Over 100,000 Gazans have fled Rafah as Israel escalates its attacks on the southern city. Deadly aerial attacks on Rafah have targeted residential and public buildings in the tightly packed area. The Israeli army’s closure of Rafah’s border is preventing food and medical supplies from entering Gaza. Community kitchens in Rafah say they do not know how much longer they can keep running.

Azza Nana: “Approximately 80% of people rely on food from charity kitchens, as they are unable to provide their own meals and drinks. Their entire dependency lies on these charity kitchens. If these kitchens were to close, they would have no means to provide food and drinks. Many individuals have approached us with similar concerns, urging us to attempt to reopen kitchens in their displacement location. We, too, seek shelter and support.”

The blockade is being felt throughout Gaza. This is a Jordanian doctor, Ali Abu Khurma, who has been working at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza.

Dr. Ali Abu Khurma: “There used to be medical aid coming in, and now there’s no medical aid. Now we have operations, but we don’t have gauze to use. There’s nothing to use. We have a simple operation, an urgent one which is not related to the war, which is appendicitis. We do not have anything to wear. The gown that we wear, we don’t have it. … We have become part of the people of Gaza. What happens to them happens to us. We will continue. The same way they are being resilient, we will, too.”

In occupied East Jerusalem, UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, was forced to shut its headquarters after a group of armed Israelis set fire to the compound’s perimeter. The EU condemned the attack, adding, “It is Israel’s responsibility to ensure the safety of humanitarian workers. UNRWA is an irreplaceable lifeline to millions in Gaza and the region.”

Gaza solidarity protests continue on U.S. campuses. At Princeton, 10 faculty members are joining 12 students who have already been on hunger strike for one week. We’ll be joined by one of the student hunger strikers later in the broadcast.

At the University of Pennsylvania, police in riot gear started arresting students early this morning. Yesterday, Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro called for the Ivy League school to “restore order and safety on campus” after students refused to back down and end their protest until their demands for divestment from Israel were met. At least six students have been suspended.

Here in New York, at least 11 people were arrested outside The New School, the site of the nation’s first faculty encampment. Democracy Now! was at The New School yesterday as the arrests were happening. We’ll have more on this story after headlines.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead has pulled out of his planned commencement speech at UMass Amherst next week after the police arrested over 100 students. He said, “Calling the cops on peaceful protesters is a shameful act.”

In a victory for the protest movement, Sacramento State in California agreed to review its investments so that it is not funding corporations that “profit from genocide, ethnic cleansing, and activities that violate fundamental human rights.”

Outside the U.S., Dutch riot police bulldozed a protest camp at the University of Amsterdam after students defied orders to dismantle.

In Sweden, thousands of protesters took to the streets of Malmö Thursday denouncing Israel’s participation in the Eurovision song contest. Eurovision has rejected mounting demands to ban Israel from the competition over its genocide in Gaza. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg was among the protesters. She also addressed the growing campus protest movement in the U.S. and around the world.

Greta Thunberg: “I think they should be everywhere. And once again, young people are leading the way, showing the world how we should react to this.”

Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces may have committed genocide as fighters executed thousands of civilians who desperately attempted to flee the West Darfur region last summer. That’s according to Human Rights Watch, which collected the testimonies of over 200 witnesses who described children, still alive, being “piled up and shot” by RSF fighters as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Masalit people and other non-Arab communities. The U.N. estimates some 15,000 people may have been killed in El Geneina last year, while hundreds of thousands were displaced by the violence. A Sudanese woman described to UNICEF how the mother of her 4-year-old niece Yasmine was killed as they fled El Geneina.

Aicha Abakar Abdallah: “Her mother, who was eight months pregnant, was killed, and she, Yasmine, was left all alone. Some people found her on the road and brought her back here. On the road, we suffered a lot. The Rapid Support Forces killed and wounded so many people. … We were living peacefully until the conflict broke out. There was shooting near our home, and we were trapped. When we finally managed to get out, we were beaten and robbed. We came with nothing from Sudan.”

