August 26, 2025
Dave DeCamp
On top of the violent deaths, the Health Ministry also recorded three starvation-related deaths due to the Israeli siege. “This brings the total number of victims of famine and malnutrition to 303, including 117 children,” the ministry wrote on Telegram.
Israeli strikes on Tuesday included the bombing of a tent in southern Gaza near the city of Khan Younis that killed six members of the same family, including three children, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA.
The IDF has continued its heavy attacks on Gaza City as it prepares to take over the city, plans that involve cleansing the city of its Palestinian population and then completely destroying it. Gaza City residents told Reuters that Israeli tank and aerial attacks pounded the city’s eastern neighborhoods throughout the night.
“Earthquakes, we call it, they want to scare people to leave their homes,” said Ismail, a 40-year-old Gaza City resident. Health officials told Reuters that at least 18 people were killed in and around Gaza City overnight.
Last week, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) confirmed that famine is occurring in the Gaza Governorate, which encompasses Gaza City and its surrounding towns. The IPC is calling for an immediate ceasefire to address the humanitarian catastrophe.
Israeli forces also continued to kill Palestinians attempting to reach aid, with the Health Ministry recording the death of 17 aid seekers and the injury of 122. Since the end of May, the ministry has recorded the killing of 2,140 aid seekers, and more than 15,737 have been injured.
The Health Ministry said that since October 7, 2023, its violent death toll has reached 62,819, and the number of wounded has climbed to 158,629. Studies have found that the ministry’s numbers are likely a significant undercount.
August 21, 2025
Debora Patta
Since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation first began operating nearly three months ago, the U.N. says hundreds of Palestinians have been shot and killed by Israel Defense Forces and foreign military contractors at or near its aid sites. CBS News spoke to a new eyewitness who said it's not just the IDF firing at Palestinians, but also personnel hired through American subcontractors to secure GHF sites.
The witness, who we will refer to as Mike, asked CBS News to conceal his identity because he fears reprisal. When Mike was hired by an American logistics company to drive aid trucks in Israel, he said he had no idea he'd be working with the GHF inside Gaza.
The U.S. and Israeli-backed GHF was established to replace the United Nations as the main distributor of aid back in May. In late June, the U.S. State Department approved $30 million for the group, calling its work "absolutely incredible."
Mike secretly recorded videos and shared them with CBS News. You can hear gunfire in the videos, which Mike says was fired at Palestinians seeking aid.
"It took me two or three days to realize that they were actually shooting at people, they weren't shooting at combatants," he said.
When asked by Patta whether he thought they were warning shots, Mike said, "No, it's indiscriminate." He said both the IDF and American security personnel were shooting.
We don't see who is shooting on the videos Mike gave us. But he said there was not a single occasion he observed when there was no shooting, and he was at the brightly illuminated sites on average five days a week for several weeks. CBS News has seen his work schedule, and metadata from his cell phone confirms the dates and times he was in Gaza.
More than 1,800 Palestinians have died trying to get food, at least 1,000 in the vicinity of GHF sites, according to the U.N.'s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Since GHF started operating aid sites in May, CBS News has reported on near-daily shootings at or near GHF sites, and former U.S. security contractors have spoken out about witnessing gunfire against Palestinian crowds in interviews with news outlets, including The Associated Press.
Mike said Palestinians would gather near the sites hours before they opened to be the first to grab food. He told CBS News he has "never seen a crowd of people behave with such intensity and such desperation."
When asked about the worst thing he experienced, Mike said he was once tasked by the security contractors with cleaning up human and animal remains adjacent to one site while on the job, due to the foul smell emitted by those remains.
"I struggle to talk about it," he said. "I even feel a bit clammy, and I can feel my chest beating harder. I just shut down really."
GHF says the allegations that their contractors have shot aid-seekers and mishandled their remains are "categorically false" and "utterly baseless." They criticized CBS News' refusal to provide them with more detailed information about Mike.
Mike said some of the Americans hired to secure the GHF sites made him feel uncomfortable.
"They would often boast about how many people they've killed, if they've managed to shoot animals," he said. "Or how many birds they'd shot because they were bragging about how good their aim was."
Mike is home now and won't be going back.
When asked why he's sharing his experience, he said, "It just wouldn't sit right with me if I didn't say something. These atrocities don't have to happen."
