In Gaza, another 25 Palestinians have been killed as Israel’s unrelenting war on the besieged Palestinian territory enters its second year. On Monday night, Israeli strikes in central Gaza hit houses in the Bureij refugee camp in the city of Deir al-Balah, killing five children and two women.

Abu Muhammad al-Maqadma: “The war is against civilians and children? Women? The elderly? Who is this war against? What do we have in the Gaza Strip? Do we have aircraft carriers at sea or F-35 planes? What do we have? We have always been unarmed people. All Arab and European countries know that we are oppressed and lost our rights.”

With the latest killings, the official death toll from one year of Israel’s war is approaching 42,000, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. That would mean Israeli attacks have killed one out of every 55 people living in Gaza, though the figure is likely a significant undercount. More than 16,700 of the dead are children.

In the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society says Israeli forces detained another 30 Palestinians overnight during raids on Hebron, Nablus, Bethlehem and occupied East Jerusalem. The group reports Israel has arrested more than 11,200 Palestinians across the West Bank over the past year. On Monday, two West Bank Palestinians were killed in separate Israeli raids. Twelve-year-old Hatem Ghaith was fatally shot in the abdomen by Israeli forces in a raid on the Qalandiya refugee camp. And in the city of Dura, Israeli troops fatally assaulted 66-year-old Ziad Abu Hlail as they raided his home to arrest his son. His widow Basma recounted the fatal assault.

Basma Abu Hlail: “We were asleep at 4 a.m. when the army surrounded the house and arrested my son. They took him out of the house. His father wanted to run after him, but they didn’t let him. They pushed the door into him, and he fell and died. He became a martyr. We called the ambulance, and it didn’t arrive.”

Israel has expanded its attacks on southern Lebanon as it continues to strike Beirut’s suburbs. The Israeli military said it has deployed more troops into southwest Lebanon, which followed intense overnight bombardment. In response, Hezbollah has launched a series of missile attacks into northern Israel, including the city of Haifa. Meanwhile, Israel has issued expulsion orders to about one-quarter of the population on Lebanon’s southern coastline ahead of a planned maritime attack. This all comes as the World Health Organization has expressed concern over intensifying Israeli attacks on healthcare workers and hospitals across Lebanon, which have so far forced the closure of at least five healthcare facilities. The WHO is also warning of disease outbreaks due to the overcrowded conditions in shelters for displaced people.

In Dearborn, Michigan, thousands of mourners gathered at the Islamic Center of America on Sunday to remember Hajj Kamel Ahmad Jawad, a 56-year-old husband, father of four and Lebanese American who was killed by an Israeli airstrike on his hometown of Nabatieh, Lebanon, one week ago. Jawad’s family says he’d chosen to remain near the city’s main hospital to help the elderly, disabled and those who couldn’t afford to flee Israel’s bombs. In a statement, his daughter Nadine Jawad wrote, “His life is one of over 50,000 lost at the hands of Israeli aggression across the Middle East. The fact that he was an American citizen should not make his story more important than others. As Muslims, we believe that every life matters. If my dad’s story stands out to you, every other civilian murdered by the Israeli regime should as well.” 

A state of emergency has been declared in dozens of Florida counties, and evacuations are underway as residents brace for Hurricane Milton. The Category 4 storm is expected to make landfall Wednesday, bringing life-threatening storm surges, devastating winds and torrential rain to Florida’s Gulf Coast, including Tampa Bay, just two weeks after the region was battered by Hurricane Helene. Local crews are scrambling to haul most of the debris left behind by Helene’s destruction ahead of Milton, which is expected to grow larger today as it grazes Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. On Monday, veteran meteorologist John Morales of Miami broke down on live TV as Hurricane Milton temporarily strengthened into a Category 5 storm over the Gulf of Mexico. 

John Morales: “It’s just an incredible, incredible, incredible hurricane. It has dropped — it has dropped 50 millibars in 10 hours. Um, I apologize. This is just horrific. … It is just gaining strength in the Gulf of Mexico, where you can imagine the winds — I mean, the seas are just so incredibly, incredibly hot, record hot, as you might imagine. You know what’s driving that. I don’t need to tell you. Global warming, climate change leading to this and becoming an increasing threat.”

