Israeli forces have barred rescue teams from reaching Palestinians trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings as Israel’s siege on the northern Gaza Strip continues into its 18th day. On Monday, Israeli drones equipped with loudspeakers hovered over shelters for displaced Palestinians in Beit Lahia, blaring messages ordering them to flee through military checkpoints. Witnesses say Israeli soldiers entered the shelters, separated men from their families at gunpoint and instructed women and children to move southward. The mass expulsion came amid continued unrelenting Israeli attacks, including a strike on Beit Lahia that killed 15 Palestinians, including children.

Gaza’s Health Ministry reports at least 115 Palestinians have been killed over the past 48 hours; 500 more were wounded, bringing the reported number of people wounded in Israel’s yearlong war to more than 100,000, with nearly 43,000 killed — though both figures are likely to be a vast undercount.

Northern Gaza’s last three operational hospitals remain besieged, with more than 350 patients trapped inside Al-Awda, Indonesian and Kamal Adwan hospitals. Dr. Marwan al-Hams is the director of Gaza’s field hospitals.

Dr. Marwan al-Hams: “Israel has not allowed the entry of any medicine, treatment and medical supplies to the north of Gaza. In addition, the Israeli occupation is preventing the entry of food and nutrition for the medical teams and patients inside the hospitals, and it is directly targeting the hospitals.” 

Meanwhile, Gaza officials say Israeli forces have blocked the entry of more than a quarter of a million trucks carrying food and other vital aid into Gaza in the last year, as Israel is accused of using starvation as a weapon of war.

In Lebanon, rescue workers are searching for civilians trapped under the rubble of their homes after Israel’s military carried out more than a dozen strikes overnight on Beirut and its southern suburbs. At least 13 people, including a child, were killed and 57 others injured in an Israeli airstrike near the Rafik Hariri University Hospital, Lebanon’s largest public medical center. Separately, 50 medical workers and 15 patients were forced to evacuate the Al-Sahel Hospital in southern Beirut Monday after Israel’s military claimed — without evidence — it’s home to a secret, underground Hezbollah bunker containing hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold. Doctors insisted there’s nothing hidden beneath the hospital and took reporters on a tour of its lower floors to disprove the claims. 

In Israel, air raid sirens sounded in Tel Aviv earlier today as Hezbollah fired a volley of rockets from Lebanon. Hezbollah said the attacks targeted a military base south of Tel Aviv, as well as a naval base northwest of Haifa.

Meanwhile, Syrian media is reporting at least two people were killed and three others injured Monday when an Israeli guided missile slammed into a car in Damascus. Israel’s military claimed responsibility, saying the strike killed the head of Hezbollah’s money transfers unit.

Israeli Cabinet members and officials with the ruling Likud party called Monday for the reestablishment of illegal Israeli settlements in Gaza and for the ethnic cleansing of the territory’s Palestinian inhabitants. Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir spoke from a conference of settler groups and ultranationalists near Israel’s border with Gaza, where he declared, “We will encourage voluntary transfer of all Gazan citizens. We will offer them the opportunity to move to other countries because that land belongs to us.” The conference was organized by the Nachala Settlement Movement, whose leader, Daniella Weiss, said thousands of settlers are set to move to Gaza.

Daniella Weiss: “We came here with one clear purpose. The purpose is to settle the entire Gaza Strip — not just part of it, not just a few settlements, the entire Gaza Strip, from north to south. Thousands of people are ready to move to Gaza now. As a result of the brutal massacre of the 7th of October, the Gaza Arabs lost the right to be here ever, so they will go to the different countries of the world. They will not stay here.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Tel Aviv for talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders. The State Department claims Blinken’s trip is aimed at reviving failed Gaza ceasefire negotiations, yet the Biden administration continues to refuse calls for an arms embargo against Netanyahu’s government amid record U.S. military assistance to Israel. This is Blinken’s 11th visit to the region since Israel launched its latest war on Gaza last October.

