This story was originally written in Arabic by a 14-year-old Palestinian girl in Gaza named Lujayn. Along with one of Lujayn’s relatives, I have translated it into English. She initially wrote this story for her mother and then decided to share it with the world. It recounts her family’s forced displacement from the house where they were sheltering in Khan Younis. This was the fourth time Lujayn had been displaced since Israel’s assault on Gaza began.

Lujayn describes an increasingly common tactic of the Israeli military in her narrative: bulldozing buildings with people still inside. In addition, Lujayn’s story serves as a warning to the world about the dangers of Israel’s threatened invasion of Rafah. If she were displaced again, she and her family would have nowhere to go.

Lujayn is a brilliant student. She had been planning to go to university to study mathematics. But there are no more universities left in Gaza, and Lujayn has no permanent home. All she can do right now is survive and tell her story. For Lujayn as for many Palestinians, storytelling is a form of resistance. She asks the international community to take action to stop the Israeli military from killing her friends and threatening to kill her mother, her family, and herself. She particularly asks that the people of the United States of America pressure their elected representatives to stop funding Israel’s genocide.

—Rebecca Ruth Gould

This is what happened. On March 2, 2024, my dad went to bring us supplies from Rafah despite the danger on the road. He stayed overnight in Rafah because there was no transportation at night. That night, suddenly, the situation changed. The sound of explosions and missiles was everywhere.

My mom, me, and our extended family were sheltering together with four other families and eight unaccompanied children in a home in Khan Younis. We came out of our rooms and hid in the area beneath the staircase. There was gunfire and strange sounds everywhere. We tried to understand what was happening, but we couldn’t because there was shooting and chaos all around.

Mom kept telling me, “Don’t worry, we’ll be fine,” but I could see how she looked around anxiously. She told me, “I need to understand what’s happening. Stay away from the windows.”

I could see strange green light lines entering from the window, and I heard the sound of bullets. I told her, “No, it’s dangerous,” but she insisted. She said, “I have to understand what strange thing is happening.” So, I climbed under the staircase. She came back and she told me, “Come quickly.”

We hurried downstairs, and Mom told everyone: “The bulldozer is demolishing the house in front of ours, and the tanks have surrounded us from all sides. We need to get out quickly before they come towards us.” No one thought going out was a good idea. Mom told them that she would go out first. If they allowed her to pass, she would signal to us to come out. Everyone told her she shouldn’t go out. We knew that people were dying outside.

As we were talking, two teenage girls and three children suddenly came to the front door. One of them was covered in blood, crying, and screaming. They were the children of the family whose house had been demolished. Their father was also in Rafah like my father, but their mother, sister, and the rest of the family had been martyred under the bulldozer as it destroyed the house while they were inside. Everyone was stunned.

Mom told me to bring her my first aid supplies. She started to wipe the blood from the little boy and sterilize the wounds. Then she bandaged them while trying to comfort him.

Suddenly, we heard a loud noise. The bulldozer was coming for our house. Mom stopped and told me, “I must go out and try to stop them because we’ll die under the bulldozer. I’ll try to go out and tell them that we are civilians. If they hit me and let you all out, then you leave after me. If they hit me and continue to demolish the house, know that I tried everything I could with my last hope that you would be safe.”

I started crying. Everyone told her to stop, saying the army would kill her. At the same time, we could hear the bulldozer approaching. Mom quickly went out and stood in front of it, exactly in its path, and started telling them that there were civilians, women, elderly, and children in the house. The bulldozer kept coming.

Suddenly, a tank flashed its light and the bulldozer started backing away. As I was coming out of the house, I saw Mom next to the tank, refusing to move. Suddenly, green lines covered my mother’s body and head. I understood that the tank’s machine gun was aimed at her. I knew they were going to shoot at her while she stood there. I closed my eyes. Suddenly, the green light stopped flashing, and the tank started signaling, and two people from the house came down the stairs, carrying a white flag.

Everyone tried to understand what Mom was saying. The army was signaling for us to leave, and when the tank signaled with the green light, we understood that we should go to the nearby school. Mom moved quickly and urged us to leave. Everyone was trying to get out.

