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It was nineteen years ago this week that I.F. (Izzy) Stone died. The legendary blogger was 81.
Confused? You say he died years before web blogs were invented?
Well, yeah, but when I think of today's blunt, fact-based online hell-raisers, my mind quickly flashes on Izzy Stone. You may think of Josh Marshall or Glenn Greenwald or Arianna Huffington. I think of Izzy.
Before there was an Internet, Izzy Stone was doing the work we associate with today's best bloggers. Like them, he was obsessed with citing original documents and texts. But before search engines, Izzy had to consume ten newspapers per day -- and physically visit government archives and press offices, and personally pore over thousands of words in the Congressional Record. That's how he repeatedly scooped the gullible, faux-objective MSM of his day in exposing government deceit, like that propelling the Vietnam War.
Izzy was the ultimate un-embedded reporter. His journalism was motivated by a simple maxim that resonates loudly in our era of Cheneys and Rumsfelds and WMD hoaxes: "All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out."
Month after month from 1953 to 1969 I.F. Stone's Weekly (biweekly through 1971) exposed deceptions as fast as governments could spin them. His timely and timeless dispatches are gathered in an exceptional paperback, The Best of I.F. Stone.
In real time in August 1964, Izzy was virtually alone in challenging the Gulf of Tonkin hoax, an imaginary "unprovoked attack" on U.S. warships used by the Johnson administration to send several hundred thousand American troops into Vietnam. How did Izzy do it? By citing international law texts and finding nuggets of truth in the Congressional Record of the Senate debate (no C-SPAN then) and in contradictory reporting in mainstream publications.
Izzy's expose began boldly: "The American government and the American press have kept the full truth about the Tonkin Bay incidents from the American public." He fumed at the credulous MSM: "The process of brain-washing the public starts with off-the-record briefings for newspapermen." Only two senators, Oregon's Wayne Morse and Alaska's Ernest Gruening, had voted against the Tonkin Resolution; Izzy noted that the press had "dropped an Iron Curtain weeks ago on the antiwar speeches of Morse and Gruening."
Like today's online journalistic entrepreneurs, being his own editor and boss allowed Izzy the freedom and space to parse out the distortions of government in detail. A year before the Tonkin hoax, he wrote: "In this age of corporation men, I am an independent capitalist, the owner of my own enterprise." While most journalists "find their niche in some huge newspaper of magazine combine, I am a wholly independent newspaperman, standing alone."
Bloggers battle today's McCarthyites who smear Iraq War opponents as un-American abettors of our country's enemies. Izzy battled the original Joe McCarthy, in issue after issue of his weekly. Indeed, he launched his publication the same month -- January 1953 -- McCarthy became chair of the Senate Operations Committee, enhancing his powers of intimidation. Izzy warned prophetically: "McCarthy is in a position to smear any government official who fails to do his bidding. With such daring and few scruples, McCarthy can make himself the most powerful single figure in Congress."
Three months later, he wrote: "The most subversive force in America today is Joe McCarthy. No one is so effectively importing alien conceptions into American government. No one is doing so much to damage the country's prestige abroad. . . .If 'subversion' is to be met by deportation, then it is time to deport McCarthy back to Wisconsin."
Not until 11 months later did Edward R. Murrow air his first report on McCarthy.
Today, online media critics and bloggers expose the bigotry and fallacy gushing forth from Fox News and talk radio and the Rev. Moon-owned Washington Times, long-edited by Wes Pruden Jr. They blog about MSM being stenographers to rightwing extremists. When racists in Little Rock were obstructing court-ordered school desegregation in 1958, Izzy was on the scene reporting: "A staff correspondent in Little Rock quoted the Reverend Wesley Pruden the segregationist leader, as saying, 'The South will not accept this outrage, which a Communist-dominated government is trying to lay on us.' This was my introduction to a regional journalism which prints such statements matter-of-factly."
The Communist-dominated regime referred to by Pruden Sr. was headed by Eisenhower.
