Category World News

According to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), a Palestinian paramedic who survived a deadly Israeli attack on a group of first responders in southern Gaza last month has been released from Israeli custody.

According to the PRCS, at least 10 Palestinian detainees were among those who were detained on Tuesday and were taken into custody in the Gaza Strip.

After 37 days in Israeli detention, the organization shared footage that appeared to show a clearly emotional al-Nassasra embracing his colleagues on social media.

After the Israeli military fatally shot 15 health workers on March 23, in an attack that drew widespread outcry and calls for an independent investigation, his exact whereabouts were unknown.

According to the PRCS, “He had been detained while performing his humanitarian duties in the Tel Al-Sultan area of Rafah Governorate’s massacre of medical teams.”

After 37 days in detention by the occupation forces, Asaad Al-Nsasrah’s arrival and reunion with his teammates came as they were celebrating his release today. He had been detained while carrying out his humanitarian work in the Tel… pic massacre. twitter.com/TzGHbZHeJl

Israeli forces opened fire on the doctors who were driving ambulances to aid Palestinians who were being treated for wounds at the site of a previous Israeli attack, according to the PRCS.

The organization claimed that its team lost communication with it, and Israeli forces blocked access to the incident’s location.

A week later, when UN and Palestinian officials arrived in the area, they discovered a mass grave with bodies and bulldozed ambulances.

According to the PRCS, six members of the Palestinian Civil Defense Team and one UN employee were killed in addition.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society’s statement on March 30 stated that the massacre of our team was a tragedy for both humanitarian work and humanity.

One of the slain doctors’ mobile phones had a video that captured their final moments. Before being shot by Israeli forces, they were inside clearly identifiable rescue vehicles and had highly reflective uniforms.

The Israeli military announced it would investigate the incident in the midst of the international outcry.

It claimed last week that a number of “professional failures” had been identified as a result of its investigation. One soldier was fired, according to the army, and their code of ethics was upheld.

The PRCS criticized the findings made by the Israeli military and demanded an UN body’s independent and impartial investigation.

One of two survivors.

Al-Nassasra, 47, is one of the two people who survived the attack.

Munther Abed, the other survivor, claimed at the time that he witnessed al-Nassasra being bound, captured, and taken away.

According to his son Mohamed, the father of six last spoke to his family the night of the Israeli attack when he vanished, telling them that he was about to break his Ramadan fast with his coworkers.

He didn’t respond when the family tried to call him at dawn the following day, and the PRCS informed them that neither he nor the other emergency personnel could reach him.

Al-Nassasra’s son said Al-Nassasra’s family had always been warned that whenever he set out on a mission, he might not return. Al-Nassasra continued his work throughout Israel’s 18-month war against Gaza, but the family made an effort to avoid thinking about it.

Al-Nassasra’s coworker Ibrahim Abu al-Kass also reported to Al Jazeera that al-Nassasra would always hand out candy to children to encourage them to play somewhere safe, not in the middle of the road.

During the war, Israel has intensified its arrest campaign. At least 9,900 Palestinians are currently being held in Israeli detention facilities, including 400 children, according to the Palestinian prisoner support group Addameer.

More than 3,400 people are being held in “administrative detention,” which is an indefinite term that can be renewed for six-month periods.

Before being transported to a hospital in Deir el-Balah’s Deir el-Balah for medical checkups, Al-Nassasra and the ten other detainees were released through the Kissufim checkpoint along with them.

According to Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, the detainees who were released from jail, had reported being tortured in “horrific ways” and were in a “bad physical and psychological state.

During the Gaza bombardment, Israeli forces frequently target first responders, humanitarian workers, and journalists.

Donald Trump, president of the United States, claimed that his tariffs were already generating $ 2 billion daily. At the time, the actual number was $ 192 million per day.

Although imports have increased a little since then, they still fall short of what the president had predicted.

According to the most recent data from the US Department of Commerce, the US collected $ 285,0 in customs and other excise taxes for the day on April 25. The total has so far exceeded $ 16.1 billion in April. The US Treasury Department released a daily report on January 17 to bring in $ 128 million, which is an increase over the previous day of former president Joe Biden’s reign.

