الكاتب: kafej

Decision was made in part to prevent spread of diseases that would ‘harm’ civilians and its own troops on the ground, Israeli official says.

Israel is allowing two trucks of fuel into Gaza every day to keep the besieged enclave’s water and sewage system operational, as its forces continue their air and ground siege of the territory.

Israel’s war cabinet said 140,000 litres (37,000 gallons) of fuel could enter every two days after it received a “special request” from the United States.

Israel banned fuel supplies into Gaza when it launched a military campaign in the Strip on October 7. Acute shortages have threatened aid deliveries and communications.

Tzachi Hanegbi, national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said the fuel would be used to “operate the sewage and water systems run by UNRWA”, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.

“We took that decision to prevent the spread of epidemics. We don’t need epidemics that will harm civilians or our fighters. If there are epidemics, the fighting will stop,” he said. Hanegbi described the quantity as “very minimal”.

A US State Department official, offering more details, said Israel had committed to allowing in 120,000 litres (31,700 gallons) of fuel every 48 hours for UNRWA’s trucks and other needs like desalinisation of water, sewage pumping and for bakeries and hospitals in the south of Gaza.

An additional 20,000 litres (5,300 gallons) every two days would be allowed in to power generators of telecoms company Paltel, which had warned of an imminent blackout of its cellphone network due to a lack of fuel.

But aid groups have said the fuel ration is far from enough.

Why allow fuel supplies now?

Reporting from occupied East Jerusalem, Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands said: “Tzachi Hanegbi is basically justifying allowing this trickle of fuel in, for a domestic audience, as a way of keeping the military operation going on in Gaza.

“He is saying pandemics, if they break out, would not just affect the population of Gaza but also affect Israeli troops and hurt their fighting ability. And he is also saying that this decision basically gives diplomatic space to Israel to carry on pushing that military offensive.”

US officials have been pushing Israel to allow fuel in for some time. After not complying for weeks, “now, Netanyahu’s government believes that granting this wish from the US basically means that that criticism is going to start dying down,” Challands said.

On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made calls to members of Israel’s war cabinet and warned that the fuel shortage risked a humanitarian catastrophe among Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, a State Department official said.

But Israeli officials argue that Hamas should release hostages before it eased the pressure on Gaza.

Challands said allowing fuel into Gaza is “incredibly unpopular among the far right” in Israel.

“They feel while the fuel is being given, the captives are not being returned,” he said, noting how Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has said that “there is no sense in giving the enemy humanitarian gifts”.

Andreas Krieg, senior lecturer of security studies at King’s College London told Al Jazeera that for Israel, this decision about allowing limited supplies of fuel into Gaza is not really “an act of empathy”.

“This is more about them knowing that the clock is ticking,” he said.

“They know the international community, especially Western allies of Israel, are increasingly nervous about what Israel is doing. Especially the Biden administration wants to see this is coming to an end somehow.”

It’s the happy memories of his toddler son playing around their home in The Gambia’s capital that are most painful for Ebrima Sagnia to remember. When he tries to speak, Sagnia pauses mid-sentence, muted by grief.

In September last year, Sagnia watched Lamin writhe in pain on a hospital bed. The four-year-old had developed a fever early that month, which was common in the rainy season. His parents had given him prescribed medication, hoping the high temperature would go away, but Lamin developed new symptoms instead, becoming drowsy and unable to pass urine for days. He was rushed to the hospital, but his symptoms persisted. Despite his discomfort, Lamin just wanted to return to their home in Banjul and play. He loved football and motorcars. When his dad drove, Lamin would sit in his lap and pretend he was the driver.

By mid-September, about a week after his parents took him to the hospital, Lamin had died. Doctors told Sagnia the cause was complications from acute kidney injury (AKI). The condition, a sudden onset of kidney failure, causes swollen limbs, nausea, confusion and reduced urine flow.

Lamin was one of 70 children killed last year by substandard cough syrups imported from India that the World Health Organization (WHO) said contained “unacceptable levels” of toxins. Most of the children were under five, and some were from the same family. The case has underlined the difficulties low-income economies like The Gambia face in sourcing quality medication and implementing local quality controls.