Mom told me not to be afraid and lifted the injured boy up by his legs, while the girl carried her brother by his arms. We started walking behind the others. Mom was panting, and her breath was short. I understood that she needed her inhaler for her asthma. When I tried to give it to her, she said there was no time, just keep going quickly, don’t stop. If we stopped, bullets might hit us.

I don’t know how we made it to the school, but we were all safe. Mom made the boy sleep on the mattress and made sure he was okay. Then she sat me on a chair. It was two in the morning. Mom kept telling me not to worry.

A few hours later, the soldiers shouted in Arabic that we must clear the place through a certain route to another place. So we went outside. On both sides of the road, there were tanks, soldiers, and bulldozers. A soldier was speaking Arabic and selecting people, including women, to be arrested and taken to Israel. Those of us who remained were taken to a partly destroyed building three hundred meters away from the school. We stayed outside from nine or ten in the morning until eight at night, waiting in front of the entrance to the building.

Everyone started getting hungry and thirsty, especially the children. Suddenly the soldiers brought water bottles and started handing them out. Mom told us that we shouldn’t accept water from the occupation army, and that we would leave soon. She asked everyone to be patient, and added that if anyone couldn’t bear it, they could drink.

The little boy with us asked why. She told him it was because the soldiers were taking pictures of themselves while pretending to be kind to show the world how well they were treating people, but in reality they were demolishing houses on people’s heads and trampling them with their bulldozer at dawn. She was right. One of the soldiers was taking pictures, and we refused to take water from them.

I stood in front of the building’s entrance. I couldn’t even sit down when a soldier told me to sit and aimed his rifle at me. Mom came and stood in front of me, speaking forcefully in Arabic and English, telling him not to scare her daughter, as there was no room. There were elderly people next to me and if I sat so close to them, I might hurt them. For a moment, he aimed his weapon at her. She remained standing between me and him, the distance being approximately a meter and a half.

I was scared, but even more than that I was amazed and asked myself where Mom got this strength from.

Everyone was afraid, and most were crying, but she stood still, speaking and comforting me. The soldier left, and Mom sat me down. It was around eight in the evening. She placed me and the others with me in the middle, while she stood at the end near the soldiers. She told me: “If they let us go together, it would be good, but if they didn’t let me go with you, take the money and the phone. You’ll definitely find Dad outside.” She instructed the others where to go.

They separated us and took us for inspection. Strangely, they let us pass without any searching. We kept walking until we reached the last tank. Mom was holding my hand in one of her hands and the hands of the two little children in her other hand. Suddenly, the army was gone, and it was dark. Mom switched on the flashlight, and we saw Dad come running towards us from a distance. The father of the little children from the house we’d seen bulldozed was also approaching us, running. Dad hugged me tightly. Then I felt Mom stopping as if she had been waiting for this moment to catch her breath. I couldn’t believe we had made it out alive.

After this experience, Mother, I have to tell you something. I learned two things that I won’t forget. First, we must not let go of our strength, courage, and faith in God’s will at any moment. Second, we don’t turn our backs on those in need, no matter what. You didn’t leave the boy or his sisters alone. You carried their brother with them. You stayed by their side and told me: “They have no one else but us.” I won’t forget any of this. I’ve become certain that the occupation can never destroy our faith, our strength, our courage, our goodness, or our compassion.

I don’t know if the war will stop while we’re still alive, but what matters is that there are many people resisting with what is more important than weapons. Every day, a father walks under bombardment to feed us. A mother stands against bulldozers and tanks hoping to protect her daughter, knowing that even if she dies, what matters is that her daughter will live. A grandson carries his grandmother and never thinks of leaving her behind for even a moment. A sister pulls her brother out from under the rubble, away from death, and tries to save him.

Mom, this is my country, this is my people. Every generation of Palestinians will pass these lessons onto the next.

—Lujayn, Rafah, March 2024

Emphasis in bold is all my own - just bolded the parts that really stuck out to me when reading this. Anyone who reads this and still supports Israel deserves the wall in my book.

It will be legal and encouraged to hunt & kill any unhoused person in at least 13 states by the end of the year at this rate.