Izzy loved to tell the story of how he found -- hiding in plain view in different editions of the New York Times -- one-paragraph "shirrtail" wire stories indicating that our country's first underground nuclear test in Nevada in 1957 was detected in Toronto, Rome and Tokyo. Months later, just as hawks in Washington were preparing to attack a test ban treaty with the Soviets on the basis that nuclear tests could not be detected more than 200 miles away, Izzy found a seismologist in the Commerce Department who told him the test had also been detected as far away as Alaska and Arkansas. Izzy's reporting obstructed the government's lie before it could get its shoes on.
Starting out in his teens, Izzy was a daily reporter, editor and columnist. After moving to D.C. in 1940 to become Washington editor of The Nation, he exposed U.S. corporations still doing business with Hitler's Germany. He was one of the first to sound the alarm about the Nazi holocaust, referring in 1942 to "a murder of a people." An anti-racist, he battled the all-white National Press Club over exclusion of black journalists.
Izzy's cantankerousness and "hound-dog tenacity" -- in the words of his biographer -- would make even the most stubborn blogger blush. Although he was a lifelong progressive, his journalistic hallmark was independence: "I felt that party affiliation was incompatible with independent journalism." His writings show deep admiration for Franklin Roosevelt, yet his article on FDR's death criticized his "deplorable disrespect for the constitutional amenities" in resisting a reactionary Supreme Court that knocked down one New Deal bill after another.
He wrote books passionately supporting the birth of Israel, but strongly criticized it for mistreatment of Palestinians. He advocated peace and negotiations with the Soviet Union, while increasingly vocal in denouncing its rulers: "The worker [in Russia] is more exploited than in Western welfare states."
He despised racists, but fought for their free speech rights, and everyone's: "Once you put ifs and buts in the Bill of Rights, nobody's civil liberties will be secure.'' That he marched to his own drummer can be seen in his dispatch from the 1963 March on Washington for civil rights, in which he criticized "respectables" for muting "Negro militancy" into support of JFK's inadequate program, and referred to Martin Luther King as "a little too saccharine for my taste."
Born of immigrant parents, Izzy was an American patriot who worshipped the Bill of Rights: "You may think I am a red Jew son-of-a-bitch, but I'm keeping Thomas Jefferson alive."
And he worshipped our country's tradition of press freedom: "There are few countries in which you can spit in the eye of the government and get away with it. It's not possible in Moscow." But Izzy was never naive about American traditions that threatened freedom, and he had a 5,000-page FBI spy file to prove it.
Today's muckraking bloggers are often belittled for working from their homes, far removed from the corridors of power. Izzy worked out of his home. If he were alive, he'd be applauding the Josh Marshalls and other independents, urging: Keep your distance from power.
I made no claim to inside stuff. . . I tried to dig the truth out of hearings, official transcripts and government documents, and to be as accurate as possible. . . I felt like a guerilla warrior, swooping down in surprise attack on a stuffy bureaucracy where it least expected independent inquiry. The reporter assigned to specific beats like the State Department or the Pentagon for a wire service or a big daily newspaper soon finds himself a captive. State and Pentagon have large press relations forces whose job it is to herd the press and shape the news. There are many ways to punish a reporter who gets out of line. . . But a reporter covering the whole capitol on his own - particularly if he is his own employer -- is immune from these pressures.
Imagine the obstacles Izzy faced -- did I mention his impaired eyesight and hearing? -- launching a weekly and finding an audience at the height of McCarthy's witch hunts (even at $5 for an annual subscription).
Far fewer obstacles face today's bloggers who seek to follow in Izzy's footsteps -- blessed as they are with relative freedom and this awesome research and outreach tool known as the Internet.
As these upstarts speak truth to power, I see Izzy Stone watching over them, from the heavens.
Jeff Cohen first saw I.F. Stone's Bi-Weekly at a D.C. peace march in 1969. Soon after Cohen launched the media watch group FAIR in 1986, Izzy Stone signed on to its first formal protest, a telegram to ABC News on the exclusion of progressive voices.