“Every day reminds me of my son, how he kept saying to me, ‘Daddy, take me home. Take me home,’ and I told him I would,” Sagnia said.

Sagnia could not take his son home, but the 44-year-old is now leading a coalition of 19 aggrieved parents who’ve dragged their government and private entities involved in producing and distributing the medicine in The Gambia to court. The parents, Sagnia said, are seeking justice and restitution for what they say were deaths caused by “negligence and breach of statutory duty”. The Gambia’s Ministries of Health and Justice, the drug manufacturer and distributors, and the country’s Medicines Control Agency (MCA) are all listed as defendants.

Court hearings began on July 21. At the second sitting on October 24, none of the government’s representatives showed up, Loubna Farage, a lawyer representing the parents, said, and the court fined them. About nine of the parents chosen to represent the group were present along with their family members who had shown up for support. The group filled the courtroom, their faces long, their demeanor heavy.

At another court hearing on November 7, government lawyers showed up, but representatives of the manufacturer and distributor were missing. The judge was forced to adjourn until late in November.

Deadly doses

The cough syrups in question are four brands, all manufactured by Maiden Pharmaceuticals Ltd, an Indian drugmaker, and imported by The Gambia-based Atlantic Pharmaceuticals Co. On their colourful packaging, the syrups carried a logo saying they were WHO-certified. Officials of the WHO told Al Jazeera the claim was a lie.

All four medicines contained high levels of diethylene glycol (DEG) and ethylene glycol (EG), officials at the WHO and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed. Both are sweet-tasting but deadly substances normally used to manufacture products like brake fluid and windshield wipers.

Mass poisonings like this have more recently been recorded in India, Panama and Nigeria. Several cases in the past document how manufacturers intentionally swap out pharmaceutical-grade propylene glycol (PG), a mildly sweet additive used to improve the solubility of medicines for the similar, much cheaper and fatal DEG and EG.

In a January alert, the WHO said it had recorded 300 child fatalities in 2022 across seven countries, including Indonesia and Uzbekistan, due to contaminated medication. Six deaths have also been recorded in Cameroon this year. It’s the deadliest set of poisonings recorded since 1996.

An Indonesian firm, Afi Farma, manufactured the syrups locally in that country’s case while China’s Fraken Group produced the syrups pulled off shelves in Cameroon. In August, Uzbek authorities began the trials of officials of Marion Biotech, another Indian manufacturer, for reportedly selling contaminated cough syrups believed to have killed 65 children in the Central Asian country.

Health experts are not sure how the poisonings are occurring but believe substances or additives like PG used to stabilise the medications are likely contaminated. WHO officials said they have no evidence the cases are linked.

In The Gambia case, Indian health authorities said the WHO failed to show a direct link between Maiden’s cough syrups and the multiple deaths and accused the UN agency of trying to tarnish the country’s image. Tests by Indian health authorities, the Indian government said, did not reveal contaminants in Maiden’s products. Maiden has also said it did nothing wrong.

But Parsa Bastani, a CDC epidemiologist who led an expert team to assist The Gambia in its investigation, told Al Jazeera the tests conducted left no doubt as to what caused the clusters of AKI deaths.

“I don’t know what evidence the Indian government was reviewing,” Barstani said, “but the evidence we found highly suggested that there was a link.” His team had received a request to investigate from Banjul in late August last year and arrived in The Gambia just as the deaths peaked in mid-September.

“The drug testing showed there were levels of DEG in all the cases and that that led to the deaths,” Bastani said, clarifying that his team had not done a separate test but had analyzed tests done by WHO officials also on ground at the time. “That was a very difficult and sad process to be there and collect information from parents, some of whom had lost their kids within the past week.”

Industry malpractice?

Gambian authorities have flown into a flurry of activity since the tragedy.

In October last year, three months after they started investigating the unusual spike in AKI deaths among children, the country banned Maiden and Atlantic. In June, officials went further, tightening import controls from India. All drug exporters from that country must now present clearance certificates from a designated Indian testing laboratory.

Authorities also fired the head and deputy of the MCA, the entity in charge of certifying and monitoring imported pharmaceuticals, which should have stopped the drugs from going on the market. Children died in six of the country’s seven regions, underlining the spread of the contaminated medicine.

