Over 400 Media Figures Urge BBC to Remove ex-Jewish Chronicle Director From Board Over Gaza Coverage

 'Our failures impact audiences,' the signatories – including over 100 anonymous BBC staff members – wrote in their letter

More than 400 cultural figures, journalists and industry professionals, including Harry Potter actress Miriam Margolyes and British director Mike Leigh, have signed a blistering open letter to BBC leadership accusing the broadcaster of censoring Palestinian voices and calling for the resignation of board member Sir Robbie Gibb, who until last year served as the director of The Jewish Chronicle, over alleged conflicts of interest.

 

As first reported in The Guardian, the letter – also signed anonymously by 111 current BBC staff members – criticizes the corporation's Israel-Gaza coverage, claiming it falls short of its own editorial and is "crippled by the fear of being perceived as critical of the Israeli government." Citing a "culture of censorship," the signatories say staff have been penalized for sharing content critical of Israel.

 

Read more on Haaretz (paywalled)

Israeli military used 500lb bomb in strike on Gaza cafe, fragments reveal

Exclusive: Experts say use of heavy munition in Monday’s strike that killed dozens may constitute a war crime

The Israeli military used a 500lb (230kg) bomb – a powerful and indiscriminate weapon that generates a massive blast wave and scatters shrapnel over a wide area – when it attacked a target in a crowded beachfront cafe in Gaza on Monday, evidence seen by the Guardian has revealed.

Experts in international law said the use of such a munition despite the known presence of many unprotected civilians, including children, women and elderly people, was almost certainly unlawful and may constitute a war crime.

...

Medical and other officials said between 24 and 36 Palestinians were killed in the attack on the cafe and dozens more were injured. The dead included a well-known film-maker and an artist, a 35-year-old housewife and a four-year-old child. Among the injured were a 14-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl.

Read More at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/02/israeli-military-bomb-fragments-gaza-al-baqa-cafe

The planned expulsion of Gaza’s population is already underway

Israel is conditioning aid delivery to force Gazans south into 'concentration zones.' This plan has begun to stall, but that only portends greater brutality.

 Maybe you were waiting for the alarm bells to ring, or for the Israeli army spokesperson to issue an official announcement. But the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, long referred to in Israeli parlance as “transfer,” is already underway. Not in some distant future. Right now.

It’s not exactly happening before Israeli eyes — it’s always possible to look away — but the echoes are reaching Israeli homes. The thundering blasts from Gaza heard across the country are personal messages, like those the army used to send Gazans in a previous era of cruelty: “Your home is about to be bombed. Leave immediately.” This is the updated version of the message, addressed not to the people of Gaza, but to Israeli citizens: “The transfer is underway. It is progressing. And it cannot be undone.”

....

Read more at https://www.972mag.com/gaza-expulsion-aid-delivery/

Israeli forces kill at least 60 Palestinians seeking food in Gaza, health officials say

Dozens more wounded as crowds approached food distribution centres run by Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation

Israeli forces killed at least 60 Palestinians in Gaza on Wednesday, most of them as they were seeking food from a US-Israeli distribution scheme, according to local health authorities.

Medical officials said at least 25 people were killed and dozens wounded as they approached a food distribution centre run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), near Netzarim in central Gaza.

Later in the day, at least 14 people were killed by Israeli gunfire as they were moving towards another GHF distribution site, in Rafah, at Gaza’s southern border. On Tuesday Israeli troops killed 17 Palestinians around GHF sites.

Read more on The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/11/israeli-forces-kill-at-least-60-palestinians-seeking-food-aid-in-gaza-health-officials-say

Compare the courage of Greta Thunberg’s Gaza aid mission with the inaction and complicity of western governments

 One of the definitions of genocide, according to the 1948 UN convention, is “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. This is an accurate description of what Israel has been doing in Gaza. It has killed 452 aid workers, systematically killed police officers charged with protecting aid, destroyed infrastructure needed to carry humanitarian aid, blocked fuel and water needed to cook food. More than 95% of agricultural land has been rendered unusable by Israeli attacks, 81% of cropland has been damaged and 83% of plant life has been destroyed. Almost all of its cattle and poultry are dead; milk production is nearly halted.

Israel has criminalised Unrwa, Gaza’s main humanitarian agency, and three months ago imposed a total blockade. It then replaced the existing humanitarian structures with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Its purpose, as Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich declared, was to allow the entry of the “minimum necessary” so that “the world does not stop us and accuse us of war crimes”. Stop what? Well, Smotrich openly declares that Israel will expel all surviving Palestinians from Gaza. Not only does the GHF provide far too little and often unusable aid, but it also set up aid points in the south to deliberately empty Gaza’s north. Israeli troops then repeatedly massacred starving Palestinians, replacing the existing humanitarian structures with what Tory MP Kit Malthouse called “a shooting gallery, an abattoir”.

The Madleen did not make it to Gaza’s shores. Yet its crew exposed an obscenity that has repulsed western citizens, who will one day force their governments to cease their complicity – which is why, in the end, Israel will lose.

Read more at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/10/greta-thunberg-gaza-aid-mission-madleen

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