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.

The U.S. remains the most powerful single nation in the world, but it is not the most powerful in every region. While the U.S. remains mired in numerous wars in the Middle East, it is facing a rapid challenge from the People’s Republic of China. In recent history, China has become a major economic, technological, and political power—even taking the place of the U.S. as the dominant economic actor in many parts of the world.

The U.S. and China in recent years have transformed from erstwhile partners into fierce rivals that many fear is rapidly transforming into a new Cold War. As their rivalry grows, some observers warn that the economic decoupling now taking place between Washington and Beijing could be a prelude to a direct military clash over Taiwan in the years to come.

Understanding the history and future of China is more important than ever. The central figure in Chinese politics today is the country’s leader and Communist Party chief Xi Jinping. But to understand Xi’s rise and contemporary Chinese politics, an even more interesting figure may be his father, Xi Zhongxun.

The elder Xi was a leading figure in the Chinese Communist Party during the revolutionary era and a close associate of Mao Zedong. Like many Chinese officials of that generation, he suffered purges and repression, in the midst of a century of suffering that touched nearly the entire Chinese population, including his family and children.

Drop Site’s Murtaza Hussain is joined by Joseph Torigian, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the author of the new book: “The Party's Interests Come First: The Life Of Xi Zhongxun, Father Of Xi Jinping.”

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

Israel’s widening military assault on Gaza—the continued bombardment, the prolonged siege, the daily murder of starving people seeking aid, the expansion of ground operations and the carving up of Gaza with military corridors—has brought Gaza to a tipping point. Starving Palestinians have begun to collapse in the streets and die of hunger and thirst. At least thirty-three people have died from hunger and malnutrition over the past two days. Israeli troops gun down desperate people seeking meager food rations on a daily basis, with one of the deadliest aid massacres taking place on Sunday with nearly 70 people killed by the Israeli military as they approached a World Food Program aid convoy.

On Monday, Israeli troops pushed into areas of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza for the first time since the beginning of the war. Deir al-Baah was the only city in Gaza that has not been subject to a major Israeli ground operation or suffered widespread devastation. Many Palestinians have sought refuge there and it is also the headquarters of several UN agencies and medical NGOs. Israeli forces raided the main staff residence of the World Health Organization in the city on Monday, forcing women and children to evacuate on foot toward the coast while male staff ere handcuffed, stripped, interrogated on the spot and screened at gunpoint.

On this week’s Drop Site News livestream, Sharif Abdel Kouddous speaks to Eyad Amawi of the Gaza Relief Committee in Deir al-Balah about the latest assault on the city and the spreading famine in Gaza; and with Mouin Rabbani, co-editor of Jadaliyya and a former UN official who worked as a special adviser on Israel-Palestine for the International Crisis Group about how the US and Europe are allowing Israel to pursue its genocidal campaign with impunity.

Negotiations for a Gaza “ceasefire” deal are continuing in Doha, Qatar, as President Donald Trump claims an agreement could be reached as early as this week. Palestinian negotiators, however, have told Drop Site that Israel continues to demand terms that would allow the genocide to continue after a 60-day pause during which 10 Israeli captives would be released from Gaza. Israel has also been threatening to establish a concentration camp in southern Gaza to corral an initial 600,000 Palestinians to prepare them for eventual removal from Gaza entirely.

As this process continues, Israel has further intensified its military assault with daily massacres that disproportionately kill children and women. Since late May, an average of 30 Palestinians have been killed as they tried to receive meager food rations from the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation established by the U.S. and Israel.

On this week’s Drop Site News livestream, Jeremy Scahill speaks to Eyad Amawi of the Gaza Relief Committees about the increasing horrors being unleashed on Palestinians, the latest developments in the ceasefire negotiations, and how ordinary people in Gaza view the prospects for a deal to end the genocide. Jeremy also offers insights from sources involved with the negotiations and gives a comprehensive update on the state of affairs.

Ryan Grim, Jeremy Scahill, and Murtaza Hussain are joined by Jon Elmer of Electronic Intifada to break down today’s major developments.

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

The United States carried out airstrikes last month against three sites in Iran tied to its nuclear program. The attacks were the culmination of years of belligerence that began when Trump violated the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and embarked on a strategy of confrontation with Iran, at the behest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

While the level of damage done to the sites remains unclear, the Iranian government has responded to the attacks by ceasing cooperation with international monitoring agencies. Iran is also hinting it retains the capacity to develop a nuclear weapon if it chooses.

The standoff with Iran is just one aspect of a larger story of the reemergence of nuclear weapons and possible nuclear warfare as a major risk in the 21st century.

The U.S. and Russia are currently in the process of building up to a new nuclear arms race, while, at present, China has the fastest growing nuclear arsenal of any country . Recently, the India and Pakistan conflict made many nervous that one of the countries would use nuclear weapons.

After years of relative stability, the size of the nuclear club also looks very likely to grow with new nations potentially carrying out nuclear tests in the years ahead. These changes mean that the risk of a nuclear war is growing after the end of the Cold War rather than decreasing.

Drop Site’s Murtaza Hussain is joined by Ankit Panda. Panda is the Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the author of the new book “The New Nuclear Age: At the Precipice of Armageddon.”

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