Israel’s genocide against Palestine has continued unabated since the ceasefire implemented on October 10. In the past two months, Israeli airstrikes and gunfire have killed nearly 400 people — an average of five per day — and injured nearly 1,000 in the Gaza Strip. All told, officials in Gaza say that the Zionist state has committed around 800 ceasefire violations, threatening to derail the second phase of the deal.
In addition to continued bombing campaigns, Israel is also preventing much-needed aid from reaching Palestinians. The number of aid trucks is far below the terms agreed to in the ceasefire, let alone enough to rebuild the enclave: Israel’s genocidal campaign has damaged or destroyed over 80 percent of all buildings, ruined 95 percent of farmlands, and decimated sanitation systems. As a result of this destruction, at least a dozen people have been killed during heavy rains that have collapsed more houses.
Israel is also moving full-steam ahead on its plan to annex the Strip. Although the ceasefire stipulates that Israeli forces are meant to withdraw from Gaza, the Zionist state has continued to keep troops in the Strip, retaining control of 58 percent of the territory. Israel is also attempting to make the new occupation permanent: the Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), has said that the “yellow line” which currently marks the IDF’s limits is the “new border line.”
Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign isn’t limited to Gaza. Palestinians in the West Bank are experiencing the highest level of violence since the 1967 start of the occupation. Since October 2023, more than 1,000 have been killed, including 277 this year alone. In addition to deadly shootings, Palestinians in the West Bank are exposed to raids, beatings, arbitrary arrest, and prison torture.
This situation makes clear that this is a ceasefire in name only, and Israel will not stop committing genocide and ethnically cleansing Palestinians, whether in Gaza or in the West Bank.
U.S. imperialism, particularly President Trump’s colonial 20-point “Peace Plan,” cannot guarantee a ceasefire nor protect Palestinians. We also cannot rely on European countries which, just like the United States, continue to provide aid to Israel — like Germany, which has resumed arms shipments.
For their part, the regimes of the countries in the region — including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Turkey — have also been complicit in the genocide and back Trump’s plan, despite popular demonstrations against Israel. For instance, the Sisi government in Egypt has helped enforce the Rafah border closure and keep Gaza isolated, all while deporting activists attempting to break the siege of Gaza.
Instead, the Palestine movement across the world must return, showing its full solidarity with people in Gaza and the West Bank. We’ve seen powerful demonstrations of this force across the world in recent years — like the hundreds of thousands who have marched in cities across Europe, the youth occupations in both Europe and the United States, and the Global Sumud Flotilla.
Key to this fight is the labor movement: workers make the economy run, and they can grind the gears of imperialism — like arm shipments — to a halt. Workers in Italy recently showed the way forward, by going on strike to protest the genocide. Until the genocidal state of Israel and its imperialist accomplices are defeated, the global working class cannot stop fighting for Palestinian liberation.
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A commission of top United Nations human rights watchdogs sent a series of blistering letters to the heads of five U.S. universities raising sharp concerns over the treatment of pro-Palestine students, The Intercept has learned.
The letters, which were sent on October 14 to the presidents and provosts of Columbia, Cornell, Georgetown, Minnesota State, and Tufts universities, called out school officials and U.S. law enforcement agencies for cracking down on student protesters and subsequently using immigration authorities to single out foreign students for detention and deportation.
“We are highly concerned over reports that students were arrested, suspended, and expelled, and lost their university accommodation, campus access, and their immigration status merely because of assembling peacefully to express their solidarity with victims of the conflict in Gaza,” wrote the group of U.N. special rapporteurs, independent experts who monitor human rights violations. “We fear that such pressure and public attacks on scholars and institutions can result in repression of free expression and in self-censorship, thus damaging academic freedom and the autonomy of universities.”
The letters suggest the international body has taken notice of domestic protest repression on U.S. campuses. Since President Donald Trump returned to office, his administration has weaponized immigration authorities against international students and investigations over alleged antisemitism at universities across the country — ratcheting up a crackdown on student protests for Palestine that began under former President Joe Biden.
The letter to Columbia highlighted the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi, and Leqaa Kordia, as well as the attempted arrest of Yunseo Chung. (Columbia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
Khalil and Mahdawi both spent months in detention earlier this year. Kordia, a Palestinian student who was arrested on March 8, was still in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody as recently as December 8, according to a report by Drop Site News.
“It has been reported that the conditions of Ms. Kordia’s detention are particularly severe. Due to overcrowding, she sleeps on the floor where cockroaches and other bugs abound, and many showers and sinks do not work,” the authors wrote. “She is also not given materials her faith requires to have to pray, and she is not allowed to wear a hijab in the presence of men as her religion requires.”
The authors of the letter include Mary Lawlor, the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders; Farida Shaheed, the special rapporteur on the right to education; Irene Khan, the special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression; Gina Romero, the special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association; and Gehad Madi, the special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants. Representatives of the U.N. rapporteurs who drafted the letters did not immediately respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment.
The U.N. letter also highlighted the cases of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish student at Tufts who was snatched by masked ICE agents on the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts, on March 25; Badar Khan Suri, the Indian-born researcher at Georgetown arrested on March 17; Momodou Taal, a Cornell grad student with dual citizenship from the United Kingdom and Gambia who was ordered to turn himself in to ICE agents on March 22; and Mohammed Hoque, a Minnesota State student arrested at his home on March 28. (Cornell, Minnesota State, and Tufts did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)
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How Columbia’s Leadership Refashioned the University in Trump’s Image](https://theintercept.com/2025/08/07/columbia-gaza-student-protests-expulsions-trump/)
In the letter, the authors singled out Columbia for bowing to pressure from the Trump administration, which they said set a standard that chilled speech nationwide.
“The restrictive measures at Columbia University reflect nationwide structural changes at universities to suppress Palestine solidarity movements,” the authors wrote.
In each letter, the authors asked the universities to provide information on the allegations of mistreatment, any measures taken by the schools to protect the rights of its students and scholars, and details on how the schools plan to safeguard the rights to freedom of expression and assembly.
“Students report self-censoring political expression, and particularly international students are withdrawing from activism due to deportation fears,” the authors wrote. “Campus organizing has diminished significantly, with activists reporting less attendance from international students who had to quit their activism because of the potential risk of repercussions. This intimidating effect extends beyond issues concerning Israel and Palestine, with students reporting reluctance to engage in any political activism.”
Stop David Lammy killing political prisoners! Release all Palestine protesters!es
The British government is starving to death eight young people it has imprisoned for protesting Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians and UK complicity in the destruction of Gaza.