Banjul is also mulling legal action against Maiden and possibly the Indian government, the Reuters news agency reported.

Analysts have also pointed out “unacceptable” lapses in the Ministry of Health itself that might have contributed to the steepness of the death toll.

Although health workers at the Edwards Francis Small Teaching Hospital alerted the ministry about an unusual cluster of deaths in late July 2022, the first public warning to stop selling or using a list of suspected cough syrups did not materialise until September, more than 40 days later.

A review of the timeline of events as well as information from the CDC team and government reports show that the contaminated medicines were imported about June 21 and that AKI deaths peaked in mid-September before tapering off in October.

But there were already suspicions as early as August that the syrups were poisoned.

One parent whose child used the syrup in July and died on August 5 said doctors in Banjul asked him what type of drugs he used and that he had presented the syrup. “One of the doctors told me that they were having these cases and that my son was the fifth case,” Alieu Kijera, an eye nurse, said. Kijera said he was surprised when he continued to hear of many cases after his son, two-year-old Mohamed, died and was shocked to know the medication was still available on shelves in The Gambia at the end of August.

Some children, including Sagnia’s son, used the deadly drugs weeks after the authorities had been officially alerted.

“It’s unacceptable that after having some evidence, even if not confirmed, that the authorities there let it pass for another month,” said Prashant Yadav, a health supply chains scholar and Harvard Medical School lecturer, who has researched pharmaceuticals in Africa for more than a decade.

“Even if it was a wrong call, what would we have lost by preventively taking a product off the market? Safety comes so much higher than anything else,” Yadav said.

The Gambian Health Ministry and the MCA did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment. In a report by a government task force looking into the deaths, authorities said they “suspected that the AKI could be caused by drug toxicity” after the initial alert in July and that the Health Ministry “decided to ban these drugs even before receiving confirmation from the laboratory testing”.

Hiring people with vested interests in The Gambia’s pharmacy sector may have also contributed to the deadly medicines going on shelves across the country.

While fully employed elsewhere, Gambian pharmacists commonly double as supervisors in private dispensaries, local sources as well as the government task force report confirmed. The practice, referred to in local media as tantamount to “renting out licenses”, presents a potential case of conflict of interests, according to the government report.

While unusual, it is not illegal for pharmacists in the civil service to double as private workers. The law requires that dispensaries wanting to import drugs provide the certificate of a licensed pharmacist to be allowed to ship products in and the pharmacist must provide technical advice to the importer, spending two to four hours a day at the dispensary.

In several cases though, these supervising pharmacists are often full-time government staffers who don’t spend time at the dispensaries. Some even work for the MCA or the Gambian Pharmacy Council, both industry regulators. Some pharmacists also supervise several private dispensaries simultaneously.

At the time of the deaths last year, an MCA official was supervising Atlantic Pharmacy, the entity that imported the contaminated syrups, investigations by Gambian officials showed. The same official, speaking for the agency in the early days of the crisis, had claimed that floodwaters, not the contaminated medicines, caused the mass deaths. The man, who told authorities that another supervising pharmacist with Atlantic had signed off on the drug imports, did not respond to a request for comment.

“It’s not normal,” Yadav, the supply chain scholar, said of the industry practice. But the multiple issues with the response to the deaths underscores a deep-seated issue in The Gambia and other low-income countries like it, he pointed out.

“It’s a country that has a very limited budget and the regulation is very weak,” Yadav said. “In theory, there’s what authorities should be doing, but the practicality is different. Saying that they could have removed those syrups earlier, for example, that’s a matter of financial luxury. So in a way, I also empathise with the ministry because it’s not straightforward.”

Dependence on imports

The Gambia, which has four public hospitals and 170 registered drug stores for a population of 2.6 million people, has no local drug manufacturers, meaning all of its medicines are imported. The country has no drug testing laboratories to authenticate imports either. To test the syrups, officials sent samples to Senegal, Ghana, France and Switzerland.

Enter India. With about 10,500 drug manufacturers in the country, India is by far the world’s biggest generic medicine maker, cornering a 20 percent share of global production. The country is often referred to as the “pharmacy of the world”.