GHF told CBS News that their contractors do not fire on civilians, nor, they say, has anyone been killed by gunfire at a GHF site, not even within sight of a foundation site. And they say they have "never encountered any situation involving unclaimed bodies" at or near their sites.
The IDF has categorically denied allegations that it deliberately fires at Palestinian civilians, but told CBS News it is investigating recent reports of harm being done to civilians approaching GHF sites, and said any deviation from the law will result in further action.
August 25, 2025
Dave DeCamp
A new University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll (UMD CIP) has found that Americans are more sympathetic to Palestinians than Israelis, a historic shift in US public opinion that comes as the US government continues to support Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip.
The poll found that 28% of respondents sympathized more with the Palestinians and 22% said they sympathized more with the Israelis, while 26% said they sympathized with both sides equally, 12% said “neither,” and 13% said they didn’t know.
Sympathy for Palestinians is stronger among Americans ages 18-34, with 37% of them saying they sympathize more with the Palestinians and just 11% sympathizing more with the Israelis.
The results are divided by political party, with Republicans much more sympathetic toward Israelis (46%) than Palestinians (7%). Sympathy for Palestinians is stronger among younger Republicans, with 12% saying they’re more sympathetic toward Palestinians and 24% choosing the Israelis.
UMD CIP said that the results follow trends from other polling organizations, but its poll was the first to find more US sympathy for Palestinians than Israelis. The poll was conducted between July 29 and August 7, 2025, a time when more US media outlets began reporting on the Israeli-imposed starvation in Gaza.
The poll found that 40% of Americans believe President Trump’s policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian issue is “too pro-Israel,” while only 3% said he was “too pro-Palestinian,” and 27% say it’s “about right.”
UMD CIP also found that 41% of Americans, including 67% of Democrats and 14% of Republicans, believe that Israel’s actions in Gaza either constitute genocide (22%) or are “akin to genocide” (19%). Just 22% of respondents said that Israel’s actions were justified under the country’s “right to self-defense.”
The majority of respondents acknowledged the US government’s responsibility for Israel’s military operations, with 61% agreeing that US military, economic, and diplomatic support for Israel enables Israeli actions in Gaza (34% strongly and 27% somewhat).
August 24, 2025
Brett Wilkins
Palestinian teenagers kidnapped and imprisoned by Israeli occupation forces during the genocidal war on Gaza accused their jailers of torturing and sexually assaulting them in a report published Saturday by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
“They took me from the aid distribution site and transferred me to a hospital in Rafah, where I was interrogated for an hour,” one 16-year-old boy identified by his first name Sami, who was abducted on June 29, told ABC. “They stripped me and conducted a body search. Then, they loaded me into a jeep and transported me to a prison in Israel.”
“During the interrogations, they tortured us – handcuffing us, beating us with sticks, and using electric shocks,” the teen continued. “They did countless things to break us.”
“I was tortured for a week until I lost all sense of time and awareness,” Sami said. “They put me in a one-square-meter cell, where I spent the entire week. I never saw daylight, never stepped outside. They only came to deliver food.”
“They asked if I knew anyone from Hamas, and whether I had crossed over on October 7,” Sami recounted. “They kept pressing me about who I knew and who I had seen. I told them I was just walking down the street – I didn’t know anything.”
“They would beat me. Each person that talked to me would beat me,” the teen alleged. “I was handcuffed, blindfolded, and they put electricity in my legs.”
Mahmoud, age 17, said that his Israeli abductors “began hurling insults, cursing at us, and accusing us of being with Hamas.”
“They stripped us of our clothes and took us to Kerem Shalom, completely naked, with nothing,” he continued. “There, the beatings and torture began.”
“The Israeli women soldiers beat us. They stripped us and ‘played’ here, and here, and there,” Mahmoud said, indicating his genitals. “They beat us with sticks. Got on us while we were lying on the ground. We were handcuffed like that and naked.”
Mahmoud said his captors wanted to humiliate him and other teenage boys in custody, accusing the troops of taking nude photos of them and sending female soldiers to mock and touch his body – an especially shameful ordeal for Muslims.
“When I was released from prison, I had a breakdown,” Mahmoud said. “I felt mentally exhausted and deeply disgusted. What I witnessed – no one should ever have to see.”
“I was tortured, we are children,” he added. “What have we done?”
ABC published photographs showing signs of torture on the teens’ bodies, including from shackling.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) categorically rejected the teens’ accusations, saying that “this includes allegations of electric shocks during interrogations, strip-searching detainees for humiliation purposes, or sexual assaults.”