In a major case on homelessness, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday appeared to side with an Oregon city's crackdown on sleeping in public. The decision could have sweeping implications for the record number of people living in tents and cars, and the cities and states struggling to manage them.

The Supreme Court had declined to hear a similar case out of Boise, Idaho, in 2019. But since then rates of homelessness have spiked. An annual federal count found more than 250,000 people living in parks, on streets, and in their vehicles. Sprawling street encampments have grown larger and expanded to new places, igniting intense backlash from residents and businesses.

The current case centers on the small city of Grants Pass, Ore., which has a population just under 40,000 and is a symbol of just how widespread the homelessness problem has become. A slew of other cities and states — led by Democrats and Republicans alike — urged the justices to take up this issue. Cities say the courts have hamstrung efforts to address homelessness

In both the Boise and Grants Pass cases, lower courts said that under the Eighth Amendment it's cruel and unusual to fine or jail someone for sleeping on public land if there's no adequate shelter available. But Grants Pass and many other cities across the West say those rulings have tied their hands as they try to keep their public spaces open and safe for everyone.

Grants Pass has no public shelter. But its local law essentially banned people from sleeping with a blanket or pillow on any public land, at any time.

During Monday's arguments, the Supreme Court's more liberal justices suggested this amounts to unlawfully targeting people simply because they're homeless. "You don't arrest babies who have blankets over them. You don't arrest people who are sleeping on the beach," said Justice Sotomayor.

Justice Kagan said sleeping is not a criminal act. "Sleeping is a biological necessity. It's sort of like breathing. ... But I wouldn't expect you to criminalize breathing in public."

But the court's conservative justices said it can be hard to draw the line between someone's conduct — which can be legally punished — and a status they are unable to change — which cannot be punished. "How about if there are no public bathroom facilities?" Justice Gorsuch asked. "Do people have an Eighth Amendment right to defecate and urinate? Is that conduct or is that status?"

Over and over, conservative justices also said homelessness is a complex policy problem and questioned whether courts like theirs should "micromanage" it.

"Why would you think that these nine people are the best people to judge and weigh those policy judgments?" Chief Justice Roberts asked.

He doesn't know that I don't think any Supreme Court Justice is the best person to judge or weigh any policy judgements...

Whatever the decision, this case won't solve the homelessness problem

States and cities across the U.S. have struggled to manage record rates of homelessness. Some in the West have found ways to limit encampments and even clear them out without running afoul of the 9th Circuit rulings. Elsewhere, several states have taken a more sweeping approach with camping bans. Florida's governor recently signed a law that seeks to move unhoused people off public property altogether and into government-run encampments.

In America, you are forced to work full-time for poverty wages and when you are made homeless due to an uncontrolled and unregulated housing market, they will send you to live and work in a government camp...

Some worry that a decision in favor of Grants Pass will lead to more such moves or even a worst-case scenario of a "banishment race" if communities seek to push people out of their jurisdiction. Justice Sotomayor raised that concern during the arguments.

"Where do we put them if every city, every village, every town lacks compassion?" she said.

Grants Pass and other cities argue that the 9th Circuit's ruling has fueled the expansion of homeless encampments. But whichever way the case is decided, it's not likely to dramatically bring down the enormous number of people living outside in tents and vehicles. Many places simply don't have enough shelter beds for everyone. And more importantly, they don't have nearly enough permanent, affordable housing. The city of Grants Pass is short by 4,000 housing units; nationally, the deficit is in the millions.

If you simply criminalize being unhoused and funnel even more money into the local police department's yearly budget for surplus military gear, you don't have to invest in building 4,000 affordable housing units so long-time members of your community aren't living on public land in tents and you get some free prison slave labor for maintaining public infrastructure

That shortage has pushed rents to levels many cannot afford, which advocates say is a main driver of rising homelessness. Even where places are investing heavily to create more affordable housing, it will take a while to catch up. This Supreme Court case won't solve any of that, but it could dramatically shape the lives of those forced to live on streets, parks and back alleys for years to come.