Trump had threatened to impose “retaliatory tariffs” on almost all of its global trading partners. Due to China’s involvement in the fentanyl trade, Trump claimed, the country maintained its highest, which was 125 percent, in addition to an earlier 20 percent rate.

He imposed a 10% levy on all US imports on April 9 and put a stop to the retaliatory tariffs on April 9 by excluding China. Additionally, he continued to impose tariffs that he had instituted in March on imports of potash, steel, aluminum, and cars, which are now generating US revenue. Trump stated on Tuesday that his goal was to lower some auto tariffs, and that businesses that pay them would no longer be subject to additional levies, such as those on aluminum and steel, with reimbursements in the works for those tariffs that had already been paid.

Beijing has since imposed 125 percent tariffs on the US. Both sides have since made a small reversal. According to media reports, the US exempted some Chinese electronic imports from its tariffs, and China was considering exempting some of them.

The US consumer is likely to weigh a lot of this. The American public currently has the highest average tariff rate in more than a century, at 28%, according to the Yale Budget Lab.

lasting effect

Before Trump took office, tariffs were still imposed on a wide range of products, from electric vehicles to lumber.

Additionally, the Biden administration was strict with Chinese goods. Biden imposed a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum, a 50% tariff on semiconductor chips, and a 100 percent tariff on electric vehicles in 2024. However, the action was a continuation of a tariff plan put in place during Trump’s first term.

Trump had already imposed 25 percent tariffs on steel in 2018, and 10 percent on aluminum immediately followed. Trump lifted those tariffs on Mexico and Canada in 2019. As steel prices rose as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Biden reversed tariffs that Trump had suggested specifically for the European Union in 2021.

Biden also increased lumber tariffs on Canada, which have long been a source of conflict between the two countries, to 14.5 percent in 2024 from the previous year’s 8. 5 percent. In the upcoming months, those tariffs are anticipated to increase to 34.5 percent.

The National Association of Home Builders criticized the lumber tariffs as “detrimental” in response to the US’s current housing crisis. However, those difficulties first appeared in 2017 when the first Trump administration implemented a 20% tariff that was later reduced to an 8.5% level in April 2022.

Following the widespread economic sanctions, including a 35 percent tariff on some Russian imports in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration also imposed other notable tariffs. Similar tariffs were imposed on other countries, such as Canada and the UK, at 35%.

looming tariff jitters

Wall Street and Main Street are both on the edge of Trump’s tariffs, which have affected the rest of the world. This month, the US Commerce Department released a report on consumer spending that revealed a 1.4% increase over the previous month’s figure. Although that would typically indicate an improvement in the economy, economists believe that this time can be attributed to consumers’ spending on important goods before the new tariffs cause prices to rise.

Consumer confidence is slipping in other data. The March consumer sentiment index, released on April 11 for the University of Michigan, decreased by 11% from the previous month. Consumer confidence dropped to a 12-year low, according to a report from the Conference Board in March.

Automobile companies have already started hiring and firings. Due to uncertainty surrounding tariffs, General Motors and Stellantis both fired 900 employees this month. Due to the tariffs, Volvo announced it would reduce 800 US jobs. By the end of the year, the US’s Budget Lab anticipates that the tariffs will cost 770, 000 jobs.

Following a massive, hour-long blackout, people cheered and danced in Spain’s streets. By early Tuesday, Spain and Portugal, both of which had been hit, were nearly at their peak. The reason behind the interruption is still undetermined.

My siblings and I frequently spent our pocket money on new books when we were younger. Our mother had a fervent love for books instilled in us. Reading was more than just a pastime; it was also a way of life.

I can still recall our parents’ surprise gift of a home library to us. They had placed numerous shelves in the living room, making it tall and wide. Even though I was only five years old, I immediately recognized the sacredness of its location.

My father had a burning desire to have books on philosophy, religion, politics, languages, science, literature, etc. on the shelves. He desired a large selection of books that could rival those at the neighborhood library.

