Israeli tanks have surrounded hospitals in the Gaza Strip following a series of strikes on Palestinian medical facilities. The World Health Organization reports Al-Shifa in Gaza City — the territory’s largest hospital — remains under heavy bombardment. Thousands of Palestinians left homeless by previous attacks have been sheltering under tents in the hospital’s courtyard. The Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital in Gaza City reports it was attacked twice on Thursday and nearly had to halt operations, and the Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital, home to Gaza’s only pediatric cancer ward, caught fire after an Israeli strike. Video shows patients and medical workers evacuating Al-Rantisi carrying white flags, then running in a panic as the sound of gunfire rings out. At least six of Gaza’s hospitals have come under fire in the past 24 hours. The Palestinian death toll is nearing 11,000, including 4,400 children. 

On Thursday, the White House said Israel had agreed to pause its assault on northern Gaza for four hours per day to allow civilians to flee south. The U.N. estimates that on Thursday alone, 50,000 people were forced to travel on foot along what Israel’s military is calling a “humanitarian corridor.” Many of them compared the mass expulsion to the 1948 Nakba that saw about 700,000 Palestinians pushed out of their homes and turned into refugees during the creation of the state of Israel.

Um Hassan: “What do things look like behind us? Destruction and death. It has become here a second Nakba for the Palestinians. What more does the world want?”

Khaled Abu Issa: “The Beach refugee camp is burning. The whole northern and western areas of Gaza are, as well. They’re driving people to schools and scaring them so they would leave. What we see today is a plan for a second Nakba.”

“Nakba” means “catastrophe” in Arabic.

Craig Mokhiber, the U.N.'s former top human rights official in New York, condemned Israel's so-called humanitarian corridors, writing, “Four-hour pauses between massacres are not 'humanitarian.' They are merely managed ethnic cleansing. Saying to caged victims 'go ahead, I'll give you a head start before I come to kill you again’ is a cruel and cynical charade, for which the perpetrators must be held to account.” Click here to see our full interview with Craig Mokhiber.

The Pentagon says two U.S. fighter planes bombed an ammunition depot used by Iran-backed militia groups in eastern Syria Wednesday. The reported airstrike follows a series of drone and missile attacks on U.S. troops stationed in Iraq and Syria. This week the Pentagon reported 46 injuries to U.S. military personnel over the last month.

On Thursday, Yemen’s Houthi rebels said they had shot down a U.S. drone over the Red Sea and fired a barrage of long-range missiles toward Israel. A Houthi spokesperson said more attacks would follow until Israel halts its aggression against Palestinians. In Paris, the United Nations’ top relief official, Martin Griffiths, warned Thursday that Israel’s assault on Gaza is poised to trigger a much wider war across the Middle East. 

Martin Griffiths: “War, indeed, is a virus that always wants to expand. And the current conflict is a wildfire that could consume the region, that could spread, and that we will think these have been the good days, when we see what may happen tomorrow.”

Here in the U.S., a top State Department official said Wednesday the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli airstrikes is likely far higher than the more than 10,000 reported by the Gaza Health Ministry. Barbara Leaf, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, was testifying to a House panel.

Barbara Leaf: “It is very difficult for any of us to assess what the rate of casualties are. We think they’re very high, frankly. And it could be that they’re even higher than are being cited. We’ll know only after the guns fall silent.”

Barbara Leaf’s testimony comes after President Biden and senior White House officials cast doubt on the Gaza Health Ministry’s count of the killed and wounded — even though human rights groups, the United Nations and even the U.S. State Department regularly cite those figures.

Here in New York, hundreds of people shut down multiple streets across midtown Manhattan Thursday for another round of protests demanding a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Hundreds of public school students joined walkouts.

Meanwhile, a large group of media workers led a march to The New York Times and later occupied the paper’s building entrance for over an hour, denouncing what demonstrators called biased reporting toward Israel. Protesters read the names of the at least 36 journalists killed by Israeli fire in Gaza and distributed mock newspapers with the words “The New York Crimes,” accusing the Times with “complicity in laundering genocide.” This is Palestinian writer and poet Mohammed El-Kurd.

Mohammed El-Kurd: “It is incredible to see hundreds of writers and journalists take part of this — in this action, because it’s telling us that journalistic malpractice, such as omitting facts and passive voice and denying war crimes and treating the lives of Palestinians as though they are less than, and demonizing and vilifying and dehumanizing Palestinians and Palestinian resistance, is completely unacceptable, if we are going to be truthful and if we are going to be loyal to the rules of this profession we call our own.”