Please God, deliver a hammer to the head of every American Supreme Court Justice or lawmaker in Grants Pass, Oregon

https://web.archive.org/web/20240210204325/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67411188

WASHINGTON — Just five minutes into a meeting with President Joe Biden, a Palestinian American doctor who has treated gravely injured patients in Gaza couldn’t bear to stay, so he left.

Dr. Thaer Ahmad, who specializes in emergency medicine, recalled getting emotional when talking about the many Palestinians he cared for, describing the scale of death in the six months since the war began.

“The decision to leave was a personal one,” he told NBC News in a phone interview, explaining he wanted to show the White House that “it was important to recognize the pain and the mourning that my community was in.”

Ahmad stressed that he wanted “to let the administration feel the way that we felt this past six months and kind of get up and walk away from them.”

He was one of only six Muslim American community leaders who attended a small meeting on Tuesday with Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and senior administration officials at the White House.

Many others who had been invited to attend declined, according to multiple sources familiar with the outreach, underscoring the deepening tensions between the administration and the Muslim and Arab American communities over the president’s support of Israel in its bombardment of Gaza. More than 30,000 people have died, according to health officials, since Hamas’ terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7 and the group is still holding more than 100 hostages captive.

Another doctor who attended was taken aback when she showed Biden prints of photos of malnourished children and women in Gaza — to which Biden responded that he had seen those images before. The problem, the doctor said, was that she had printed the photos from her own iPhone.

"This speaks volumes to the dismissive nature of the administration when it comes to strong-willed action towards a permanent cease-fire or, at a bare minimum, a red line on the invasion of Rafah," Dr. Nahreen H. Ahmed told NBC News.

Before leaving the meeting early, Ahmad handed a letter to the president from an 8-year-old orphan in Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza.

“There is an incredible amount of urgency around this,” Ahmad said, expressing deep skepticism that Israel’s military campaign can be done “in a sophisticated or tactical way” that doesn’t put innocent civilians at risk.

During the 90-minute meeting, which took place behind closed doors, Biden told attendees that he will not call for a permanent cease-fire between Israel and Hamas until all the remaining hostages are released, according to two people familiar with his comments.

The president “listened respectfully,” a third source briefed on the meeting said, and pledged to continue working to “significantly increase” humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Throughout the discussion, other doctors who have spent time in Gaza spoke about their harrowing experiences, including the danger they experienced in trying to help others, a Muslim rights activist who attended the meeting said. They also showed Biden and Harris photos of injured patients, including children, the activist said.

Biden thanked the Muslim American community leaders for attending the meeting and acknowledged that many people had expressed concern about attending an event at the White House while so many Palestinians are suffering, these people said.

Salima Suswell, founder and chief executive of the Black Muslim Leadership Council, who attended the meeting at the White House, said she felt like Biden and Harris both listened closely to the attendees and understood their perspectives.

“I thought that it was important to accept the invitation to meet with the president, the vice president and their senior administration officials today, because I have been consistent regarding the importance of engagement,” Suswell said. “It was important for me to let the president know that Black Americans and Black Muslim Americans are deeply hurting about what is happening in Gaza.”

Harris also delivered remarks that reiterated Biden’s stance and seemed designed to soften criticism of Biden’s position on the war, namely that he values the U.S. relationship with Israel more than Palestinians. She said Biden was “sincere” in his concerns, according to an attendee. She told the group she sees how much the war and the civilian death toll are “weighing on” the president and insisted he is “doing absolutely everything that he can to put an end to this war.”

Biden said, according to one of the attendees, that if Israel tries to obstruct the ability to bring aid into Gaza, the U.S. will push back and advocate for more resources to be brought into the region.

Last Thursday, the United Nations’ highest court ordered Israel to open more land crossings to allow food, water, fuel and other supplies into Gaza after reports that the Israeli government was blocking lifesaving supplies from reaching the devastated enclave. Israeli officials have repeatedly denied obstructing aid from entering Gaza, and instead blame the U.N. for acute shortages of lifesaving supplies in the strip — particularly the north.

The president did not specify what the U.S. would do to ensure aid can be safely delivered, the attendee said.

