More than 200 Palestinian journalists have been killed by the IDF since October 2023. Five were killed on May 17, 2025.
Israel is starving Gazans to death and continuing its bombing attacks on civilians. Israel also specializes in personal revenge, targeting men, women, and children who might be the subject of international press attention and remind the world of that state's sadistic nature. There are many accomplices to these crimes, but Joe Biden's role in giving protection to a genocide cannot be forgotten.
“Israeli attacks render last Gaza hospital for cancer treatment inoperable” - Gaza Health Ministry
“Based on what I have seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you.” - Joe Biden absolving Israel of blame in the destruction of Al-Ahli Hospital, October 2023
On May 15, 2025, the European Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza, the last facility there capable of providing cancer treatment, ceased operations. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, “Israel’s targeting of the hospital has made it impossible to provide medical care due to the danger posed to medical staff and patients.” The following day, May 16, Joseph R. Biden, 46th President of the United States, was diagnosed with an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer that had spread to his bones.
Joe Biden is the person most responsible for the destruction of Gaza’s last cancer treatment center. His decision to give Israel a free hand in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza beginning in October 2023 led to the destruction of hospitals, homes, schools, and even the tent camps where victims had fled. Donald Trump has presided over the U.S./Israel genocide for four months, but it must always be pointed out that Biden began the atrocities, allowed them to continue for fifteen months, and protected Israel from the prohibitions of international law that could have stopped the carnage. Before he left office an estimated 200,000 people died as a result of the U.S./Israeli war crimes which every humanitarian organization in the world has defined as a genocide. The United Nations is quite literally begging Israel to allow food and other aid to enter Gaza but Israel is unrelenting in its goal of killing as many people as possible and occupying the region itself.
The viciousness of Israel in dispensing punishment is unrivaled in modern times. Like mobsters, they target anyone for death who brings them unwanted attention. Twelve year old Mohammed al-Bardawil was a witness to the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) massacre of 15 ambulance workers that took place on March 23, 2025. One of the victims recorded his last moments and those of his colleagues on his mobile phone. “Forgive me, Mother… this is the path I chose to help people. O Allah, accept me as a martyr. Forgive me and have mercy on me.” Mohammed al-Bardawil paid the ultimate price for speaking about what he saw. On May 10 he and his father were fishing when they were attacked by an Israeli patrol boat which fired shells and bullets which killed the child. His father pointed out what was obvious. “It was a targeted, deliberate killing.”
More journalists have been killed in Gaza than in every other conflict from the late 1800s to the present day. On the evening of May 17, 2025, five journalists, Abdel Rahman al-Abadla, Aziz al-Hajjar, Ahmad al-Zeenati, Khaled Abu Seif, and Nour Qandil, were killed by Israeli airstrikes in their homes along with their families. They were among the more than 200 Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza since October 2023, a number larger than all the journalists killed in the U.S. Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos), the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined.
Journalists and child witnesses are not the only targets of revenge.
On April 16 a documentary entitled Put Your Hand on Your Soul and Walk featuring Gaza photojournalist Fatima Hassona was announced as an entry in the Cannes film festival. The next day Hassona was killed, along with ten family members, in an Israeli air strike on their home. A study conducted by Forensic Architecture concludes that Hassona was deliberately killed.
That expert analysis is useful, but it strains common sense logic and credulity to think that these killings could possibly be coincidental. Israel is not only committed to its genocide but to making an example out of anyone who exposes it to the world. Of course, Israel exposes itself on a daily basis, bragging about emptying Gaza and proclaiming that no one there is innocent. The sadism and the imperative to punish for the sake of punishing what the world already knows to be true is unparalleled.
It is important that United States culpability not be unmentioned. Israel would have no weaponry and no impunity from United Nations resolutions or any other means of bringing that country to justice without its partners in crime in Washington. When Biden’s office announced his cancer diagnosis there were predictable expressions of sympathy but also expressions of anger because Gazans cannot be treated for cancer or any other ailment for that matter. Their hospitals have been destroyed and they are imprisoned, unable to leave and get help for injury or illness, and all because of bipartisan U.S. foreign policy decisions.
Trump may be feuding with Benjamin Netanyahu about the details of how Gaza will be emptied of its people, but no one should be mistaken. There is little daylight between the U.S. and Israel. Trump may want to have the U.S. take over administration of Gaza and Netanyahu may want Israel to do it but in the end the people there will suffer regardless of who wins this particular turf war between rival gangsters.
The junior partners cannot be let off either. European nations that have also worked to arm and protect Israel are suddenly full of rhetorical condemnation. The United Kingdom, France, and Canada claim they may impose sanctions, demanding that Israel, “... stop its military operations in Gaza and immediately allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.” All three have censored anti-zionist speech in their countries, allowed journalists to be detained, declared that Palestine solidarity organizations are terrorist groups, and joined the U.S. in arming Israel. The last minute claim of innocence is fooling no one.
Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis announcement only inspires empathy among Democratic Party operatives and the dead-enders among their membership. The rest of the world remembers Biden racing to Netanyahu’s side and covering up a hospital bombing committed by the IDF.
The evil twin nations will continue their killing spree unless they are stopped by nations severing diplomatic ties, the imposition of a worldwide boycott, and ultimately by military force. Humanity is either with the Palestinian people or against them. There is no other choice to be made.
Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on the Twitter, Bluesky, and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email at margaret dot kimberley at blackagendareport dot com.
Malcolm X understood that “oppressed peoples must commit themselves to radical political struggle in order to advance a dignified approach to human rights.” What’s needed is a bottom-up mass movement…
"A few lines for the Poet Ojenke..." is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
The Israeli army has intensified attacks on hospitals as part of the new operation, which aims to displace the entire population of Gaza.
The Trump administration opens a new ICE detention center in New Jersey’s biggest city and a hub for immigrant communities, earning a bold response from immigrant rights organizers.
In this week’s segment, we discuss the modern history of Black politics in the city of Newark, New Jersey, after the death of a long-serving former mayor and the arrest and brief detention of the…