Milton is one of the fastest-intensifying storms ever recorded in the Atlantic. Its approach comes as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, is facing severe staff shortages, with just about 9% of its workers, or about 1,200 people, available to respond to Hurricane Milton.

Georgia’s Supreme Court reinstated the state’s six-week abortion ban Monday, one week after a lower court struck down the ban, ruling it unconstitutional. Alice Wang from the Center for Reproductive Rights said, “This ban has already killed multiple women, as the state’s own maternal mortality review committee found last month. Yet Attorney General Carr rushed to court to reinstate this ban, ensuring more lives will be lost.”

In another blow to abortion rights, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday Texas doctors cannot be compelled to perform emergency abortions if the procedure is deemed to violate Texas’s abortion ban. The far-right-led Supreme Court, which overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, rejected the Biden administration’s invocation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which requires health providers to intervene if a patient’s life is at risk.

In Colorado, former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters was sentenced to nine years in prison for crimes she committed in the wake of the 2020 election, as she peddled false claims about rigged voting machines following Donald Trump’s loss. District Judge Matthew Barrett castigated Peters as he handed down her sentence last Thursday.

Judge Matthew Barrett: “You are no hero. You abused your position. And you’re a charlatan who used, and is still using, your prior position in office to peddle a snake oil that’s been proven to be junk, time and time again.”

Since last week’s sentencing, Judge Barrett and court staff report they have received threats. Tina Peters is the first election official to be convicted of criminal charges for attempting to overturn the 2020 election based on right-wing conspiracy theories.

In labor news, some 600 workers at two Hilton hotels in Boston have gone on strike, joining thousands of others in at least four other U.S. cities who’ve walked off the job demanding higher wages, better staffing and fair workloads. Those striking include housekeepers, front desk agents, cooks, dishwashers, servers, bartenders, bellhops and door attendants.

A total of more than 4,700 hotel workers with the UNITE HERE union are currently on strike at Hilton, Hyatt and Marriott hotels in Boston, Honolulu, San Diego and San Francisco.

In Tunisia, incumbent President Kais Saied won Sunday’s election with some 90% of the vote. The turnout was less than 29% as Saied’s critics called for a boycott of the election, which came after the president orchestrated a widespread crackdown on dissent, jailing political rivals, journalists, lawyers and activists. Since coming to power three years ago, Kais Saied dissolved parliament, dismantled Tunisia’s judiciary and rewrote the constitution in what has been described as a coup. Ahead of the vote last Friday, protesters rallied in Tunis. This is the renowned filmmaker Ibrahim Letaief.

Ibrahim Letaief: “Today, we had to go out despite the unfortunate fact that the election results are almost predetermined. However, this anger must continue until we stop the bleeding that affects rights and freedoms.”

Here in New York, Jewish activists and allies gathered Monday for a vigil on the first anniversary of October 7 to mourn Israelis and Palestinians who have been killed and to call for an end to the Israeli massacre in Gaza and beyond. Participants performed prayers and read out the names of those whose lives have been lost. Democracy Now! spoke to Eva Borgwardt of the group IfNotNow at the vigil.

Eva Borgwardt: “So, the motto is 'every life a universe,' and it’s from 'pikuach nefesh,' which says that to destroy a life is to destroy an entire world, and to save a life is to save an entire world. And our government is not treating every single life as a universe. They’re treating Palestinian lives as less sacred.”

That was Eva Borgwardt, national spokesperson of the group IfNotNow. Another speaker who joined a later rally of Israeli Americans who are relatives of hostages in Gaza also spoke.

Adi: “My name is Adi, and I’m an Israeli American. A year ago, I was here in New York with my mother anxiously texting our family in Be’eri as they were trapped in their homes listening to the sounds of a massacre outside, abandoned by the Israeli government to fend for themselves. My uncle was murdered, together with a hundred other kibbutz members, and 31 members were kidnapped to Gaza. The brutality did not start a year ago, but for me and most of the people I know from my region in the world, this year was like a magnifying glass to the unimaginable damage of oppression, occupation, war and violence. … Now take this loss as I feel today, and multiply it by millions and millions, the millions of Palestinians, Lebanese, Israelis, Iranians, millions of hundreds who lost lives, lost loved ones, body functions, their homes, food, shelter, things with sentimental values, a million little connections lost forever. I want to scream. Scream. None of them are my enemy. I want nothing but peace and healing for all of them.”