World-renowned photographer Nan Goldin has canceled a New York Times project over what she called its “complicity with Israel” and “how they question the veracity of anything Palestinians say.” The outspoken artist has been active in recent protests for Palestinian rights, including this week’s takeover of the Statue of Liberty by 500 people led by Jewish Voice for Peace. Nan Goldin also signed onto a letter of 2,000 artists, including Kara Walker and Tilda Swinton, demanding a ceasefire. Goldin was the subject of the Oscar-nominated film “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.”

Students on college campuses across the U.S. have been protesting Israel’s U.S.-funded assault on Gaza amid an intensifying crackdown from school authorities. At Brown University, 20 Jewish students who participated in a sit-in to demand Brown consider a divestment resolution were arrested Wednesday. Hundreds of fellow students sang Jewish prayer songs outside Brown’s University Hall in solidarity with the sit-in.

Students with the MIT Coalition Against Apartheid held a peaceful protest despite threats from the school’s administration.

MIT student 1: “We are all here because MIT has now threatened to suspend all peaceful protesters who took part in the No Science for Genocide demonstration. And we must fight for this voice, because we are Gaza’s voice outside of Palestine.”

MIT student 2: “There’s a lot of energy around this No Science for Genocide claim, because a lot of people here, they come to MIT because they care about science, they care about engineering. They want to do good for the world. But the thing is that they come to MIT and become disillusioned, because we find out that what our work is going towards is not for good, is not for people. It’s going towards war, endless war.”

Here in New York City, students at the Columbia School of Social Work held a sit-in protest despite multiple threats of academic sanctions.

On Capitol Hill, students protested at a congressional hearing Wednesday, calling out the demonization of pro-Palestinian voices and what they called unjust charges of antisemitism to suppress any criticism of Israel. Students were thrown out of the hearing and arrested. The House hearing was called “Free Speech on College Campuses.”

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a record nearly 7 million people have been displaced due to ongoing conflict and violence. That’s according to the International Organization for Migration, which warns it’s one of the largest internal displacement and humanitarian crises in the world. The Congo’s eastern region has been the worst hit due to fighting between dozens of armed groups. Local communities have led protests against U.N. peacekeepers, saying they’ve failed to prevent escalating violence. Just last month, at least eight U.N. peacekeepers in eastern Congo were suspended over allegations of sexual assault.

West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin said Thursday he will not seek reelection in 2024. The conservative Democrat has earned millions of dollars from his family-owned coal business and is Congress’s largest recipient of fossil fuel industry contributions. Even as he announced his decision Thursday, Manchin appeared to leave open the possibility of a run for the White House.

Sen. Joe Manchin: “I believe, in my heart of hearts, that I’ve accomplished what I set out to do for West Virginia. I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for reelection to the United States Senate. But what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle.”

Manchin has received the support of the billionaire-backed organization No Labels, which is exploring whether to run a third-party candidate for president.

Dr. Jill Stein announced Thursday she will seek the Green Party’s 2024 presidential nomination. Stein ran for the presidency in 2016. Until recently, she was the presidential campaign manager for Cornel West, who was running for the 2024 Green Party nomination but is now running independently for president.

A federal court in Alaska has sided with the Biden administration in its approval of the Willow project. ConocoPhillips’s $8 billion oil and gas project in Alaska’s Western Arctic Reserve is projected to emit more than 260 million metric tons of greenhouse gases over the next 30 years. Climate and Indigenous groups who have been fighting the project say they are considering an appeal of the court’s decision.

The state of Texas has executed Brent Brewer, a 53-year-old who spent three decades on death row. Brewer’s lawyers had argued the jury handed down a death sentence based on the testimony of a forensic psychiatrist who never examined Brewer — and whose arguments were later declared to be “junk science” by a Texas appeals court. One of the jurors who agreed to the death sentence later recanted.

The Justice Department has launched an investigation into civil rights violations by police in the majority-Black Mississippi city of Lexington. This is Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke. 

Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke: “We will assess whether the police department uses excessive force; violates people’s civil and constitutional rights during stops, searches and arrests; engages in discriminatory policing; or violates people’s civil rights to engage in speech or conduct protected by the Constitution.”