Meanwhile, calls are growing for U.S. officials to investigate reports of the Israeli army using abducted Palestinians as human shields in Gaza, often forcing them to walk ahead of Israeli soldiers to inspect underground tunnels and buildings. The use of human shields is a war crime. 

In related news, a group of over 60 House Democrats are demanding the Biden administration “take immediate action to advocate for unrestricted, independent media access” to Gaza, as Israel has blocked foreign journalists from entering over the course of its yearlong war.

Five falsely convicted New Yorkers who became known as the “Central Park Five” have filed a defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump after the Republican presidential candidate wrongfully suggested at last month’s debate with Kamala Harris that the five confessed to a crime they did not commit. In 1989, the group of one Latino and four Black teenagers was falsely accused, and then convicted, of raping and nearly killing a white jogger. As the boys faced a barrage of racism and police misconduct, Trump took out a full-page ad in The New York Times calling for a reinstatement of the death penalty. Four members of the redubbed “Exonerated Five,” including New York City Councilmember Yusef Salaam, spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August. Click here to see our interview with Councilmember Salaam.

The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe is demanding an apology from Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and the National Park Service Police after members of the tribe were assaulted, arrested and violently removed from the National Mall by federal police forces last week. A contingent of the tribe had just completed a 70-day journey on horseback from the Bay Area to Washington, D.C. — coinciding with Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe says it will use Freedom of Information Act requests to investigate why it was attacked, as the group continues its campaign to restore federal recognition.

Texas lawmakers heard testimony Monday in the case of death row prisoner Robert Roberson, whose execution last week was halted at the 11th hour by the Texas Supreme Court. But Roberson, who had been subpoenaed, did not appear before the Texas House Committee, after his lawyers determined it was not appropriate due to Roberson’s communication challenges linked to his autism. Roberson’s 2003 murder conviction was based on the “shaken baby syndrome” theory, which has never been scientifically validated. Among those who did testify Monday was Terre Compton, a juror in Roberson’s 2003 trial.

Terre Compton: “I started thinking back about all the things that I knew about that went on in the trial, and I just realized and I just finally came to the conclusion he was an innocent man. And I just — in good conscience, I could not live with myself thinking that I had a hand in putting an innocent man to death.”

The Texas House panel says they will seek alternatives to hear directly from Roberson as they continue to consider his case.

In Guatemala, prominent journalist José Rubén Zamora has been transferred from prison to house arrest after serving two years of his six-year sentence behind bars. Zamora is the founder of El Periódico, which was known for its investigative reporting on corruption. He was convicted in 2022 on money laundering charges as part of then-President Alejandro Giammattei’s crackdown on the press and dissent. Zamora spoke to reporters and supporters as he left a Guatemala City prison Saturday.

José Rubén Zamora: “And I think they’re going to try to lock me up again. And I want you to be certain that it may be that they are bluffing or it may be true. And if they are going to bring me back, I will wait for them at my house again, and I will come back here. I think that kind of actions are affecting them, not me.”

Click here to see our past coverage of this case and our interview with Zamora’s son.

Legendary singer and activist Barbara Dane died in her Oakland home Sunday. She was 97 years old. In the 1950s, Dane became a popular blues singer and performed with many leading musicians of the time, including Louis Armstrong, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon and others. She eventually largely dropped out of the commercial music world to focus on social justice, becoming involved in the civil rights movement, as well as the GI resistance movement during the Vietnam War. She and her husband Irwin Silber started the record label Paredon to release music from freedom struggles across the globe. She was one of many artists whom the FBI surveilled because of their activism. In 2018, Barbara Dane stopped by the Democracy Now! studio to talk about her remarkable life and to perform a few songs.

Barbara Dane: “With parking lots filled up with playgrounds and schools, / We can do what we like 'cause we like what we do. / We'll build gardens and hospitals in every mall, / And we’ll stop the wars once and for all. / What? / Stop the wars once and for all! / What? /Stop the wars once and for all! Yeah! / Be reasonable, and demand the impossible now. / Yes, be reasonable, and demand the impossible now.”

Click here to see our full interview with Barbara Dane.