Eric Reidy

Rita’s Gaza evacuation diary, part three: I survived, but I haven’t truly left A series of articles chronicling journalist Rita Baroud’s evacuation from Gaza in her own words.

Every word of this demands to be read. Read it out loud to yourself. Find a loved one or friend, read it to them. Let the weight of each sentence sink in.

"I don’t want to be used as a symbol of triumphant survival. Yes, I survived – but I am not okay."

www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/firs...

I had hoped that the gate of Iran’s Evin prison would be opened by the people For former political prisoner Saeedeh Fathi, Israel’s strike on the ultimate symbol of the Iranian regime’s oppression stirred complicated emotions.

"I had once hoped that the great iron gate of Evin would fall – not from an airstrike, but opened by the people... That the fall of that gate would be a celebration, not a mourning."

Read this first-person by former prisoner Saeedeh Fathi: www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/firs...

Why humanitarians must act to end Israel’s genocide in Gaza With all other actors abdicating responsibility, a broad coalition of aid organisations must take bold steps to halt Israeli atrocities.

Tammam Aloudat, @newhumanitarian.bsky.social's CEO, with a bold call to action for humanitarian organizations:

1) Take Western governments to court over complicity in Israeli atrocities
2) Assemble a massive flotilla to break the blockade of Gaza

www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/2025...

From this week's @newhumanitarian.bsky.social Cheat Sheet.

Read Rita's article here: www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/firs...

Rita’s Gaza evacuation diary, part two: Crossing the gate to exile A series of articles chronicling journalist Rita Baroud’s evacuation from Gaza in her own words.

Every word of Rita Baroud's latest article for The New Humanitarian demands to be read, their magnitude absorbed.

"Gaza is not a memory. It is a pulse inside me that will not stop. I feel like I am still there, caught between the rubble and the fire."

www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/firs...

Under fire for flour: A night of survival in Gaza Hani Qarmoot, a 22-year-old writer, recounts risking his life to get flour from one of the rare aid convoys Israel has allowed into northern Gaza.

Another absolutely critical, must-read in @newhumanitarian.bsky.social's "Don't look away" series of first-person articles from Gaza. This one by 22-year-old Hani Qarmoot on facing gunfire to get flour.

www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/firs...

All in the same boat: A decade of civilian search and rescue in the central Mediterranean As EU countries withdrew from rescuing migrants at sea, a motley crew of volunteers mobilised to fill the gap. Ten years on, there’s no end in sight.

Civilian volunteers have rescued more than 175,000 people in the central Mediterranean Sea in the past 10 years. Their humanitarian work has also become a flashpoint in Europe's poisonous migration politics.

Read this deeply human portrait of one mission: www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/firs...

My last..
#Gaza

My family received flour without having to face down bullets. In Gaza, this is now news There’s a ready alternative to end starvation – and the chaos and death surrounding aid distribution in Gaza – if only Israel would allow it.

We have reached the point where a family receiving a sack of flour in Gaza without being shot at or shelled is news.

Read @rasha-abou-jalal.bsky.social's latest for @newhumanitarian.bsky.social. www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/firs...

What’s Unsaid | Don’t look away from Gaza What is it like reporting on and living through a genocide for nearly 20 months, and then escaping? We talk to journalist Rita Baroud.

Despite intense media coverage, the day-to-day human reality of life in Gaza under Israeli assault is difficult to imagine. Journalist Rita Baroud writes about it with heart-wrenching power. I spoke to her for this @newhumanitarian.bsky.social podcast. www.thenewhumanitarian.org/podcasts/202...

My husband was nearly killed trying to get aid from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed trying to get desperately needed food from the US- and Israeli-backed organisation’s distribution centres.

At least 549 Palestinians have been killed while trying to get aid from the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in the past month.

Read Rasha Abou Jalal’s harrowing account of her husband’s experience: www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/firs...

Hajar Harb, in memoriam We pay tribute to a Palestinian journalist and valued contributor to our coverage of Gaza who recently passed away.

Hajar Harb was a formidable human being. I was privileged to know her and work with her for the brief time that I did. This is my attempt to honor her memory: www.thenewhumanitarian.org/editors-take...

The details of what Israel is doing in Gaza are so much more sinister than even the already horrific big picture appears. The closer you look, the uglier and more pernicious it gets. From this week's @newhumanitarian.bsky.social Cheat Sheet.

www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2025/06...

How Israel is engineering Gaza's social collapse Empowering criminal gangs and weaponizing aid, Netanyahu seeks to fracture the Strip into rival fiefdoms — allowing only chaos to reign.

"What is unfolding is not mere military conquest but engineered disintegration — one in which Israel actively cultivates Gaza’s collapse by empowering criminal militias, fragmenting authority, and dismantling every pillar of Palestinian social infrastructure."
www.972mag.com/gaza-social-...

Gaza’s first responders: A life of fire and rubble Palestinian firefighters and civil defence workers keep hope alive even as they bear witness to endless tragedy and grief – and the loss of their own.

Journalist Ghada Abdulfattah spent two days with a team of Gaza's first responders. Perhaps more than anyone else, they have borne witness to the horror of the past 20 months, continuing to show up every day to save live. Read Ghada's remarkable report: www.thenewhumanitarian.org/feature/2025...

