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After nearly two years of brutal attacks by the Israeli government, portions of the Gaza Strip are now subject to a full-blown famine. That assessment comes from an international monitor known as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, which issued a report last month officially declaring famine in the Gaza Governorate for the first time. The assessment comes after months of warnings from the World Food Program, World Health Organization, and other global NGOs stating that Israeli restrictions on food and other basic supplies to the territory were at risk of generating widespread deaths from hunger.

The Israeli military has vowed to press on with its offensive in Gaza despite global backlash, stating that it plans to force the surviving population of the territory into camps after conquering Gaza City. In the meantime, the humanitarian situation is continuing to deteriorate.

In response to the famine, some countries have begun airdrops of aid to the territory, with little success.

This week, Drop Site’s Murtaza Hussain is joined by Chris Houston. Houston is an expert on humanitarian aid efforts who has worked in crisis zones in Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Yemen, Ethiopia, and elsewhere. He has also served on the board of directors of Doctors Without Borders, and is the founder of the Canadian Peace Museum.

Listen above or on the Drop Site News channel on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Ryan Grim is joined by philanthropist and frontline humanitarian Amed Khan to discuss the obstacles and urgency of delivering aid to Palestinians in Gaza.

“Governments have been an absolute disaster. They are an embarrassment… we only have us,” Khan told Drop Site. He singled out the U.S. as “an absolute disaster,” noting that while Greece and Italy have quietly done some medical evacuations, no state is “punching at their weight.” Leaders across the world, he said, “can’t look themselves in the mirror and say, I did the right thing.”

Khan is executive producing “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” premiering in Venice tomorrow. The film has major Hollywood names attached—including Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, Alfonso Cuarón, and Jonathan Glazer.

Grim also spoke with Drop Site’s Alex Colston aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla, now on its way from Barcelona to Gaza in an attempt to break Israel’s siege.

BELGRADE, SERBIA—On August 12, 2025, in the cities of Vrbas and Bačka Palanka, Serbia, several hundred people took to the streets to protest against the repression by the regime of President Aleksandar Vučić. That evening, pro-government supporters attacked demonstrators, throwing stones and frozen water bottles and targeting them with fireworks. The protestors retaliated, throwing objects back at Vučić’s supporters. The police did not intervene, though they were also struck several times.

These events sparked outrage, in part because the police stood by and allowed the violent attacks by Vučić’s supporters against the demonstrators, and on August 13, people in several Serbian cities protested in front of the ruling party’s offices. The police responded with force, and since then, clashes between protestors and police have continued across Serbia. Almost every night, the streets of the capital, Belgrade, and other Serbian cities are filled with police deploying tear gas and armored vehicles on one side, and regime opponents on the other.

The roots of the uprising stretch back to November 1, 2024, when a concrete canopy weighing over 300 tons collapsed at the railway station in Novi Sad, killing 16 people. This canopy had been officially reopened just four months earlier after reconstruction.

This tragic event sparked a wave of protests across Serbia, led by a segment of the population previously considered the most indifferent to social and political issues in the country—university students. They swiftly formed the core of a movement waging a campaign for accountability and against corruption and vowing to drive Vučić from power.

Arrests of protesters, particularly students, are ongoing.

Vučić has ruled Serbia for 13 years. A veteran of Serbian politics who served as information minister under the government of Slobodan Milošević in the 1990s, Vučić is well known for his ability to calibrate his positions to maintain strategic alliances with both the U.S. and its adversaries. Although the country officially remains on the path to joining the European Union and enjoys warm relations with the Trump administration, Vučić also maintains close ties with Russia and China.

Vučić is conducting talks with the EU regarding the status of Kosovo, which formally declared independence from Serbia in 2008. His government sends weapons to both Ukraine and Israel and Belgrade reportedly signed a recent deal with the Israeli weapons technology firm Elbit Systems worth $1.6 billion for long-range rockets, drones, and surveillance systems. Rio Tinto—a powerful mining company that environmentalists accuse of causing pollution and other environmental damage in addition to allegations of mistreatment of workers—plans to open a mine in a lithium- and boron-rich area of Serbia called Jadar. Just over two months ago, the European Commission declared the Jadar project one of strategic importance for the EU.

Vučić’s opponents call him an autocrat and dictator, claiming that corruption in the country has never been higher. They cite as an example the cost of the Paris Olympics last year—€10 billion—and compare it with the projected costs for Serbia’s EXPO, scheduled to be held in Belgrade in 2027, which is expected to cost nearly €18 billion.

According to recent polls, Vučić’s popularity is on the decline and he has rejected calls for new elections, despite the country being in deep political crisis.

Dušan Čavić and Dušan Šaponja, cohosts of the popular Serbian YouTube documentary news program Marka Žvaka produced this report for Drop Site News explaining how Serbia once again has found itself at the political crossroads.

