"I want to be clear that everybody who followed this issue from inside the U.S. government—whether it's the military, the intel world, the State Department, USAID—was fully aware of not only everything that was happening in terms of destruction and civilian deaths in Gaza, but also the expected consequences and expected trajectory of the Israeli campaign in Gaza.
What I've told you is not really my unique analysis or has anything to do with my own personal genius judgments. I think they're widely shared, or widely at least understood by everybody who works on this topic professionally. And I emphasize that because I think even in the past month, we've seen demands from our government that the Israelis must have a day-after plan, or that the Israelis still must work towards reducing civilian casualties, or that they must work towards a number of these sort of very basic steps that it was clear nine months ago that they weren't going to do anything about. [...] Anybody could have told you back in October, back in November, that we'd get somewhere like where we are today."
Great piece by D. Danyelle Thomas @blackmastodon#StopGenocide#Juneteenth
"No one can truly thrive in a persistently barren land without anything to sustain living. Although there is little in which to take solace, we are not without hope."
Israeli soldiers rounded up Ahmad Safi and his male family members in Khan Younis and made them stand atop a sand dune for 12 hours as the soldiers took cover behind them during a firefight with Palestinian resistance fighters. This is their story.