However, there have been numerous documented cases of such abuse, most notably at the notorious Sde Teiman torture prison. Israeli physicians who served at Sde Teiman have described widespread severe injuries caused by 24-hour shackling of hands and feet that sometimes required amputations.
Palestinians taken by Israeli forces have described being raped and sexually assaulted by male and female soldiers, electrocuted, mauled by dogs, soaked with cold water, denied food and water, deprived of sleep, and blasted with loud music. Dozens of detainees have died in Israeli custody, including one who died after allegedly being sodomized with an electric baton.
Last year, nine IDF reservists were arrested for allegedly gang-raping a Sde Teiman prisoner, who suffered severe internal injuries in the attack, which was caught on video. Far-right Israelis including government officials subsequently stormed the facility in a bid to free the reservists, and Israeli leaders including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich demanded a probe of the video – not to seek justice for the victim, but rather to find and punish whoever leaked it.
Survivors of Israeli abuse have also accused their jailers of bringing Israeli civilians into detention centers and allowing them to watch and record prisoners being tortured.
Gazan doctor Khaled al-Sir told ABC that Sami and Mahmoud’s accounts mirrored his own abuse at the hands of Israeli soldiers who imprisoned him for six months last year.
“I witnessed many prisoners who were sexually assaulted using batons in their buttholes and also using the pepper spray over their private parts,” al-Sir alleged, adding that there was an area of Sde Teiman that guards called the “hell section,” where abuse was particularly severe.
A pair of recent United Nations reports detailed sexual violence, including reproductive and gender-based crimes, perpetrated by Israeli soldiers against Palestinians. The UN has also reported rape and other sexual violence committed by Hamas militants against Israelis during the October 7, 2023 attack and against hostages kidnapped that day.
In January, Israel blocked a request from UN sex crimes experts to probe alleged sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas fighters during the October 7, 2023 attack, reportedly to avoid scrutiny of rapes and other abuses allegedly committed by Israeli forces against imprisoned Palestinians.
Dave DeCamp
Gaza hospitals recorded another
three starvation-related deaths due to the Israeli siege
Gaza’s Health Ministry said in a
statement on Tuesday that Israeli forces killed 75 Palestinians and wounded 370
over the previous 24-hour period as relentless US-backed Israeli attacks
continue across the Strip.
On top of the violent deaths, the Health Ministry also recorded three starvation-related deaths due to the Israeli siege. “This brings the total number of victims of famine and malnutrition to 303, including 117 children,” the ministry wrote on Telegram.
Israeli strikes on Tuesday included the bombing of a tent in southern Gaza near the city of Khan Younis that killed six members of the same family, including three children, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA.
The IDF has continued its heavy attacks on Gaza City as it prepares to take over the city, plans that involve cleansing the city of its Palestinian population and then completely destroying it. Gaza City residents told Reuters that Israeli tank and aerial attacks pounded the city’s eastern neighborhoods throughout the night.
“Earthquakes, we call it, they want to scare people to leave their homes,” said Ismail, a 40-year-old Gaza City resident. Health officials told Reuters that at least 18 people were killed in and around Gaza City overnight.
Last week, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) confirmed that famine is occurring in the Gaza Governorate, which encompasses Gaza City and its surrounding towns. The IPC is calling for an immediate ceasefire to address the humanitarian catastrophe.
Israeli forces also continued to kill Palestinians attempting to reach aid, with the Health Ministry recording the death of 17 aid seekers and the injury of 122. Since the end of May, the ministry has recorded the killing of 2,140 aid seekers, and more than 15,737 have been injured.
The Health Ministry said that since October 7, 2023, its violent death toll has reached 62,819, and the number of wounded has climbed to 158,629. Studies have found that the ministry’s numbers are likely a significant undercount.
August 21, 2025
Debora Patta
Since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation first began operating nearly three months ago, the U.N. says hundreds of Palestinians have been shot and killed by Israel Defense Forces and foreign military contractors at or near its aid sites. CBS News spoke to a new eyewitness who said it's not just the IDF firing at Palestinians, but also personnel hired through American subcontractors to secure GHF sites.
The witness, who we will refer to as Mike, asked CBS News to conceal his identity because he fears reprisal. When Mike was hired by an American logistics company to drive aid trucks in Israel, he said he had no idea he'd be working with the GHF inside Gaza.