Trump and Musk are on an unconstitutional rampage, aiming for virtually every corner of the federal government. These two right-wing billionaires are targeting nurses, scientists, teachers, daycare providers, judges, veterans, air traffic controllers, and nuclear safety inspectors. No one is safe. The food stamps program, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are next. It’s an unprecedented disaster and a five-alarm fire, but there will be a reckoning. The people did not vote for this. The American people do not want this dystopian hellscape that hides behind claims of “efficiency.” Still, in reality, it is all a giveaway to corporate interests and the libertarian dreams of far-right oligarchs like Musk. Common Dreams is playing a vital role by reporting day and night on this orgy of corruption and greed, as well as what everyday people can do to organize and fight back. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. |
It was nineteen years ago this week that I.F. (Izzy) Stone died. The legendary blogger was 81.
Confused? You say he died years before web blogs were invented?
Well, yeah, but when I think of today's blunt, fact-based online hell-raisers, my mind quickly flashes on Izzy Stone. You may think of Josh Marshall or Glenn Greenwald or Arianna Huffington. I think of Izzy.
Before there was an Internet, Izzy Stone was doing the work we associate with today's best bloggers. Like them, he was obsessed with citing original documents and texts. But before search engines, Izzy had to consume ten newspapers per day -- and physically visit government archives and press offices, and personally pore over thousands of words in the Congressional Record. That's how he repeatedly scooped the gullible, faux-objective MSM of his day in exposing government deceit, like that propelling the Vietnam War.
Izzy was the ultimate un-embedded reporter. His journalism was motivated by a simple maxim that resonates loudly in our era of Cheneys and Rumsfelds and WMD hoaxes: "All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out."
Month after month from 1953 to 1969 I.F. Stone's Weekly (biweekly through 1971) exposed deceptions as fast as governments could spin them. His timely and timeless dispatches are gathered in an exceptional paperback, The Best of I.F. Stone.
In real time in August 1964, Izzy was virtually alone in challenging the Gulf of Tonkin hoax, an imaginary "unprovoked attack" on U.S. warships used by the Johnson administration to send several hundred thousand American troops into Vietnam. How did Izzy do it? By citing international law texts and finding nuggets of truth in the Congressional Record of the Senate debate (no C-SPAN then) and in contradictory reporting in mainstream publications.
Izzy's expose began boldly: "The American government and the American press have kept the full truth about the Tonkin Bay incidents from the American public." He fumed at the credulous MSM: "The process of brain-washing the public starts with off-the-record briefings for newspapermen." Only two senators, Oregon's Wayne Morse and Alaska's Ernest Gruening, had voted against the Tonkin Resolution; Izzy noted that the press had "dropped an Iron Curtain weeks ago on the antiwar speeches of Morse and Gruening."
Like today's online journalistic entrepreneurs, being his own editor and boss allowed Izzy the freedom and space to parse out the distortions of government in detail. A year before the Tonkin hoax, he wrote: "In this age of corporation men, I am an independent capitalist, the owner of my own enterprise." While most journalists "find their niche in some huge newspaper of magazine combine, I am a wholly independent newspaperman, standing alone."
Bloggers battle today's McCarthyites who smear Iraq War opponents as un-American abettors of our country's enemies. Izzy battled the original Joe McCarthy, in issue after issue of his weekly. Indeed, he launched his publication the same month -- January 1953 -- McCarthy became chair of the Senate Operations Committee, enhancing his powers of intimidation. Izzy warned prophetically: "McCarthy is in a position to smear any government official who fails to do his bidding. With such daring and few scruples, McCarthy can make himself the most powerful single figure in Congress."
Three months later, he wrote: "The most subversive force in America today is Joe McCarthy. No one is so effectively importing alien conceptions into American government. No one is doing so much to damage the country's prestige abroad. . . .If 'subversion' is to be met by deportation, then it is time to deport McCarthy back to Wisconsin."
Not until 11 months later did Edward R. Murrow air his first report on McCarthy.
Today, online media critics and bloggers expose the bigotry and fallacy gushing forth from Fox News and talk radio and the Rev. Moon-owned Washington Times, long-edited by Wes Pruden Jr. They blog about MSM being stenographers to rightwing extremists. When racists in Little Rock were obstructing court-ordered school desegregation in 1958, Izzy was on the scene reporting: "A staff correspondent in Little Rock quoted the Reverend Wesley Pruden the segregationist leader, as saying, 'The South will not accept this outrage, which a Communist-dominated government is trying to lay on us.' This was my introduction to a regional journalism which prints such statements matter-of-factly."