Since the end of the 12-day war this summer, an uneasy ceasefire has held between Iran, Israel, and the United States.

The war saw hundreds dead, as well as widespread destruction in both Iran and Israel. The short conflict that began with an Israeli surprise attack may have only set the stage for further conflict. The Israeli and U.S. attacks damaged, but did not destroy, the Iranian nuclear program, and despite attacks on Iran’s leadership, its government did not collapse. Meanwhile, both Iran and Israel have continued to trade threats, while President Donald Trump has indicated that the U.S. is likely to jump back into new rounds of fighting between the two countries.

The next phase of the war between Iran, Israel, and their backers might possibly be far more bloody and violent than the first. The conflict also threatens to involve the U.S. in another major Middle Eastern war, even as politicians in the U.S. have promised to leave the region.

This week, Drop Site’s Murtaza Hussain is joined by Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Parsi is an award-winning author with a focus on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. You can read his latest Substack piece here and his latest piece for Foreign Policy magazine here.

Listen above or on the Drop Site News channel on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The confirmed death toll in Gaza has crossed 62,000 with at least 26 Palestinians killed over the past 24 hours, including four while seeking aid, according to the Ministry of Health. Nearly 350 Palestinians were injured over the same period, bringing the total number of wounded since the start of the war to 156,573.

The Israeli military has systematically attacked the healthcare system in Gaza—bombing, raiding and destroying hospitals, killing and imprisoning medical workers and staff, and preventing much needed medical aid from entering the territory. It has also severely restricted the number of medical evacuations allowed out of Gaza, with thousands of wounded Palestinians, including thousands of children, unable to receive medical attention abroad. Meanwhile, the Trump administration recently suspended all visitor visas for individuals from Gaza after far-right influencer Laura Loomer said she “obtained video footage” of a few severely injured Palestinian children arriving in the U.S.

In Congress, Rep. Ro Khanna has been leading calls for the U.S. to recognize a Palestinian state. The letter follows announcements from France, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom that they would move toward recognizing a Palestinian state. Khanna has been repeatedly criticized by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) for his efforts.

On this week’s Drop Site News livestream, Ryan Grim and Sharif Abdel Kouddous speak with Dr. Thaer Ahmad, an emergency medicine physician based in Chicago who has volunteered in Gaza about medical evacuations and with Rep. Ro Khana about Washington’s foreign policy toward Palestine.

Israel massacred six journalists in Gaza City on Wednesday in an airstrike on a media tent outside Al-Shifa Hospital—an attack that sent shockwaves throughout Gaza and made headlines across the globe. The Israeli military publicly proclaimed the attack was a targeted assassination of renowned Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif.

Over the past 22 months, Israel has killed at least 238 journalists in Gaza, according to the Government Media Office, an unprecedented slaughter of journalists in modern history.

Al-Sharif was the most recognizable Palestinian journalist still alive and reporting from Gaza and had been openly targeted by the Israeli military for months. Killed alongside him were four of his Al Jazeera colleagues—Mohammed Qraiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Moamen Aliwa, and Mohammed Noufal—and Mohammed Al-Khalidi of the media outlet Sahat.

As the threats against al-Sharif escalated, he penned a letter in April to be published upon his death. “If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice,” he wrote. “I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification—so that Allah may bear witness against those who stayed silent, those who accepted our killing, those who choked our breath, and whose hearts were unmoved by the scattered remains of our children and women, doing nothing to stop the massacre that our people have faced for more than a year and a half.”

Western media institutions have, for the most part, remained largely silent or actively enabled the killing of their Palestinian colleagues in record numbers by parroting ludicrous claims by the Israeli military labelling journalists in Gaza as militants and terrorists.

On this week’s Drop Site News livestream, Jeremy Scahill and Sharif Abdel Kouddous speak with Emmy and Peabody Award–winning Al Jazeera English journalist and documentary producer Laila al-Arian about the killing of Palestinian journalists in Gaza and western media coverage of the genocide.

For the past eight months, since the fall of the Assad government in December, Syria has been grappling with major internal crises and the legacy of a brutal 14-year civil war. While millions of Syrians have welcomed the collapse of the country’s previous regime, Syria today faces a new set of challenges. There is uncertainty over the future of the national economy, political rights, sovereignty, protection of minorities, and other issues vital to the country’s future.

In addition to a wave of Israeli attacks on Syria that has continued to this day, Syria has been hit by outbreaks of sectarian violence that have called into question the motivations—and level of control—that the central government has over the country.

Syria today is led by veterans of militant Islamist groups that fought the former regime. While the government has sought to put forward a pragmatic image to reassure both Syrians and the international community, today there remains a challenge dealing with thousands of foreign Islamist fighters who flocked to Syria to take part in the war.