The U.S. and Israeli-backed GHF was established to replace the United Nations as the main distributor of aid back in May. In late June, the U.S. State Department approved $30 million for the group, calling its work "absolutely incredible."
Mike secretly recorded videos and shared them with CBS News. You can hear gunfire in the videos, which Mike says was fired at Palestinians seeking aid.
"It took me two or three days to realize that they were actually shooting at people, they weren't shooting at combatants," he said.
When asked by Patta whether he thought they were warning shots, Mike said, "No, it's indiscriminate." He said both the IDF and American security personnel were shooting.
We don't see who is shooting on the videos Mike gave us. But he said there was not a single occasion he observed when there was no shooting, and he was at the brightly illuminated sites on average five days a week for several weeks. CBS News has seen his work schedule, and metadata from his cell phone confirms the dates and times he was in Gaza.
More than 1,800 Palestinians have died trying to get food, at least 1,000 in the vicinity of GHF sites, according to the U.N.'s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Since GHF started operating aid sites in May, CBS News has reported on near-daily shootings at or near GHF sites, and former U.S. security contractors have spoken out about witnessing gunfire against Palestinian crowds in interviews with news outlets, including The Associated Press.
Mike said Palestinians would gather near the sites hours before they opened to be the first to grab food. He told CBS News he has "never seen a crowd of people behave with such intensity and such desperation."
When asked about the worst thing he experienced, Mike said he was once tasked by the security contractors with cleaning up human and animal remains adjacent to one site while on the job, due to the foul smell emitted by those remains.
"I struggle to talk about it," he said. "I even feel a bit clammy, and I can feel my chest beating harder. I just shut down really."
GHF says the allegations that their contractors have shot aid-seekers and mishandled their remains are "categorically false" and "utterly baseless." They criticized CBS News' refusal to provide them with more detailed information about Mike.
Mike said some of the Americans hired to secure the GHF sites made him feel uncomfortable.
"They would often boast about how many people they've killed, if they've managed to shoot animals," he said. "Or how many birds they'd shot because they were bragging about how good their aim was."
Mike is home now and won't be going back.
When asked why he's sharing his experience, he said, "It just wouldn't sit right with me if I didn't say something. These atrocities don't have to happen."
GHF told CBS News that their contractors do not fire on civilians, nor, they say, has anyone been killed by gunfire at a GHF site, not even within sight of a foundation site. And they say they have "never encountered any situation involving unclaimed bodies" at or near their sites.
The IDF has categorically denied allegations that it deliberately fires at Palestinian civilians, but told CBS News it is investigating recent reports of harm being done to civilians approaching GHF sites, and said any deviation from the law will result in further action.
August 25, 2025
Dave DeCamp
A new University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll (UMD CIP) has found that Americans are more sympathetic to Palestinians than Israelis, a historic shift in US public opinion that comes as the US government continues to support Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip.
The poll found that 28% of respondents sympathized more with the Palestinians and 22% said they sympathized more with the Israelis, while 26% said they sympathized with both sides equally, 12% said “neither,” and 13% said they didn’t know.
Sympathy for Palestinians is stronger among Americans ages 18-34, with 37% of them saying they sympathize more with the Palestinians and just 11% sympathizing more with the Israelis.
The results are divided by political party, with Republicans much more sympathetic toward Israelis (46%) than Palestinians (7%). Sympathy for Palestinians is stronger among younger Republicans, with 12% saying they’re more sympathetic toward Palestinians and 24% choosing the Israelis.
UMD CIP said that the results follow trends from other polling organizations, but its poll was the first to find more US sympathy for Palestinians than Israelis. The poll was conducted between July 29 and August 7, 2025, a time when more US media outlets began reporting on the Israeli-imposed starvation in Gaza.
The poll found that 40% of Americans believe President Trump’s policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian issue is “too pro-Israel,” while only 3% said he was “too pro-Palestinian,” and 27% say it’s “about right.”
UMD CIP also found that 41% of Americans, including 67% of Democrats and 14% of Republicans, believe that Israel’s actions in Gaza either constitute genocide (22%) or are “akin to genocide” (19%). Just 22% of respondents said that Israel’s actions were justified under the country’s “right to self-defense.”
The majority of respondents acknowledged the US government’s responsibility for Israel’s military operations, with 61% agreeing that US military, economic, and diplomatic support for Israel enables Israeli actions in Gaza (34% strongly and 27% somewhat).