The Communist-dominated regime referred to by Pruden Sr. was headed by Eisenhower.
Izzy loved to tell the story of how he found -- hiding in plain view in different editions of the New York Times -- one-paragraph "shirrtail" wire stories indicating that our country's first underground nuclear test in Nevada in 1957 was detected in Toronto, Rome and Tokyo. Months later, just as hawks in Washington were preparing to attack a test ban treaty with the Soviets on the basis that nuclear tests could not be detected more than 200 miles away, Izzy found a seismologist in the Commerce Department who told him the test had also been detected as far away as Alaska and Arkansas. Izzy's reporting obstructed the government's lie before it could get its shoes on.
Starting out in his teens, Izzy was a daily reporter, editor and columnist. After moving to D.C. in 1940 to become Washington editor of The Nation, he exposed U.S. corporations still doing business with Hitler's Germany. He was one of the first to sound the alarm about the Nazi holocaust, referring in 1942 to "a murder of a people." An anti-racist, he battled the all-white National Press Club over exclusion of black journalists.
Izzy's cantankerousness and "hound-dog tenacity" -- in the words of his biographer -- would make even the most stubborn blogger blush. Although he was a lifelong progressive, his journalistic hallmark was independence: "I felt that party affiliation was incompatible with independent journalism." His writings show deep admiration for Franklin Roosevelt, yet his article on FDR's death criticized his "deplorable disrespect for the constitutional amenities" in resisting a reactionary Supreme Court that knocked down one New Deal bill after another.
He wrote books passionately supporting the birth of Israel, but strongly criticized it for mistreatment of Palestinians. He advocated peace and negotiations with the Soviet Union, while increasingly vocal in denouncing its rulers: "The worker [in Russia] is more exploited than in Western welfare states."
He despised racists, but fought for their free speech rights, and everyone's: "Once you put ifs and buts in the Bill of Rights, nobody's civil liberties will be secure.'' That he marched to his own drummer can be seen in his dispatch from the 1963 March on Washington for civil rights, in which he criticized "respectables" for muting "Negro militancy" into support of JFK's inadequate program, and referred to Martin Luther King as "a little too saccharine for my taste."
Born of immigrant parents, Izzy was an American patriot who worshipped the Bill of Rights: "You may think I am a red Jew son-of-a-bitch, but I'm keeping Thomas Jefferson alive."
And he worshipped our country's tradition of press freedom: "There are few countries in which you can spit in the eye of the government and get away with it. It's not possible in Moscow." But Izzy was never naive about American traditions that threatened freedom, and he had a 5,000-page FBI spy file to prove it.
Today's muckraking bloggers are often belittled for working from their homes, far removed from the corridors of power. Izzy worked out of his home. If he were alive, he'd be applauding the Josh Marshalls and other independents, urging: Keep your distance from power.
I made no claim to inside stuff. . . I tried to dig the truth out of hearings, official transcripts and government documents, and to be as accurate as possible. . . I felt like a guerilla warrior, swooping down in surprise attack on a stuffy bureaucracy where it least expected independent inquiry. The reporter assigned to specific beats like the State Department or the Pentagon for a wire service or a big daily newspaper soon finds himself a captive. State and Pentagon have large press relations forces whose job it is to herd the press and shape the news. There are many ways to punish a reporter who gets out of line. . . But a reporter covering the whole capitol on his own - particularly if he is his own employer -- is immune from these pressures.
Imagine the obstacles Izzy faced -- did I mention his impaired eyesight and hearing? -- launching a weekly and finding an audience at the height of McCarthy's witch hunts (even at $5 for an annual subscription).
Far fewer obstacles face today's bloggers who seek to follow in Izzy's footsteps -- blessed as they are with relative freedom and this awesome research and outreach tool known as the Internet.
As these upstarts speak truth to power, I see Izzy Stone watching over them, from the heavens.
Jeff Cohen first saw I.F. Stone's Bi-Weekly at a D.C. peace march in 1969. Soon after Cohen launched the media watch group FAIR in 1986, Izzy Stone signed on to its first formal protest, a telegram to ABC News on the exclusion of progressive voices.