Rita’s Gaza evacuation diary, part one: The final weeks were the hardest A series of articles chronicling journalist Rita Baroud’s evacuation from Gaza in her own words.

In case you missed it last week, this piece is incredibly powerful and essential reading. Part of @newhumanitarian.bsky.social's series "Don't look away", keeping a spotlight on the human reality of life in Gaza: www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/firs...

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is a grotesque theatre of cruelty The new aid scheme is part of a plan to strip Palestinians of their homes and dignity, and leave them to an uncertain fate, writes Nour ElAssy.

Nour ElAssy provides a view from the ground of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation's violent and chaotic first week of operations and the broader context of forced displacement and deprivation imposed on people in Gaza: ⬇️

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is a grotesque theatre of cruelty The new aid scheme is part of a plan to strip Palestinians of their homes and dignity, and leave them to an uncertain fate, writes Nour ElAssy.

Nour ElAssy on the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation's disastrous first week: "The manipulation of humanitarian assistance serves a sinister purpose: to force us into the southern part of Gaza, stripping us of our homes and dignity."
www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/2025...

Rita’s Gaza evacuation diary, part one: The final weeks were the hardest A series of articles chronicling journalist Rita Baroud’s evacuation from Gaza in her own words.

Rita Baroud, a 22-year-old Palestinian journalist from Gaza City, continues to write the most incredibly poignant and powerful articles chronicling her life amidst the unrelenting violence, deprivation, and horror of Israel's war.

www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/firs...

Briefing to the Security Council on the humanitarian situation and the protection of aid workers in Gaza | United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs - Occupied Palestinian Ter... Mr. Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator New York, 13 May 2025 [AS DELIVERED] Mr. President, Members of the Council,

Yesterday's remarks by the UN's top humanitarian official are worth taking note of. He all-but calls Israel's conduct in Gaza genocidal. Many have gotten there before him and the institution he represents. But it's a significant shift in tone: www.ochaopt.org/content/brie...

We are the last eyes left inside Gaza In an urgent and damning plea, Nour ElAssy decries the lack of protection and support for Palestinian journalists in Gaza.

"Recognise the humanity of those whose stories you publish. Stop using us. Stand with us. Because if we all fall, there will be no one left to tell the story."

Read Nour ElAssy's excoriating plea for global media solidarity with Gaza's journalists: www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/firs...

With Israel’s expanding war and plan to take over aid, my colleagues and friends in Gaza fear a “death blow” People in Gaza fear being permanently corralled into an even smaller pen of misery where they have to beg their occupiers for a loaf of bread.

"For the people of Gaza, the objective is clear: to permanently corral them into an even smaller pen of misery where they have to beg their occupiers for a loaf of bread."

Read Arwa Damon's article for @newhumanitarian.bsky.social: www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/2025...

Israel’s massacre of Gaza paramedics was not an aberration The killing of 15 emergency workers in March was part of a pattern of systematic violence and impunity that James Smith witnessed first-hand.

On 23 March, Israel massacred 15 first responders in Rafah, Gaza. Dr James Smith, an emergency physician, volunteered with some of these man last year. He writes for @newhumanitarian.bsky.social about the broader pattern of violence behind their killings: www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/2025...

In the West Bank, Tulkarm reels from Israel’s new military campaign From widespread destruction of homes and infrastructure to severe movement restrictions, Israel’s largest military operation in the West Bank in years is taking its toll.

In mid January, Israel launched its largest military campaign in the West Bank in years. More than three months in, it has displaced 10,000's of people, laid waste to several refugee camps, and caused a cascade of dire humanitarian effects.
www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature...

I’ve been displaced again, but I will not let Gaza disappear quietly After returning home during the ceasefire, journalist Nour ElAssy has been forcibly displaced again. Now, she confronts a war seemingly with no end.

Nour ElAssy, whose articles I've been editing since last October, has been forcibly displaced again from her home in Gaza City. She had only recently returned. Somehow, she had the strength to write about it and the harrowing new phase of Israel's war: www.thenewhumanitarian.org/first-person...

Ukrainian prisoners of war and the crisis of international law Russia’s treatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war is undermining trust in international humanitarian law and the institutions meant to uphold it.

Amid a broader global crisis, Russia’s treatment of Ukrainian PoWs – and the perception that the institutions meant to uphold international humanitarian law have failed to stop or even mitigate abuses – has driven a deepening scepticism in Ukraine. www.thenewhumanitarian.org/feature/2025...

After Nonviolence, by Ben Ehrenreich The end of peaceful resistance in Palestine

"The moral awakening occurred as planned. It just didn’t make a difference. What they hadn’t counted on was the utter lack of real democracy in the West."

On Palestinian non-violent resistance to Israeli occupation in the West Bank: harpers.org/archive/2025...

Final thought: It is fairly terrifying that we (Meta users) allow ourselves to be tracked like this. The data is anonymized, but in an era of authoritarian threat, with tech companies backtracking on ethical commitments, it seems entirely naive to think data like this won't be used nefariously.

Overall, the article and data raise important points and provide an informative, large-scale picture of global migration. But, in framing the relevance, it too readily accepts the existing terms of the poisoned global migration debate when, really, the data provide ample opportunity to push back.

Also on the positive side, it acknowledges: "When you create legal channels for people to move, people use those legal channels." And: "Tightening border controls can increase permanent immigration because it disrupts the natural circular pattern of human migration".