India provides half of Africa’s generic drugs. Their comparatively low cost makes the country all the more attractive to middle- and low-income countries. As of 2019, at least 90 percent of The Gambia’s pharmaceutical imports came from India.

While it has recorded major successes, India’s pharmaceutical scene is riddled with problems, including substandard production and a chaotic regulation process that often make it unclear who is in charge of what between its many state control agencies and the federal drug control body.

The country itself has recorded five DEG mass poisonings. Experts linked the latest deaths in 2019 in Jammu and Kashmir to a failure of manufacturers to test raw materials as required by law. Twelve children died after their kidneys and other organs stopped functioning.

Researchers have found that some Indian manufacturers produce substandard drugs specifically for export to African markets and to other low-income countries because of lax regulation. The Pharmacy Export Council of India (Pharmexcil), in one document, said Africa is particularly attractive because “market access to these countries is simpler in nature as compared to stringent regulatory authorities of other developed nations.”

The string of recent DEG cases implicating at least two Indian manufacturers spurred authorities to crack down on drug producers with spot checks.

After news of the Gambian deaths emerged, the Indian government confirmed that Maiden was not licensed to sell the syrups in India but was licensed to sell them to the African country. The company is also on a government list of “WHO-GMP-certified” manufacturers, a certification implying it met the WHO’s “good medical practices” standard for exports.

But Maiden had been prosecuted by multiple Indian states in the years leading up to its fatal Gambia exports, mainly for providing substandard products. Top officials in the company were also handed jail sentences in an Indian court in February for exporting substandard drugs to Vietnam almost a decade ago.

India suspended Maiden’s production last year after the deaths in The Gambia. Allegations that a state regulator helped switch the samples Indian health authorities tested in The Gambia case emerged in June. India’s anticorruption agency told reporters those claims are being investigated.

WHO officials told Al Jazeera they’ve ordered Maiden to cease using “WHO-certified” labels, as it did on the syrup bottles. However, Maiden still remains on the Indian government’s WHO-GMP-certified list, meaning it still meets WHO production standards, according to the Indian government.

Hopeful for justice

After the second court hearing in the Gambian parents’ case, Sagnia felt hopeful, he said, even if the fight ahead looked daunting.

He and other parents felt hurt by the no-show from government representatives at that hearing. It made them feel like the case was not important to them, he said, adding, however, that the authorities’ attitude did not surprise him.

“None of the government officials has ever visited us in our homes since this whole thing happened,” Sagnia told Al Jazeera after the court session.“They only called us to meet them in their offices while we lost our children due to their negligence. It might be that the judge rules in our favour if they continue like that.”

The parents, who are spread across the country, have turned inward to find solace. They formed a WhatsApp group, so they can stay in touch about the case, and it has become a therapy platform of sorts with members pitching in when one person needs help, even outside the case. At the moment, Sagnia is trying to get a good doctor to see one member who has suffered a hand injury. “As the group leader, I feel like it is my duty,” he said. “We have all become just like a family.”

Many of the parents are confident of a win. “I believe there is hope for us, inshallah,” Alassan Kamaso said, using a phrase meaning “as God wills”, which is popular in Muslim-majority Gambia. Kamaso’s son, Musa, was 18 months old when he died in September last year.

An unprecedented trial

The mass AKI deaths are on a scale never-before experienced in The Gambia, but the trial too is just as historic, Farage, the lawyer representing the parents, said.

Never before have parents bonded together to go after the authorities in such a manner – an unusually brave stand in a country where the courts have traditionally had little autonomy.

For two decades, The Gambia was under the iron-fisted rule of Yahya Jammeh, who cracked down on dissidents and controlled the judiciary. It was Jammeh’s electoral defeat in 2017 by President Adama Barrow that halted the dictator’s plans to withdraw The Gambia from the International Criminal Court. The ongoing legal case to bring Jammeh to justice, involving dozens of witnesses, is one of the few that legally compare to the syrup deaths case.

“I believe this is why the government does not know how to deal with this matter since there is no precedent,” the lawyer said.