It was nineteen years ago this week that I.F. (Izzy) Stone died. The legendary blogger was 81.
Confused? You say he died years before web blogs were invented?
Well, yeah, but when I think of today's blunt, fact-based online hell-raisers, my mind quickly flashes on Izzy Stone. You may think of Josh Marshall or Glenn Greenwald or Arianna Huffington. I think of Izzy.
Before there was an Internet, Izzy Stone was doing the work we associate with today's best bloggers. Like them, he was obsessed with citing original documents and texts. But before search engines, Izzy had to consume ten newspapers per day -- and physically visit government archives and press offices, and personally pore over thousands of words in the Congressional Record. That's how he repeatedly scooped the gullible, faux-objective MSM of his day in exposing government deceit, like that propelling the Vietnam War.
Izzy was the ultimate un-embedded reporter. His journalism was motivated by a simple maxim that resonates loudly in our era of Cheneys and Rumsfelds and WMD hoaxes: "All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out."
Month after month from 1953 to 1969 I.F. Stone's Weekly (biweekly through 1971) exposed deceptions as fast as governments could spin them. His timely and timeless dispatches are gathered in an exceptional paperback, The Best of I.F. Stone.
In real time in August 1964, Izzy was virtually alone in challenging the Gulf of Tonkin hoax, an imaginary "unprovoked attack" on U.S. warships used by the Johnson administration to send several hundred thousand American troops into Vietnam. How did Izzy do it? By citing international law texts and finding nuggets of truth in the Congressional Record of the Senate debate (no C-SPAN then) and in contradictory reporting in mainstream publications.
Izzy's expose began boldly: "The American government and the American press have kept the full truth about the Tonkin Bay incidents from the American public." He fumed at the credulous MSM: "The process of brain-washing the public starts with off-the-record briefings for newspapermen." Only two senators, Oregon's Wayne Morse and Alaska's Ernest Gruening, had voted against the Tonkin Resolution; Izzy noted that the press had "dropped an Iron Curtain weeks ago on the antiwar speeches of Morse and Gruening."
Like today's online journalistic entrepreneurs, being his own editor and boss allowed Izzy the freedom and space to parse out the distortions of government in detail. A year before the Tonkin hoax, he wrote: "In this age of corporation men, I am an independent capitalist, the owner of my own enterprise." While most journalists "find their niche in some huge newspaper of magazine combine, I am a wholly independent newspaperman, standing alone."
Bloggers battle today's McCarthyites who smear Iraq War opponents as un-American abettors of our country's enemies. Izzy battled the original Joe McCarthy, in issue after issue of his weekly. Indeed, he launched his publication the same month -- January 1953 -- McCarthy became chair of the Senate Operations Committee, enhancing his powers of intimidation. Izzy warned prophetically: "McCarthy is in a position to smear any government official who fails to do his bidding. With such daring and few scruples, McCarthy can make himself the most powerful single figure in Congress."
Three months later, he wrote: "The most subversive force in America today is Joe McCarthy. No one is so effectively importing alien conceptions into American government. No one is doing so much to damage the country's prestige abroad. . . .If 'subversion' is to be met by deportation, then it is time to deport McCarthy back to Wisconsin."
Not until 11 months later did Edward R. Murrow air his first report on McCarthy.
Today, online media critics and bloggers expose the bigotry and fallacy gushing forth from Fox News and talk radio and the Rev. Moon-owned Washington Times, long-edited by Wes Pruden Jr. They blog about MSM being stenographers to rightwing extremists. When racists in Little Rock were obstructing court-ordered school desegregation in 1958, Izzy was on the scene reporting: "A staff correspondent in Little Rock quoted the Reverend Wesley Pruden the segregationist leader, as saying, 'The South will not accept this outrage, which a Communist-dominated government is trying to lay on us.' This was my introduction to a regional journalism which prints such statements matter-of-factly."
The Communist-dominated regime referred to by Pruden Sr. was headed by Eisenhower.
