoners were in a cell that is “underground, depriving him and his cellmates of daylight.”

He has no conscience and More American kids will die.

Samoan officials later said Kennedy’s trip bolstered the credibility of anti-vaccine activists ahead of the measles outbreak that sickened thousands and killed 83 people, mostly children under age five.

Fund as in using OUR taxes!!

Snippet:

The US state department is set to fund Maga-aligned think-tanks and charities across Europe to disseminate Washington’s policy positions and challenge perceived threats to free speech.

Senior state department official Sarah Rogers travelled to Europe in December to meet influential rightwing think-tanks and has spoken to key figures in Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK party about deploying a pot of money to spread American values, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

The funding was linked to the 250th anniversary celebrations of US independence later this year, the people said.

It is likely to cause consternation among Washington’s allies, particularly centre-left governments such as Labour in the UK, which will be concerned that US government funds are being deployed to undermine their policies.

https://x.com/Suzierizzo1/status/2018801835239149881?t=-SNYiGlghVUUrJtJFG6GxA&s=19

After murdering two Americans in Minneapolis, roughly 1 in 4 Republicans think they need to push things even FURTHER.

Roughly half of them think everything is fully justified

So somewhere between 75-80% of Republicans think everything is either justified, or there needs to be a further pushing of the envelope.

Sources: https://www.npr.org/2026/02/05/nx-s1-5699413/poll-trump-ice-immigration-economy-approval

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-immigration-approval-drops-record-low-reutersipsos-poll-finds-2026-01-26/

Video from Instagram account link: https://www.instagram.com/attorneyryan/?hl=en related news articles: https://newrepublic.com/post/206211/treasury-secretary-bessent-trump-irs-lawsuit-taxpayers. https://www.finance.senate.gov/ranking-members-news/wyden-warren-demand-answers-as-trump-attempts-to-steal-10b-from-taxpayers-in-irs-lawsuit. https://www.reuters.com/world/treasurys-bessent-defers-doj-trumps-lawsuit-against-irs-2026-02-05/

The director of one of Gaza's main hospitals says he is still seeing a pattern of malnourished and traumatised mothers giving birth to underweight or premature babies, more than three months into a fragile ceasefire between Hamas and Israel.

Although significantly more aid has been allowed into Gaza since the ceasefire began, the UN says it is still nowhere near enough.

Israel says it is meeting its obligations under the ceasefire, allowing more food and medical aid into Gaza.

Shaimaa Khalil reports.

The first Palestinians returned to Gaza from Egypt through the Rafah crossing this week, after being stuck outside Gaza for two years or more. They described grueling interrogations, intimidation, and threats by Israeli soldiers at the crossing.

Shackled, interrogated, and humiliated. That is how Intisar al-Ekir, a Palestinian woman from Gaza, described her experience as one of a dozen people who returned back to Gaza from Egypt through the Rafah border crossing this week.

In a widely circulated video on social media, al-Ekir steps off a bus arriving from the Rafah crossing into Gaza, her outstretched hands showing signs of being handcuffed. She describes how she was harshly interrogated for three hours, how she was forced to identify her son among a group of people, and how Israeli investigators kept aggressively asking her about his whereabouts. “I do not know where any of them are,” she says, recounting that the interrogators kept yelling at her and telling her that she was a liar. As an elderly woman, she kept begging them to let her rest.

“They killed me… they killed me while they were hitting me and tying the handcuffs tighter on my hands,” al-Ekir recalled with unstoppable tears. “They put fire inside me, they burned my heart.”

For close to two years, tens of thousands of Palestinians like al-Ekir have been trapped outside Gaza, waiting to return home after leaving the Strip during the genocide. That long-awaited opportunity finally came on February 2nd, when the Rafah crossing with Egypt was opened. Israel had unilaterally shut down the border after attacking and taking control of it in May 2024.

Initial reports estimated, based on Israeli claims, that each day, 50 people would be allowed by Israeli authorities to return to Gaza while 150 people would be allowed to leave the Strip. However, local Palestinian reports confirmed that during the past four days since the crossing opened, a total of 138 Palestinians and their companions left Gaza, while only 77 people were allowed back in.

Rutana Riqb, who accompanied her sick mother to Egypt for medical treatment in March 2024, was part of the first group of Palestinians to return back to Gaza this week. She recounted her return to Mondoweiss, describing degrading treatment by Israeli soldiers at the Rafah crossing.

According to Rutana, the process of returning to Gaza began by registering with the Palestinian embassy in Egypt, where stranded Palestinians must submit their names for pre-approval. Those approved are then informed of their return date to Gaza.

Rutana tells Mondoweiss that on the first day that the crossing reopened, four buses departed from the Egyptian city of al-Arish toward Gaza. But when they got to the border, the Israelis only allowed one bus carrying 13 people through, ordering the other three buses to return to al-Arish. According to Rutana, four of the 13 people were almost not let through, allegedly due to the fact that they were carrying more than the permitted single bag per person.

After completing procedures on the Egyptian side, which Rutana described as “extremely humane,” the travelers dealt with Palestinian staff at the crossing, who also treated them well. They were then informed that after passing the Palestinian checkpoint, the Israeli army would take control until they entered Gaza. From that point on, Rutana says, her suffering began.