Just this week, seven aid workers with disaster relief charity World Central Kitchen were killed by an Israeli airstrike, adding to the 200 who have already died since the war started in October. The aid group said its convoy was hit as it was leaving a warehouse in the Deir al-Balah area of central Gaza, where the team had unloaded more than 100 tons of humanitarian food aid that the charity had brought to Gaza by sea earlier in the day.

In the meeting, one attendee said it appeared Biden and Harris were careful not to discuss what is taking place behind the scenes to negotiate a possible six-week cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, the attendee said.

After it concluded, the Muslim American community leaders departed and a small group of Muslim staffers participated in a scaled-back iftar dinner with Biden, Harris and other senior administration officials.

In years past, the White House hosted larger receptions related to Ramadan, including several Eid celebrations that attracted hundreds of guests and included public remarks from the president.

Several Arab American and Muslim American leaders rejected invitations in recent weeks, specifically citing their discomfort with participating in a celebration when so many in Gaza are facing starvation, two people who received invitations told NBC News.

“President Biden and Vice President Harris know this a deeply painful moment for many in the Muslim and Arab communities,” a White House official said. “President Biden made clear that he mourns the loss of every innocent life in this conflict.”

Senior White House officials and Biden campaign aides have attempted to meet with key members of Muslim and Arab American communities in recent months but have often received icy receptions.

“The president and vice president will continue to engage with Muslim and Arab American communities and listen to the voices of all impacted by this conflict,” the White House official said.

Ahmad, the doctor who left the meeting, said he plans to go back to Gaza soon and is “legitimately concerned that I may be killed in the process.”

If that happened, he said, “it’s hard to think” it could happen from a “2,000-pound bomb that the U.S. gave to Israel.”

“That my government would have had a hand in that, I just hate that,” he said. “That’s kind of the thoughts that are crossing my mind.”

Posting this because I'd think it'd be funny if Hexbear occasionally went down whenever it was cloudy outside but also because the magazine/site is cool.

lol @ the crisis message. i will continue making inflammatory comments thank you

(for context I said that in response to some dumbass thread on a /r/todayilearned post that essentially boiled down to some neckbeard arguing with me with 10 comments that "communism killed 200 bazillion people!!!")

It's been 8 years since I bought it and it still runs like a champ but ideally I'd like to actually utilize the 4k portion of my monitors.

Ideally I'd like to hit at least 16GB of VRAM since I'm of the opinion that if I'm gonna spend more than $500 on a graphics card, it better at least last the next decade of new releases gaming wise. My motherboard can probably stand an upgrade too since I have a bunch of unused USB-C ports due to the fact that the B550-F doesn't have any 3.1 headers.

Don't really have a budget but I'm posting this in the hopes someone will tell me "don't buy the 4080 super you idiot" and inform me of a better, cheaper, alternative

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obviously YES I will be running windows, linuxheads please remain calm

in my opinion the world should turn the whole island into glass mankind has suffered the british for far too long

In an investigation into mysterious illnesses in dairy cows in Texas, Kansas, and New Mexico, tests on unpasteurized milk and nasal swabs have revealed highly pathogenic avian flu in Kansas and Texas, according to a statement today from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS).

The cow's symptoms included decreased milk production, low appetite, and other symptoms. APHIS said the infections were primarily seen in older dairy cows. The new development comes less than a week after Minnesota veterinary officials detected H5N1 avian flu in baby goats at a farm where the virus had been detected in a backyard poultry flock.

The Texas Department of Agriculture said today that the disease has been working its way through the Texas panhandle, puzzling the agriculture industry. It said the cows had flulike symptoms, including fever and thick and discolored milk.

Sporadic outbreaks continue to be reported in US poultry flocks, along with numerous H5N1 detections in a variety of wild birds across many states. Along with the unidentified illnesses, the farms had also reported dead wild birds on the properties. The virus was found in milk samples from sick cows at two dairy farms in Kansas and Texas and in an oropharyngeal sample from another dairy in Texas.

"Based on findings from Texas, the detections appear to have been introduced by wild birds," APHIS said, adding that initial testing by the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, have found no changes that would make the virus more transmissible in humans.

they were right it was interesting