Izzy loved to tell the story of how he found -- hiding in plain view in different editions of the New York Times -- one-paragraph "shirrtail" wire stories indicating that our country's first underground nuclear test in Nevada in 1957 was detected in Toronto, Rome and Tokyo. Months later, just as hawks in Washington were preparing to attack a test ban treaty with the Soviets on the basis that nuclear tests could not be detected more than 200 miles away, Izzy found a seismologist in the Commerce Department who told him the test had also been detected as far away as Alaska and Arkansas. Izzy's reporting obstructed the government's lie before it could get its shoes on.
Starting out in his teens, Izzy was a daily reporter, editor and columnist. After moving to D.C. in 1940 to become Washington editor of The Nation, he exposed U.S. corporations still doing business with Hitler's Germany. He was one of the first to sound the alarm about the Nazi holocaust, referring in 1942 to "a murder of a people." An anti-racist, he battled the all-white National Press Club over exclusion of black journalists.
Izzy's cantankerousness and "hound-dog tenacity" -- in the words of his biographer -- would make even the most stubborn blogger blush. Although he was a lifelong progressive, his journalistic hallmark was independence: "I felt that party affiliation was incompatible with independent journalism." His writings show deep admiration for Franklin Roosevelt, yet his article on FDR's death criticized his "deplorable disrespect for the constitutional amenities" in resisting a reactionary Supreme Court that knocked down one New Deal bill after another.
He wrote books passionately supporting the birth of Israel, but strongly criticized it for mistreatment of Palestinians. He advocated peace and negotiations with the Soviet Union, while increasingly vocal in denouncing its rulers: "The worker [in Russia] is more exploited than in Western welfare states."
He despised racists, but fought for their free speech rights, and everyone's: "Once you put ifs and buts in the Bill of Rights, nobody's civil liberties will be secure.'' That he marched to his own drummer can be seen in his dispatch from the 1963 March on Washington for civil rights, in which he criticized "respectables" for muting "Negro militancy" into support of JFK's inadequate program, and referred to Martin Luther King as "a little too saccharine for my taste."
Born of immigrant parents, Izzy was an American patriot who worshipped the Bill of Rights: "You may think I am a red Jew son-of-a-bitch, but I'm keeping Thomas Jefferson alive."
And he worshipped our country's tradition of press freedom: "There are few countries in which you can spit in the eye of the government and get away with it. It's not possible in Moscow." But Izzy was never naive about American traditions that threatened freedom, and he had a 5,000-page FBI spy file to prove it.
Today's muckraking bloggers are often belittled for working from their homes, far removed from the corridors of power. Izzy worked out of his home. If he were alive, he'd be applauding the Josh Marshalls and other independents, urging: Keep your distance from power.
I made no claim to inside stuff. . . I tried to dig the truth out of hearings, official transcripts and government documents, and to be as accurate as possible. . . I felt like a guerilla warrior, swooping down in surprise attack on a stuffy bureaucracy where it least expected independent inquiry. The reporter assigned to specific beats like the State Department or the Pentagon for a wire service or a big daily newspaper soon finds himself a captive. State and Pentagon have large press relations forces whose job it is to herd the press and shape the news. There are many ways to punish a reporter who gets out of line. . . But a reporter covering the whole capitol on his own - particularly if he is his own employer -- is immune from these pressures.
Imagine the obstacles Izzy faced -- did I mention his impaired eyesight and hearing? -- launching a weekly and finding an audience at the height of McCarthy's witch hunts (even at $5 for an annual subscription).
Far fewer obstacles face today's bloggers who seek to follow in Izzy's footsteps -- blessed as they are with relative freedom and this awesome research and outreach tool known as the Internet.
As these upstarts speak truth to power, I see Izzy Stone watching over them, from the heavens.
Jeff Cohen first saw I.F. Stone's Bi-Weekly at a D.C. peace march in 1969. Soon after Cohen launched the media watch group FAIR in 1986, Izzy Stone signed on to its first formal protest, a telegram to ABC News on the exclusion of progressive voices.
"Thank you to the hundreds of thousands of Americans across the country who are standing up and speaking out for our voting rights, fundamental freedoms, and essential services like Social Security and Medicare."