One of Gaza’s most recognizable bookshops, the Samir Mansour Library, was where my parents frequently took us. Each book would be able to be picked up by us.

Our schools organized reading events, reading clubs, and panel discussions to foster this love of reading.

Our home library became our friend, a source of comfort during war and peace, and a lifeline during those dark, eerie nights surrounded only by bombs. We would recite the poems of Mahmoud Darwish that we had memorized from books in our library while chatting about the works of Ghassan Kanafani while reciting the poems from our library.

The blockade on Gaza was enacted at an intolerable level when the genocide first started in October 2023. There was no shortage of nutritious food, fuel, medicines, and water.

People started burning anything they could find, including books, tree branches, and wood from the rubble of homes.

This was the first time my brother’s family encountered this. Their family could use the heavy-heartedness of my nephews’ sacrifice for their academic future: they burned their newly printed schoolbooks whose ink hadn’t even dried. The same books that once fed their minds are now feeding the flames in search of survival.

My 11-year-old nephew Ahmed confronted me with the reality despite my horror at the book’s burning. Either we starve to death or become illiterates. I’ll make the choice to live. He said that education will resume later. His response completely shook me.

Even though the price of wood was skyrocketing, I insisted that we buy it when we ran out of gas. When the war is over, my father promised to buy you every book you want, but he failed. But for the moment, let’s use these. I resisted despite my best efforts.

Our ups and downs, our laughter, our tears, our triumphs, and our setbacks were all reflected in those books. How are they going to burn them? I began to read some of our books once, twice, three times, memorizing their titles, pages, and cover names, burying my fear that our library might be the place to make the next sacrifice.

Cooking gas was finally permitted into Gaza in January after a temporary truce had been declared. I sigh of relief knowing that my books and I had survived this Holocaust.

The genocide then resumed in the first few days of March. No food, medical supplies, or fuel could enter without a blockade humanitarian aid. In less than three weeks, we ran out of gas. Without other sources of fuel for cooking, due to the complete blockade and the extensive bombardment.

I had to accept that I had no choice. I glanced through the international human rights law books as I approached our library. They had to come first, I figured. These legal principles were taught in schools to us, and they led to our liberation one day. We were made to believe that our Palestinian rights were protected by them.

Yet, we were never protected by these international laws. We have been a victim of genocide. There is no international law, no ethics, and no value for human life there. Zaza has been teleported to another moral dimension.

I tore those pages apart in an effort to recall how numerous families had been torn apart by bombs in the past. The torn pages were set on fire as I watched them go to the dust, offering an agonizing tribute to those who had been killed in the attacks on Al-Aqsa Hospital, journalist Ahmed Mansour, and countless others whose names we will never know.

Next, my brother, a graduate in pharmacology, burned all of his pharmacology books and summaries. His years of hard work were the fuel for the preparation of our canned food. Still, it was insufficient. The fires devoured book after book shelf after book as the siege grew more suffocating. Before touching any of mine, my brother demanded that he burn his favorite books.

But the inevitable was present. Soon, my books were all we had left. I was forced to burn my dearly cherished collections of poetry by Mahmoud Darwish, Gibran Khalil Gibran, Samih al-Qasim, the voice of resistance, Abdelrahman Munif, and the Harry Potter books I had spent my teenage years reading. Then, my medical reports and summaries arrived.

My heart started to burn as I watched the flames burn them. Making the sacrifice feel commendable, we prepared a more decadent meal, including pasta and bechamel sauce.

My father went even further than I thought, and I believed that was my sacrifice’s peak. He burned the library’s shelves as wood after removing them.

15 books were saved by me. These are historical works about the Palestinian cause, our ancestors’ tales, and my grandmother’s books, both of whom were brutally murdered during this genocide.

These books provide my proof that my family has always lived here, in Palestine, and that we have always been the landowners. Existence is resistance.

In our worst nightmares, the horror of the genocide has compelled us to do things that we never thought possible. In order to survive, it required us to mutilate our memories and destroy the unbreakable.

But if we survive, we will rebuild if we do so. We’ll start a new home library and restock it with the books we adore.