I teach economics at Manchester Metropolitan University (UK). My research includes household spending, domestic violence, economic recessions. All views my own
Manchester, UK
Joined April 2013
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John Simister retweeted
🚨Israeli attacks killed at least 5 Palestinians across Gaza on Monday, including a 7-year-old girl
🔸In the al-Iqlimi area of al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis, an Israeli strike on a camp of tents sheltering displaced families killed three people, Gaza's Civil Defense said. Nasser Hospital said their bodies were "torn apart by direct hits from shrapnel from the Israeli missile" and identified the dead as:
▪️Hossam Fakhri al-Zamli, a young man, 21
▪️Tamer Abu Sneima, a young man, 24
▪️Jouri Islam al-Soufi, a girl, 7
🔸Civil Defense said a fourth person was killed in a separate strike on a displaced family's tent near Khan Younis.
🔸In Gaza City's Rimal neighborhood, an Israeli drone struck a group of civilians near the Insurance and Pensions Authority building, killing one and wounding three, according to WAFA and Al-Shifa Hospital. Neither victim has been named.
Israel has killed more than 1,560 Palestinians since the October 2025 ceasefire took effect, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.
🎥 1: A Palestinian girl in Gaza cries out for her brother, killed today in southern Gaza, as her family tries to comfort her. Filmed by Doaa Albaz (Instagram)
🎥 2: "Save me, Dad" were al-Zamli's last words, according to his father, filmed by Gaza photographer Abdallah Farhan, as he wished his son a final goodbye. (Instagram)
John Simister retweeted
Seven-year-old Joury Al-Soufi, whose name means “rose,” was killed today by Israeli gunfire that struck her in the neck southwest of Khan Younis.
She joins her father, who had previously been killed by Israel.
The attack on Al-Mawasi also killed Hossam Al-Zamli, 21, and Tamer Snaima, and left dozens injured.
John Simister retweeted
Standing on the scorched ground of a displacement camp at the Shuja’iyya junction on Salah al-Din Street, east of Gaza City, after the Israeli occupation army burned it to the ground overnight.
Gaza’s Ministry of Public Works and Housing says Israeli occupation quadcopter drones dropped incendiary bombs on the camp at around 8pm on Sunday, and the fire kept eating through tents and belongings until after midnight. More than 200 families, over 800 people, most of them women, children, elderly and sick, are now without shelter. These families had stayed in the east of the city only because there was no space left in the west, where nearly everyone has fled. The eastern districts are under the control of the Israeli occupation army, which strikes them every day with warplanes and drones, and blows up booby-trapped robots packed with tons of explosives.
Before the attack, the occupation army had pushed the so-called “yellow line” east of Shuja’iyya forward until it bordered the camp, bringing its positions closer to crowded residential areas a year into the ceasefire.
ali.a.aljafarawi2 (IG)
John Simister retweeted
IOF and settlers continue to terrorize Palestinians across the West Bank through terror raids, settler attacks, detentions, and forced displacement as part of a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing aimed at uprooting Palestinians from their land.
John Simister retweeted
🇵🇸 Mohammed has been waiting for more than a year for medical evacuation from Gaza despite being approved for treatment abroad, after being shot and paralyzed by Israeli forces while trying to access aid. He urgently needs reconstructive urological surgery, and is losing hope, according to a video report shared by his caregivers.
He is one of about 21,000 patients awaiting treatment abroad, including 5,600 children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. More than 2,000 have died waiting since October 2023.
Israel blocked medical evacuations for nearly three weeks this month before letting 50 patients out on Oct. 19 and 20. Even before that closure, the ministry says, Israel allowed out about 12 patients a day, a quarter of the 50 a day agreed under the ceasefire.
President Trump's Gaza plan, now overseen by his Board of Peace, promised that Palestinians who wish to leave Gaza would be "free to do so and free to return." It remains stalled as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to act and ratchets up the cruelty before Tuesday's election.
🎥 only_one_lulu (Instagram)
John Simister retweeted
The Palestinian Red Crescent reports that three people, including two elderly individuals, were injured after being beaten by Israeli occupation forces in the Al-Fahs area, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.
John Simister retweeted
Israel going to the polls changes NOTHING for Palestinians.
Western media treats the election as a contest between Netanyahu’s far-right coalition and a "moderate" opposition. In reality, the alternative to Netanyahu is an alliance of generals and hardliners who have driven the exact same machinery of violence and dispossession for decades:
Gadi Eisenkot: The opposition frontrunner who formulated the Dahiya doctrine—mandating the deliberate, disproportionate destruction of civilian infrastructure. He sat in the war cabinet over Gaza and dismissed ICC war crimes investigations as "antisemitism."
Yair Lapid: The supposed centrist whose stated principle is "maximum Jews on maximum land with minimum Palestinians."
Avigdor Lieberman: Declared "there are no innocents in Gaza" while cutting off water, power, and food.
Naftali Bennett: Boasted on record, "I have killed many Arabs in my life, and there is no problem with that."
As Peter Oborne reports from the West Bank, an opposition victory might actually be far more dangerous internationally. It would provide Western allies with the diplomatic PR cover they crave to drop pressure, restore impunity, and pretend Israel is back to being a "rules-based democracy."
Meanwhile, on the ground:
State-armed settlers continue expelling Palestinian communities at gunpoint.
Demolitions across East Jerusalem accelerate unabated.
Human rights bodies document systemic, industrial torture across detention camps.
The ballot box in Tel Aviv is not a choice between occupation and peace. It is a choice between overt extremism under Netanyahu and an internationally sanitized version of the exact same apartheid state under his rivals.
