Democracy Now! speaks with Dr. Seema Jilani, a pediatrician who spent two weeks in Central Gaza volunteering in the Al-Aqsa Hospital emergency room. “I saw the fall of a hospital before my very own eyes,” says Jilani, who shares recorded voice notes from her time in the besieged territory while trying to save children in a health system collapsing under Israeli pressure and bombing. “I have never treated this many war-wounded children in my career.

Secretary of State Tony Blinken is on his fifth trip to the Middle East since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, reportedly pushing for a pause to Israel’s assault on Gaza and for Hamas to release all remaining hostages. Blinken’s trip to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel and the West Bank comes in the wake of U.S. strikes in Syria, Iraq and Yemen against militant groups across the region. “There’s not a lot of goodwill or faith right now for the U.S.

Israel is accused of using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, as Israeli forces continue to severely restrict the delivery of humanitarian aid, food and medical supplies to millions inside the besieged territory. “It is not possible to create a famine by accident,” says Alex de Waal, an expert on the subject who serves as the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University.

We speak with Dr. Tariq Haddad, a Palestinian American leader who refused to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week in protest of the Biden administration’s ongoing support of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Instead, the doctor wrote a 12-page letter to Blinken admonishing the latter for his role in the deaths of nearly 100 of his family members. “I wanted him to see me and see Palestinians as human beings, not as some part of a political game,” says Haddad.

As the White House steps up its shelling of targets in the Middle East amid regional unrest over Israel’s monthslong assault on Gaza, we discuss the possibility of wider war with Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders, now with the Center for International Policy. “The Biden administration’s strategy here is failing,” says Duss.

As the Pentagon launched airstrikes in Syria and Iraq against Iran-backed militants and carried out new attacks on Houthi forces in Yemen over the weekend, we speak with Narges Bajoghli, professor of Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University.

We speak with award-winning filmmaker Ava DuVernay about her latest feature film, Origin, which explores discrimination in the United States and beyond through a dramatization of the book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson, whose process of writing the book is a central part of the film’s story.

President Biden faced protests in Michigan this week over his ongoing support for the Israeli assault on Gaza. Michigan is a crucial swing state that could prove decisive in this year’s presidential election and is also home to the largest percentage of Arab Americans in the United States. Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, who refused to meet with Biden’s campaign manager last week, says it’s inappropriate to consider electoral politics as U.S. policy supports an ongoing genocide.