A lack of financial resources, Farage added, also often discourages many Gambians from seeking justice in a country where half the population lives in poverty. The average salary in The Gambia is $68 a month, so paying for legal fees costing about $250 an hour is almost impossible although there are legal aid programmes.

“One needs to understand that poor people have no hope and often feel neglected by the system,” said Farage, whose firm is providing assistance to the 19 parents free of charge. “They do not understand their rights. They do not understand that the government is here to serve the people. They will often be heard to say that God has a reason for their suffering. They are taught to be patient and leave everything in God’s hands.”

Some of the parents of the children killed by the cough syrups are neither influential nor wealthy. Kamaso is unemployed and spent all he had on his son’s treatment, he said. When Sagnia is not working at the bank where he is a chauffeur, he drives a taxi to supplement his income.

Farage said these parents are bent on pushing for regulatory changes to ensure such a tragedy never happens again. They want accountability for the government agencies involved, and they want proper compensation, he said.

Some of them are still angry that last year, when their grief was still fresh, authorities pressed them to take monetary compensation of about $200 even before investigations were concluded.

Ebrima Saidy is one of them. His five-year-old daughter Adama died on September 19. The 23-year-old is currently in Italy, where he is studying the language to prepare for a computer science course, but he has been glued to his phone for updates on the case. His partner remains in The Gambia.

“We want them to dismiss anyone who needs to be dismissed,” he said in a recent call, his papery voice rising over the phone line. Saidy also acts as a spokesperson for the group and said that for many parents, the firing of the MCA head and deputy is not enough. And the money they were offered? It was offensive, he said.

“What is the life of my daughter to 14,200 dalasi?” Saidy asked. The $200 sum, around the same price as 10 bags of rice in The Gambia, seemed the equivalent of hush money, he told Al Jazeera. “We are not here for the money. We want them to tighten their protocols and, if possible, to stop importing from India altogether,” Saidy said.

In addition to Saidy’s grief and loss, there’s the fear that grips him every time he calls home to speak to Adama’s sister, Hawa, who won’t stop asking for a twin she thinks is still coming home.

“She will ask, ‘Is she still at the hospital? Is she still with grandma?” Saidy said. He has not yet found the courage to tell Hawa the truth. “I’ll say, ‘Yes, she is still at the hospital. She is coming,’” he said.

Although at least 70 children were killed, only 19 parents are involved in the lawsuit, Saidy said, because government officials would not release all the names of the affected families so he could contact them. Eight other parents have recently signalled that they want to join the case too, but some parents, he added, have already accepted the compensation money while others have simply given up on getting any justice in a system where malpractice is common.

Not Saidy.

“Some of them said, ‘I leave them to God’ and they left,” Saidy said. “But we said, ‘No, we will fight for our children.’”

Buenos Aires, Argentina – David Urbani was 15 years old, barely in high school, when he first encountered the future far-right presidential candidate Javier Milei.

Now an economics student at the National University of Mar del Plata, Urbani remembers surfing on YouTube when he stumbled on a series of educational videos that Milei had put together, as part of his work as an economist and professor in Buenos Aires at the time.

“I think what moved me the most was the simple way he explained concepts,” Urbani, 20, said, holding up an introductory economics book with Milei’s autograph in it. “The guy is an academic, not a politician.”

A relative newcomer to Argentina’s politics, Milei has nevertheless catapulted to international fame as the dark horse candidate in this year’s presidential elections.

This Sunday, he faces centre-left Economy Minister Sergio Massa in a run-off race so tight that polls show the two candidates in a dead heat.

Part of the fuel behind Milei’s sudden political rise has been the devoted following he has whipped up among young, largely male voters like Urbani. Some are devoted libertarians. Others are merely curious and feeling disaffected with the political establishment.

But while pundits and opposition politicians lambaste Milei for his radical right-wing policy proposals, this young generation of “mileistas” say they’re all in.

“I believe we have to try, and that’s it,” Ramiro Gómez, a 21-year-old information technology (IT) technician from the province of Rosario, said of his decision to back Milei.

Elected to the lower chamber of Argentina’s congress in 2021, Milei was still in his freshman term when he launched his long-shot presidential bid in this year’s race.