In communities large and small across the United States on Saturday, hundreds of thousands of people collectively took to the streets to make their opposition to President Donald Trump heard.
The people who took part in the organized protests ranged from very young children to the elderly and their message was scrawled on signs of all sizes and colors—many of them angry, some of them funny, but all in line with the "Hands Off" message that brought them together.
"Thank you to the hundreds of thousands of Americans across the country who are standing up and speaking out for our voting rights, fundamental freedoms, and essential services like Social Security and Medicare," said the group Stand Up America as word of the turnout poured in from across the country.
A relatively small, but representative sample of photographs from various demonstrations that took place follows.
Demonstrators gather on Boston Common, cheering and chanting slogans, during the nationwide "Hands Off!" protest against US President Donald Trump and his advisor, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, in Boston, Massachusetts on April 5, 2025. (Photo by Joseph Prezioso / AFP)
"Everyone involved in this crime against humanity, and everyone who covered it up, would face prosecution in a world that had any shred of dignity left."
A video presented to officials at the United Nations on Friday and first made public Saturday by the New York Times provides more evidence that the recent massacre of Palestinian medics in Gaza did not happen the way Israeli government claimed—the latest in a long line of deception when it comes to violence against civilians that have led to repeated accusations of war crimes.
The video, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), was found on the phone of a paramedic found in a mass grave with a bullet in his head after being killed, along with seven other medics, by Israeli forces on March 23. The eight medics, buried in the shallow grave with the bodies riddled with bullets, were: Mustafa Khafaja, Ezz El-Din Shaat, Saleh Muammar, Refaat Radwan, Muhammad Bahloul, Ashraf Abu Libda, Muhammad Al-Hila, and Raed Al-Sharif. The video reportedly belonged to Radwan. A ninth medic, identified as Asaad Al-Nasasra, who was at the scene of the massacre, which took place near the southern city of Rafah, is still missing.
The PRCS said it presented the video—which refutes the explanation of the killings offered by Israeli officials—to members of the UN Security Council on Friday.
"They were killed in their uniforms. Driving their clearly marked vehicles. Wearing their gloves. On their way to save lives," Jonathan Whittall, head of the UN's humanitarian affairs office in Palestine, said last week after the bodies were discovered. Some of the victims, according to Gaza officials, were found with handcuffs still on them and appeared to have been shot in the head, execution-style.
The Israeli military initially said its soldiers "did not randomly attack" any ambulances, but rather claimed they fired on "terrorists" who approached them in "suspicious vehicles." Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an IDF spokesperson, said the vehicles that the soldiers opened fire on were driving with their lights off and did not have clearance to be in the area. The video evidence directly contradicts the IDF's version of events.
As the Times reports:
The Times obtained the video from a senior diplomat at the United Nations who asked not to be identified to be able to share sensitive information.
The Times verified the location and timing of the video, which was taken in the southern city of Rafah early on March 23. Filmed from what appears to be the front interior of a moving vehicle, it shows a convoy of ambulances and a fire truck, clearly marked, with headlights and flashing lights turned on, driving south on a road to the north of Rafah in the early morning. The first rays of sun can be seen, and birds are chirping.
In an interview with Drop Site News published Friday, the only known paramedic to survive the attack, Munther Abed, explained that he and his colleagues "were directly and deliberately shot at" by the IDF. "The car is clearly marked with 'Palestinian Red Crescent Society 101.' The car's number was clear and the crews' uniform was clear, so why were we directly shot at? That is the question."
The video's release sparked fresh outrage and demands for accountability on Saturday.
"The IDF denied access to the site for days; they sent in diggers to cover up the massacre and intentionally lied about it," said podcast producer Hamza M. Syed in reaction to the new revelations. "The entire leadership of the Israeli army is implicated in this unconscionable war crime. And they must be prosecuted."
"Everyone involved in this crime against humanity, and everyone who covered it up, would face prosecution in a world that had any shred of dignity left," said journalist Ryan Grim of DropSite News.
"They're dismantling our country. They're looting our government. And they think we'll just watch."