Now that the Assad regime has fallen, the role of those former fighters, including some from Western countries, could determine the future of Syria, as well as the region more broadly.

Drop Site’s Murtaza Hussain is joined by Tam Hussein, an award-winning British investigative journalist and co-author of the book, To the Mountains: My Life in Jihad, from Algeria to Afghanistan, a biography of the Algerian militant leader Abdullah Anas. Hussain also authors the Substack publication “The Blood Rep.”

Listen above or on the Drop Site News channel on Apple, Spotify, RSS, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Reports are emerging that an expanded Israeli military ground campaign accompanied by heavy bombing and artillery shelling is underway in various parts of Gaza, including reports of Israeli tanks pushing into the center of the enclave, increased ground attacks in Khan Younis, and deepening operations in Gaza City.

Israeli media reported on Wednesday that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is favors a complete military takeover of Gaza, including in areas where Israeli captives are being held. Netanyahu is set to convene his war cabinet today to discuss next steps. As it stands, 88 percent of Gaza is already in a so-called “militarized zone” or under Israeli displacement orders.

Meanwhile, the genocidal assault continues. At least 87 Palestinians were killed over the last 24 hours, including 52 killed in aid massacres, bringing the confirmed death toll in Gaza to over 61,000—a number that is widely acknowledged to be a vast undercount. Nearly 650 people were injured over the past day as well, bringing the number of injured to more than 150,000—many of those injuries are life altering.

Eight Palestinians died of famine and malnutrition over the past 24 hours, bringing the total number who have died as a result of hunger to 188, including 94 children—many of them in the past 2 weeks alone as Israel’s deliberate starvation campaign in Gaza has reached what food experts are calling an irreversible tipping point.

On this week’s Drop Site news livestream, Sharif Abdel Kouddous speaks to the prominent Palestinian scholar and historian Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor emeritus of modern Arab studies at Columbia University and the author of many books, his latest is "The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine.”

Khalidi recently published an article in the Guardian newspaper explaining why he is withdrawing from teaching a fall course at Columbia. This comes after Columbia University agreeing to pay a $200 million settlement to the Trump administration after it accused the university of failing to protect Jewish students during campus protests calling for the university to disclose and divest from any ties to Israel.

Israel’s extermination campaign in Gaza is continuing unabated. At least 74 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since dawn today, including 36 Palestinians who were killed while seeking aid. The starvation campaign continues to worsen as a result of Israel’s policies that severely restrict food, fuel, and medicine from getting into Gaza. As starving Palestinians try and access the meager amount food located at either GHF “aid distribution” sites or coming in through UN convoys, they are shot at, and killed, every single day by Israeli forces.

The ministry of health recorded five additional deaths due to famine and malnutrition over the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of victims of famine and malnutrition since the start of the war to 180, including 93 children—dozens of these cases have occurred just in the past two weeks, as the widening famine has reached a tipping point. The current famine conditions were predicted months ago by food experts following Israel’s full spectrum siege that began on March 2—a year and a half into Israel’s genocidal assault—where aid had already been severely restricted.

Gaza’s health care system has been systematically targeted by the Israeli military and is struggling to cope without medical supplies, with Palestinian doctors and medical workers suffering from hunger and malnutrition themselves. On Monday, officials at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis said at least 38 people died after arriving at the facility over the previous 24-hour period, and many hundreds more are being treated for injuries.

Drop Site’s Sharif Abdel Kouddous speaks with Elidalis Burgos, a critical care nurse from the U.S. who has been volunteering at Nasser hospital for the past four weeks in the intensive care unit and emergency department.

The leading international authority on food crises—the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)—on Tuesday said that the “worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip,” warning that the situation has reached “an alarming and deadly turning point” and predicting “widespread death” without immediate action.

The finding comes as Palestinians in Gaza have begun to collapse in the streets from hunger and the number of deaths related to hunger and malnutrition has grown exponentially as a result of Israel’s deliberate campaign of mass starvation.

Meanwhile, Columbia University has agreed to pay a $200 million settlement to the Trump administration, which accused the university of failing to protect Jewish students during campus protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza. The settlement was announced a day after Columbia informed nearly 80 students that they had been suspended for one to three years—or expelled—for taking part in protests against the war on Gaza.

On this week’s Drop Site News livestream, Ryan Grim and Meghnad Bose speak to Mahmoud Khalil, the former Palestinian student at Columbia University who was a lead negotiator for the student protests and was imprisoned by ICE for 104 days in a Louisiana detention center before being released on bail last month by a federal judge. Khalil discusses the latest in Gaza, the role of protest movements, Columbia University, and more in an interview with Drop Site in lieu of our weekly broadcast.