But he quickly scored an upset. In August’s open primary, he rocketed to the top spot, earning more votes than establishment figures like Massa and former Security Minister Patricia Bullrich.

Milei has remained a frontrunner ever since. In October’s general elections, he finished in second place behind Massa, earning one of two slots in the run-off race.

Many experts credit Milei’s sudden popularity to the dire straits of Argentina’s economy. The country faces a long-running economic crisis, and inflation has topped 140 percent, driving down the value of Argentina’s national currency, the peso.

To address the crisis, Milei has promised to slash key government ministries, charge fees for Argentina’s public healthcare system, shutter the central bank, and adopt the United States dollar as Argentina’s national currency.

He has also adopted an eyebrow-raising mixture of libertarian and conservative social stances, offering support for banning abortion and legalising organ sales. Popular targets for his sharply worded broadsides include women, the LGBTQ community and even Pope Francis, an Argentinian himself.

Yet, while other right-wing populists like former US President Donald Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro have struggled to win over younger generations, Milei has consistently led polls of voters between the ages of 16 and 35.

Mark P Jones, a professor in Latin American studies at Rice University, credits the difference to the deep-seated frustration with Argentina’s crisis and Milei’s image as a political outsider.

“When younger voters look at Milei, they see someone who’s fighting against the system and a rebel,” Jones said. “And I think one thing Milei has been able to do is effectively dissociate himself with younger voters from his more conservative policies.”

A ‘chainsaw’ to the status quo

Milei’s most ardent supporters often connect through WhatsApp groups and on social media, where fan accounts feature silhouettes of the candidate’s signature sideburns and memes depict him locked in epic anime battles.

Milei’s eccentricity is central to his brand: He once was the frontman of a Rolling Stones cover band, and he currently owns five cloned dogs, each named after right-wing economists.

Videos have also gone viral during the election showing Milei tearing down Post-It notes with the names of the government ministries he intends to cut and shouting his catchphrase, “Long live f***ing liberty!”

Jones described Milei’s base as motivated less by ideology and more by desperation and exasperation with the traditional political establishment.

His bloc of supporters, Jones explained, is largely composed of middle- and working-class voters in their late teens and 20s who are frustrated with struggling to maintain gainful employment.

“Milei is their vehicle to effectively take a chainsaw to the status quo, but also to perhaps try something different,” Jones said, referencing Milei’s embrace of the chainsaw as a campaign symbol.

Alan Quiroga, 28, who lives in a working-class suburb of Buenos Aires and drives for Uber on his motorcycle, said he was first drawn to Milei when he saw the libertarian on television, speaking passionately about Argentina’s “golden age” in the early 20th century.

“What he wants to implement is what they do in the United States, in Spain, in normal countries,” Quiroga said. “What we are experiencing here is going towards Venezuela, Cuba.”

Though popular with many of his supporters, Milei’s proposal to adopt the US dollar faces steep opposition from the broader public. A September poll showed nearly 70 percent of Argentinians disapproved of the idea.

That month, 170 Argentinian economists also published an open letter predicting that a currency switch would lead to further inflation, mass unemployment and “absurd” increases in Argentina’s $400bn public debt.

‘A good crazy person’

But Milei’s appeal among young voters goes beyond his radical economic plan. The candidate has sought to position himself as a critic of corruption among the political elite, whom he calls “the caste”.

High-ranking members of Argentina’s main political parties have recently faced corruption charges. Last year, for instance, outgoing Vice President Cristina Fernandez was sentenced to six years in jail for fraud.

“The Javier Milei I like the most is the effusive Javier Milei, the honest Javier Milei,” Urbani said. “It’s the Javier Milei who gets mad when he’s faced with lies, faced with dishonest people.”

Milei has a penchant for the dramatic, at times appearing overcome with emotion during his public speeches.

“A good crazy person — that’s how I would describe him,” Quiroga said. “It comes from his heart. He can’t control it.”

Yet, even some of Milei’s longstanding supporters have their doubts about his ability to maintain his credentials as a corruption fighter, especially as he broadens his coalition to include the kinds of establishment figures he frequently criticizes.

Former President Mauricio Macri has offered Milei his backing, as has Bullrich, his former conservative rival in the presidential race.