John Simister retweeted
LIFE UNDER ISRAELI APARTHEID:
Israeli soldiers assault Palestinian resident Issa Musa’af and his son in the Huwara area of Masafer Yatta, south of Al-Khalil. The assault follows another attack by Israeli settlers on their home, during which members of their family were also assaulted.
John Simister retweeted
“I was released today after about four and a half months of detention.” Dr. Mazen al-Rantisi, a 71-year-old physician from Ramallah known across the West Bank as “the doctor of the poor,” speaks with a fresh wound on his face, inflicted half an hour before his release on October 25, 2026. He says a jailer dragged him to the release room handcuffed behind his back, shackled at the legs and blindfolded, then shoved and kicked him to the ground. Israeli occupation forces seized al-Rantisi from his home in the al-Tireh neighbourhood of Ramallah in June without announcing any reason, and his daughter says he lost around 25 kilograms in their prisons.
He describes Nafha prison as overrun with scabies, affecting nearly 80 percent of the Palestinian hostages held there, with almost no medicine given. When prisoners beg the passing nurse for treatment, he says, they are cursed at, mocked and ridiculed, and he was taunted for taking the chronic medication a court had ordered he receive. He calls on international human rights organisations to intervene, saying Palestinian hostages are beaten and punished at the whim of their jailers with no oversight or accountability.
@Aljazeeraquds
John Simister retweeted
Number of Journalists killed in wars:
Vietnam: 63 journalists in 20 years.
World War II: 67 journalists in 7 years.
Gaza and Lebanon: 300+ journalists in 3 years.
This violates Article 79 of Additional Protocol (I) Geneva Conventions, but international law clearly doesn’t apply to Israel.
John Simister retweeted
Palestinian children in Jenin have to crawl under Israeli military gates to get to and from school.
Such restrictions have disrupted education for 24,500 Palestinian students in the occupied West Bank this year.
John Simister retweeted
British Jewish Doctor Who Joked About Sniping Palestinian Babies
A UK General Practitioner registered with the General Medical Council is under scrutiny after allegedly posting a response on social media appearing to endorse the killing of Palestinian children. Dr Staveley reportedly replied "not enough" when asked how many Palestinian babies he had "sniped", a comment he subsequently described as a joke. The GMC has not confirmed any formal action or suspension at the time of reporting, despite calls from advocacy groups for an immediate investigation into his fitness to practise.
The defence of humour does not hold up to professional scrutiny. Doctors operate under a code of conduct that extends beyond the clinic; the GMC's own standards require registered physicians to behave with integrity in all public-facing conduct. A comment of this nature, made on a public platform, raises legitimate questions about patient trust and professional fitness, particularly for patients from Muslim and Arab backgrounds.
Despite the public outcry, Staveley remains on the medical register and continues to hold a valid licence to practise. He is reported to have been removed from at least one clinical role, though this has not been independently verified. Campaign groups are calling for his immediate suspension and a formal GMC investigation, calls that, at the time of publication, appear to have gone unanswered.
John Simister retweeted
The “operation” in Hebron looks just like an election campaign at the expense of thousands of Palestinians. IDF commanders wanted to end it, but Netanyahu ordered it to continue. If you think this is unprecedented, listen to a soldier who testified to us in 2003:
“We were called into Jenin—an election call-up. Everyone knew we were imposing a curfew on Jenin because of the elections. There was no operational purpose to taking over houses. It was all about bringing life to a standstill. We were bringing life in Jenin to a standstill.”
Testimony in Hebrew: shovrimshtika.org/testimonie…
John Simister retweeted
🟢 Hamas is calling on the Arab League to hold an emergency meeting to confront Israel's policy of "re-starving" Gaza's population. Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem urged groups and movements across the Arab world to "take action on the ground" and pressure all parties to stop the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.
He said Israel's renewed starvation policy cannot continue "amid the silence of the concerned parties."
The call comes as Israel lets in about 34% of the 600 aid trucks a day required under the ceasefire, according to a report the Palestinian side prepared for the truce's mediators. The UN's World Food Programme has also cut food aid to 500,000 people in Gaza over funding shortages.
🎥 Saad Jamil & Ahmad Afash
John Simister retweeted
8 Palestinians killed by Israel in the Gaza Strip since dawn today:
1- Alaa Ahmad Abu Zayed, killed west of Khan Younis.
2- Nabil Ahmad Abu Zayed (25), killed west of Khan Younis.
3- Fawzi Salem al-Sawarka (54), killed near Hamad Hospital on al-Rashid Street, northwest of Gaza City.
4- Hamdan Salman Abu Amra (33), killed by Israeli drone bombing in the al-Mazraa area, east of Deir al-Balah.
5- Ashraf Dahlan, a member of the Islamic University’s security and guard staff, killed by Israeli bombing at the university gate in Gaza City.
6- Shadi Abu Ataya, a member of the Islamic University’s security and guard staff, killed in the same bombing.
7- Sami Baroud, a member of the Islamic University’s security and guard staff, killed in the same bombing.
8- Fatima Hisham al-Bayouk (8), died of wounds sustained after Israeli army soldiers shot her on October 17, 2026, on al-Mazraa Street, east of Deir al-Balah.
Fatima was the sole survivor of her family after Israeli bombing killed her entire family in late 2023. Today, she joins them. (Video and photo)
Video 1: of the Israeli bombing of Islamic university in Gaza city.
John Simister retweeted
Two Israeli strikes hit students and security guards at the Islamic University in Gaza City, killing three people and injuring at least seven others, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reports.
