Eric Reidy

Hobbled by obstruction and uncertainty: Gaza’s post-ceasefire aid response Palestinians still face extreme deprivation as Israel continues to restrict humanitarian activities amid international jockeying over the future.

Read this report about what's been happening with humanitarian aid efforts in Gaza since last month's ceasefire by @sparksriley.bsky.social & Ghada Abdulfattah. It paints a very different picture from narratives promoted by US & Israeli officials.

www.thenewhumanitarian.org/feature/2025...

Return to Gaza City: Hope sprouts from the rubble Two months after being driven out of Gaza City, journalist Rasha Abou Jalal returns to try to build a new home amid uncertainty and destruction.

Palestinian journalist Rasha Abou Jalal kept a diary for The New Humanitarian in August and September as her family tried to resist being forced out of Gaza City by Israel's offensive. Now, she writes returning to her hometown after the ceasefire:

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

Don’t look away: Two years of Israel’s war in Gaza in the words of its writers A selection of excerpts from first person pieces we have published from Gaza over the past two years of unimaginable violence and deprivation.

Over the past two years, The New Humanitarian has published 36+ first-person articles written by Palestinians in Gaza.

www.thenewhumanitarian.org/first-person...

“A truce is not peace”: Experiencing Gaza’s ceasefire from exile In the media, a truce means the bombing is over. In Gaza, it’s a frightened breath. In exile, it’s the ache of survival, writes journalist Rita Baroud.

"I’m relieved they’re not being bombed right now, but a truce is not peace. It’s just a pause in death."

Palestinian journalist Rita Baroud on the ceasefire in Gaza: www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/firs...

Tears of joy, tears of sorrow and an end (hopefully) to Gaza’s long war Palestinian journalist Rasha Abou Jalal confronts the range of emotion among displaced people at the announcement of a ceasefire.

Read @rasha-abou-jalal.bsky.social's article on the range of emotion sweeping the displacement camp where she is living in central Gaza following the announcement of a ceasefire:

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

I survived Israel's genocide in Gaza. This is what recognition of a Palestinian state means to me Recognition is meaningless while Gaza is starved, bombed, and occupied. What we need is action.

“The problem was never that Palestine lacked recognition. The problem is that Palestine lacks freedom and action.”

Essential reading from Nour ElAssy: www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/2025...

What Makes Us Free? : Throughline What's the role of government in society? What do we mean when we talk about individual responsibility? What makes us free? 'Neoliberalism' might feel like a squishy term that's hard to define and und...

Been thinking about line from this podcast a lot recently:
"What neoliberalism has done is taken away that thing that secures and holds us in common... So what are we? We're little Hobbesian creatures: diffident, anxious, competitive, and in the end, a little murderous."

www.npr.org/2025/07/10/1...

“The steadfastness and will to stay broke”: Rasha Abou Jalal’s Gaza City diary, part two As Israel’s relentless assault continues, the desire to cling to a home that could soon be gone forever gives way to the instinct to survive.

Read @rasha-abou-jalal.bsky.social harrowing account of the past week in Gaza City and her family's forced displacement to the south.

"I wept because I love my city, Gaza, where I was born and raised, and today I am being forced to leave it."

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

Israel’s mass killing of Gaza aid seekers: An undeniable pattern of escalating atrocity crimes The nearly 200 attacks we recorded contribute to the growing evidence that Israel is committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

Also read @sparksriley.bsky.social analysis of how Israel has used attacks on people seeking aid in Gaza as a tactic to achieve specific goals – from deadly crowd control to forced displacement to the destruction of a people’s collective ability to survive: www.thenewhumanitarian.org/investigatio...

EXCLUSIVE: Israel has killed nearly 3,000 Gaza aid seekers Our interactive database shows nearly 200 attacks, and a sharp uptick since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation began operations on 27 May.

Israeli forces have killed nearly 3,000 people attempting to get aid in the Gaza Strip & wounded almost 20,000 others. For over a year, @sparksriley.bsky.social tracked these attacks, which we just published as a publicly accessible database and timeline.
www.thenewhumanitarian.org/investigatio...

“A battle of identity and existence”: Rasha Abou Jalal’s Gaza City diary As Israel invades the main city in the enclave, a family clings on to a home they fear could soon be gone forever.

Don't look away.

Read Rasha Abou Jalal's intimate and harrowing diary from Gaza City as the Israeli military intensifies its assault.

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

Niger arrests six Sudanese refugees in raid on Agadez camp Most of the 1,900 people in the camp fled war in Sudan only to become stranded in poor conditions while seeking resettlement to a third country.

Arrests of Sudanese refugees involved in organising protests against dismal conditions and lack of resettlement opportunities on 21 August in Agadez, Niger "may constitute an enforced disappearance", according to the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders.

Another message from journalist Rasha Abou Jalal in Gaza

"I was deeply saddened today by the killing of journalist Maryam Abu Daqqa. Maryam was my friend...She loved photographing food, restaurants and the sea."

Maryam was one of four journalists killed today in Israeli strikes on Nasser Hospital

One message I received today from Rasha About Jalal, a journalist I work with in Gaza:

"I see fear and terror on the faces of people here in Gaza… they feel that danger and invasion are inevitable... Israeli drones are dropping bombs on the rooftops of people’s homes to force them to flee south."

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

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

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.

Hello @longreads.com

Please consider Rita Baroud's three part diary about surviving 570 days of genocide in Gaza, evacuating, and then navigating survivor's guilt while beginning to adjust to life in France for your editor's picks section.

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

Will we ever return? Facing down Israel’s invasion of Gaza City Flee to an uncertain fate of potentially permanent displacement or stay and risk death. This is the impossible choice confronting me and my family.

"Residents of Gaza City are once again living under the threat of displacement... Most conversations I overhear are about whether to head south or stay no matter the consequences."

Urgent from Rasha Abou Jalal from Gaza City as Israel threatens to invade: www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/firs...

Outcry as aid sector risks normalising the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation A secret meeting with the GHF has fuelled fears that the humanitarian system is being bent to serve the interests of the United States and Israel.

A secret meeting earlier this month between UN agencies, international aid organisations, and the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has been met with a mixture of outrage and disbelief by humanitarian figures and observers.

www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2025/08...

Protection or prevention? The global refugee system is at a crossroads The infrastructure of refugee protection is being retooled to stop people from moving, not to help them survive displacement.

“Refugees are wrongly treated as a crisis, while the real crisis is a system that approaches protecting human life as optional and stopping movement across borders as essential.”

Urgent view on global refugee protection, by Mustafa Alio & Rez Gardi
www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/2025...

Fragments of survival: A Gaza woman’s chronicle of unseen loss Sumaya Yasser Saleh’s dreams have been progressively crushed by Israel’s brutal onslaught. Now she is asking herself: What does it mean to survive?

Read this painfully beautiful article by Sumaya Yasser Saleh about the things Israel's brutal assault on life in Gaza has taken from her that will never be recorded in two-dimensional tallies of death and destruction and the meaning of survival.

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

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...