Human Rights Watch is demanding the U.N. and African Union urgently impose an arms embargo on Sudan and deploy security forces to Darfur.

In Chad, interim military ruler Mahamat Déby has been declared the winner of the presidential election. General Déby took power after his father, longtime Chadian leader Idriss Déby, was killed by rebel forces in 2021. Mahamat Déby’s main rival, Prime Minister Succès Masra, is disputing the results and declared himself the winner just hours before the election results were announced. He called on the citizens of Chad to “mobilize calmly.”

In Argentina, labor unions led a nationwide strike Thursday, bringing transportation and many businesses to a standstill. It was the second general strike against far-right President Javier Milei’s austerity and deregulation reforms. Milei also devalued the Argentine peso, causing prices to soar even higher and sending the nations annual inflation rate to around 300%, the highest in the world. Over half the population of Argentina lives in poverty. This is union leader Hector Daher.

Hector Daher: “The strike was a success. Success is not a goal in itself, and the success of the workers’ strike is not an objective in itself. It is a wake-up call to the authorities to find a course to rectify this social damage they are carrying out with the measures they are taking every day.”

Two accidents on Boeing 737 passenger jets took place Thursday. In Senegal, a 737-300 caught fire and skidded off the runway as it was preparing to take off, injuring at least 10 people. In Turkey, a tire on a Boeing 737-800 aircraft burst upon landing. The 190 people on board were safely evacuated. Just one day earlier, a Boeing 767 FedEx plane landed at Istanbul airport without its front landing gear deployed, its nose hitting the runway.

The trio of accidents come as another whistleblower formerly employed by Spirit AeroSystems, Boeing’s largest supplier, came forward. Santiago Paredes told reporters he used to regularly find up to 200 defects on fuselages that were being delivered to Boeing.

In Florida, the family members of a 23-year-old Air Force member killed by a sheriff’s deputy last week are demanding justice. Newly released body-camera footage shows Roger Fortson answering the door of his own apartment and immediately being fatally shot by an Okaloosa County officer. His relatives say the deputy arrived at the wrong apartment, which authorities have refuted. This is the family’s attorney Ben Crump.

Benjamin Crump: “He had always wanted to serve in the United States Air Force, and he was living his dream. And by doing so, he was going to make it better for his mother and his siblings and his family, so they could have a better chance at their American dream.”

The Biden administration is preparing new measures that could expedite the deportation of some asylum seekers deemed unlikely to qualify for protection in the early stages of the process. Immigrant rights advocates warn the new rules will further erode due process rights for migrants and disproportionately impact Black asylum seekers, who already face tremendous bias and racism from U.S. officials conducting credible fear interviews.

In Virginia, the Shenandoah County School Board voted to restore the former names of two elementary schools to honor Confederate leaders. In 2020, the school board stripped the names of Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Turner Ashby from the schools’ names amid the Black Lives Matter uprising following the police killing of George Floyd. The 5-1 vote comes after a campaign by right-wing group Coalition for Better Schools. Ahead of the vote, community members and students addressed the board, including 8th grader Alea Ogle.

Alea Ogle: “I’m a Black student, and if the names are restored, I would have to represent a man that fought for my ancestors to be slaves. That makes me feel like I’m disrespecting my ancestors and going against what my family and I believe.”

The University of Southern California hosted its alternative graduation event Thursday evening after calling off its mainstage ceremony. USC announced it was not holding its typical commencement ceremony this year amid a national backlash for canceling valedictorian Asna Tabassum’s speech after she was subjected to an online hate campaign for expressing solidarity with Palestine. Asna Tabassum’s fellow graduates erupted into cheers as she was acknowledged at Thursday’s graduation.

Announcer: “Asna will graduate with a Bachelor of Science in biomedical engineering, molecular and cellular engineering and a minor in resistance to genocide. You may not know this, but Asna is USC’s 2024 valedictorian.”

Click here to see our interview with Asna Tabassum, the valedictorian at USC, and our coverage of this issue.