In communities across the United States and also overseas, coordinated "Hands Off" protests are taking place far and wide Saturday in the largest public rebuke yet to President Donald Trump and top henchman Elon Musk's assault on the workings of the federal government and their program of economic sabotage that is sacrificing the needs of working families to authoritarianism and the greed of right-wing oligarchs.
Indivisible, one of the key organizing groups behind the day's protests, said millions participated in more than 1,300 individual rallies as they demanded "an end to Trump's authoritarian power grab" and condemning all those aiding and abetting it.
"We expected hundreds of thousands. But at virtually every single event, the crowds eclipsed our estimates," the group said in a statement Saturday evening.
"Hands off our healthcare, hands off our civil rights, hands off our schools, our freedoms, and our democracy."
"This is the largest day of protest since Trump retook office," the group added. "And in many small towns and cities, activists are reporting the biggest protests their communities have ever seen as everyday people send a clear, unmistakable message to Trump and Musk: Hands off our healthcare, hands off our civil rights, hands off our schools, our freedoms, and our democracy."
According to the organizers' call to action:
They're dismantling our country. They’re looting our government. And they think we'll just watch.
On Saturday, April 5th, we rise up with one demand: Hands Off!
This is a nationwide mobilization to stop the most brazen power grab in modern history. Trump, Musk, and their billionaire cronies are orchestrating an all-out assault on our government, our economy, and our basic rights—enabled by Congress every step of the way. They want to strip America for parts—shuttering Social Security offices, firing essential workers, eliminating consumer protections, and gutting Medicaid—all to bankroll their billionaire tax scam.
They're handing over our tax dollars, our public services, and our democracy to the ultra-rich. If we don't fight now, there won’t be anything left to save.
The more than 1,300 "Hands Off!" demonstrations—organized by a large coalition of unions, progressive advocacy groups, and pro-democracy watchdogs—first kicked off Saturday in Europe, followed by East Coast communities in the U.S., and continued throughout the day at various times, depending on location. See here for a list of scheduled "Hands Off" events.
"The United States has a president, not a king," said the progressive advocacy group People's Action, one of the group's involved in the actions, in an email to supporters Saturday morning just as protest events kicked off in hundreds of cities and communities. "Donald Trump has, by every measure, been working to make himself a king. He has become unanswerable to the courts, Congress, and the American people."
In its Saturday evening statement, Indivisible said the actions far exceeded their expectations and should be seen as a turning point in the battle to stop Trump and his minions:
The Trump administration has spent its first 75 days in office trying to overwhelm us, to make us feel powerless, so that we will fall in line, accept the ransacking of our government, the raiding of our social safety net, and the dismantling of our democracy.
And too often, the response from our leaders and those in positions to resist has been abject cowardice. Compliance. Obeying in advance.
But not today. Today we've demonstrated a different path forward. We've modeled the courage and action that we want to see from our leaders, and showed all those who've been standing on the sidelines who share our values that they are not alone.
Citing the Republican president's thirst for "power and greed," People's Action earlier explained why organized pressure must be built and sustained against the administration, especially at the conclusion of a week in which the global economy was spun into disarray by Trump's tariff announcement, his attack on the rule of law continued, and the twice-elected president admitted he was "not joking" about the possibility of seeking a third term, which is barred by the constitution.
"He is destroying the economy with tariffs in order to pay for the tax cuts he wants to push through to enrich himself and his billionaire buddies," warned People's Action. "He has ordered the government to round up innocent people off of the streets and put them in detention centers without due process because they dared to speak out using their First Amendment rights. And he is not close to being done—by his own admission, he is planning to run for a third term, which the Constitution does not allow."
Live stream of Hands Off rally in Washington, D.C.:
Below are photo or video dispatches from demonstrations around the world on Saturday. Check back for updates...
United Kingdom
France
Germany
Belgium:
Massachusetts:
Maine:
Washington, D.C.:
New York:
Minnesota:
Michigan:
Ohio:
Colorado:
Pennsylvania:
North Carolina:
The protest organizers warn that what Trump and Musk are up to "is not just corruption" and "not just mismanagement," but something far more sinister.
"This is a hostile takeover," they said, but vowed to fight back. "This is the moment where we say NO. No more looting, no more stealing, no more billionaires raiding our government while working people struggle to survive."