“When he became involved in politics, without wanting to, he became part of the caste,” said Lucas González, a 28-year-old bookstore owner who said he still supports Milei.

Though Milei has built a strong movement, whether or not it survives will depend on the results of Sunday’s election and how the economy fares in the coming months, said Noam Lupu, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University who researches Argentina.

“There will always be this kind of libertarian, pro-business vote in Argentina,” Lupu said. “But the sort of anti-establishment, anti-status quo, pro-disruption only succeeds if it continues to feel threatened by the status quo and the political class.”

Urbani disagrees. He believes that Milei has triggered a significant political shift among Argentinian youth that will persist regardless of Sunday’s election results.

“The majority of the youth are Milei voters, and especially boys,” Urbani said. “What is coming for Argentina is very good, because a lot of kids have started to reckon with capitalist ideas, with economic concepts in their heads that they were not talking about before.”

The evidence provided by Israeli forces to justify their attacks on Gaza’s hospitals has come up short – and so has the news coverage.

Contributors:
Alice Rothchild – Health Advisory Council, Jewish Voice for Peace
Diana Buttu – Palestinian Lawyer
Meron Rapoport – Editor, Local Call
Yumna Patel – Palestine News Director, Mondoweiss

On our radar:

Israeli politicians are calling for the transfer of Palestinians from Gaza. Producer Tariq Nafi reports on how they’re using the media to transmit the message loud and clear.

The Israeli anti-war Left: Where to next, after October 7?

A special interview with journalist and human rights activist Orly Noy on the pain and loneliness of the Israeli anti-war Left, post-October 7th.

Contributor:
Orly Noy – Chair, B’Tselem

Dozens of people remain under the rubble after attacks on two residential areas in Khan Younis.

At least 28 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air strikes on two residential areas of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

A neighbourhood in Hamad was struck in a bombardment on Saturday, said Al Jazeera’s Youmna ElSayed, reporting from Khan Younis. Dozens were also wounded in the attack that mostly killed children.

Another bombing then targeted a house in the town of Khuza’a, east of Khan Younis, she said.

“The total number of people killed is 28 people, but dozens have been injured and dozens still remain under the rubble especially in Hamad residential neighbourhood,” ElSayed added.

The director of Nasser Medical Complex in the south said his facility received 26 bodies and 23 people with serious injuries after the Hamad strike, according to the AFP news agency.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have moved to the southern Gaza Strip after Israel ordered them to evacuate the northern region, claiming it would be “safer” amid Israeli forces’ ground offensive there.

Two-thirds of them are now homeless.

In recent weeks, Israeli bombardments have also intensified in the south.

Residents in Khuzaa, Abassan, Bani Suheila and al-Qarara in eastern Khan Younis, the biggest city in southern Gaza, said Israeli aircraft dropped thousands of leaflets overnight on Wednesday and early on Thursday, warning them to leave.

“For your safety, you need to evacuate your places of residence immediately and head to known shelters,” the leaflets said. “Anyone near terrorists or their facilities puts their life at risk, and every house used by terrorists will be targeted.”

It was not clear where residents in eastern Khan Younis were expected to flee as Israel had previously ordered people to relocate to this region for their safety.

In an interview with a US broadcaster on Friday, Mark Regev, an aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said they are asking people to relocate because they “don’t want to see civilians caught up in the crossfire”, indicating the Israeli army’s plans to attack Hamas in southern Gaza after subduing the north.

Regev added that Israeli troops will have to advance into the city to remove Hamas fighters from what he alleged are underground tunnels and bunkers, but that no such “enormous infrastructure” exists in less built-up areas to the west.

“I’m pretty sure that they won’t have to move again” if they move west,” he noted.

“We’re asking them to move to an area where hopefully there will be tents and a field hospital,” he said, adding that the western areas are also closer to the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, where humanitarian aid could be brought in “as quickly as possible”.

But UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said that currently, his organisation “do not consider any part of Gaza to be safe”.

Since October 7, more than 12,000 people in the Gaza Strip, 5,000 of them children, have been killed due to Israel’s bombardment of the besieged enclave that is home to about 2.3 million people.