August 24, 2025
Brett Wilkins
Palestinian teenagers kidnapped and imprisoned by Israeli occupation forces during the genocidal war on Gaza accused their jailers of torturing and sexually assaulting them in a report published Saturday by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
“They took me from the aid distribution site and transferred me to a hospital in Rafah, where I was interrogated for an hour,” one 16-year-old boy identified by his first name Sami, who was abducted on June 29, told ABC. “They stripped me and conducted a body search. Then, they loaded me into a jeep and transported me to a prison in Israel.”
“During the interrogations, they tortured us – handcuffing us, beating us with sticks, and using electric shocks,” the teen continued. “They did countless things to break us.”
“I was tortured for a week until I lost all sense of time and awareness,” Sami said. “They put me in a one-square-meter cell, where I spent the entire week. I never saw daylight, never stepped outside. They only came to deliver food.”
“They asked if I knew anyone from Hamas, and whether I had crossed over on October 7,” Sami recounted. “They kept pressing me about who I knew and who I had seen. I told them I was just walking down the street – I didn’t know anything.”
“They would beat me. Each person that talked to me would beat me,” the teen alleged. “I was handcuffed, blindfolded, and they put electricity in my legs.”
Mahmoud, age 17, said that his Israeli abductors “began hurling insults, cursing at us, and accusing us of being with Hamas.”
“They stripped us of our clothes and took us to Kerem Shalom, completely naked, with nothing,” he continued. “There, the beatings and torture began.”
“The Israeli women soldiers beat us. They stripped us and ‘played’ here, and here, and there,” Mahmoud said, indicating his genitals. “They beat us with sticks. Got on us while we were lying on the ground. We were handcuffed like that and naked.”
Mahmoud said his captors wanted to humiliate him and other teenage boys in custody, accusing the troops of taking nude photos of them and sending female soldiers to mock and touch his body – an especially shameful ordeal for Muslims.
“When I was released from prison, I had a breakdown,” Mahmoud said. “I felt mentally exhausted and deeply disgusted. What I witnessed – no one should ever have to see.”
“I was tortured, we are children,” he added. “What have we done?”
ABC published photographs showing signs of torture on the teens’ bodies, including from shackling.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) categorically rejected the teens’ accusations, saying that “this includes allegations of electric shocks during interrogations, strip-searching detainees for humiliation purposes, or sexual assaults.”
However, there have been numerous documented cases of such abuse, most notably at the notorious Sde Teiman torture prison. Israeli physicians who served at Sde Teiman have described widespread severe injuries caused by 24-hour shackling of hands and feet that sometimes required amputations.
Palestinians taken by Israeli forces have described being raped and sexually assaulted by male and female soldiers, electrocuted, mauled by dogs, soaked with cold water, denied food and water, deprived of sleep, and blasted with loud music. Dozens of detainees have died in Israeli custody, including one who died after allegedly being sodomized with an electric baton.
Last year, nine IDF reservists were arrested for allegedly gang-raping a Sde Teiman prisoner, who suffered severe internal injuries in the attack, which was caught on video. Far-right Israelis including government officials subsequently stormed the facility in a bid to free the reservists, and Israeli leaders including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich demanded a probe of the video – not to seek justice for the victim, but rather to find and punish whoever leaked it.
Survivors of Israeli abuse have also accused their jailers of bringing Israeli civilians into detention centers and allowing them to watch and record prisoners being tortured.
Gazan doctor Khaled al-Sir told ABC that Sami and Mahmoud’s accounts mirrored his own abuse at the hands of Israeli soldiers who imprisoned him for six months last year.
“I witnessed many prisoners who were sexually assaulted using batons in their buttholes and also using the pepper spray over their private parts,” al-Sir alleged, adding that there was an area of Sde Teiman that guards called the “hell section,” where abuse was particularly severe.
A pair of recent United Nations reports detailed sexual violence, including reproductive and gender-based crimes, perpetrated by Israeli soldiers against Palestinians. The UN has also reported rape and other sexual violence committed by Hamas militants against Israelis during the October 7, 2023 attack and against hostages kidnapped that day.
In January, Israel blocked a request from UN sex crimes experts to probe alleged sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas fighters during the October 7, 2023 attack, reportedly to avoid scrutiny of rapes and other abuses allegedly committed by Israeli forces against imprisoned Palestinians.
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