Any argument that Israel had a right to defend itself after the outrage of the October Hamas massacre has been rendered invalid by the scale of reprisals that have left more than 32,000 dead and displaced 85% of the population.

Many of those displaced by ground assaults in Gaza City and Khan Yunis have fled to the southern city of Rafah where some 1.5m people are living without access to food, clean water, or any kind of health care.

The cities and neighbourhoods of Gaza have been reduced to rubble in scenes reminiscent of the kind of destruction witnessed during the darkest days of the Second World War.

Fear of the catastrophic disaster that would unfold with an Israeli ground assault of Rafah has finally squeezed a ceasefire resolution from the UN Security Council.

The US abstained in a move that has enraged its long-time ally, Israel, although a White House spokesperson said the vote did not represent a shift in policy, rather a break between the Biden administration and Netanyahu’s government. 

There was a time when disapproval from a US president was enough to stall Israeli action, but that has failed abjectly here. 

Whether that is due to Joe Biden’s ineffectiveness or Netanyahu’s intransigence is a moot point, but the elephant in the room is that the US has continued to sell arms to Israel during this war. That makes the US complicit in what is happening in Gaza, as many humanitarian workers and human rights experts have pointed out.

This might not be the time to thrash out the complicated background to the conflict but it is something that needs to be addressed in the long, or medium term.

Right now, the focus must be on stopping the violence to allow aid reach a people who are dying of starvation.

It is unconscionable that aid trucks are being restricted on the wrong side of the border when children are suffering from acute malnutrition. 

It is time to stop the violence and flood the region with desperately needed aid. But we can’t lose sight of the fact that the US (and the West) are delivering aid with one hand and weapons with the other.

Boeing should focus on safety, not profit

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has welcomed the news that Boeing CEO David Calhoun is to step down. Reform at the global plane maker is “much needed”, he said.

That is agreed, but not for the reasons O’Leary, one of Boeing’s biggest customers, has outlined.

His main concern is the delay in the delivery of planes and the effect that will have on summer air-travel schedules. It is entirely the wrong focus, even if it’s one that has captured headlines in recent coverage.

The real issue is the appalling negligence at Boeing which led to the deaths of 346 people when two defective 737 Max planes crashed in 2018 and 2019. Since then, this paper has reported on the repeated calls from families of the victims for reform at Boeing and justice for their loved ones.

One of those family members, Naoise Connolly Ryan, has being campaigning for justice for her husband, Mick Ryan, deputy chief engineer at the UN World Food Programme, since he was killed in Ethiopia in 2019.

Read More

Battle against Boeing: Naoise Ryan's fight for justice

In February 2023, US judge Reed O’Connor said Boeing’s failure to prevent that crash and the one in Indonesia five months earlier “may properly be considered the deadliest corporate crime in US history”, yet nobody in the company has ever been held responsible.

It took another accident in January — a midair blow-out on an Alaska Airlines flight — to focus world attention on safety concerns that were already glaringly obvious. This was a narrowly averted tragedy, but it was not an unpredicted event. Families of victims had been warning of the risk to the flying public for five years.

While it is positive to see change at Boeing starting at the top, it is change that comes very late in the day and only because the company has been backed into an uncomfortable corner.

The coverage now must focus on transparency and safety, not on eliminating delivery delays. This story is not about summer schedules or O’Leary soundbites; it is about keeping air travellers safe by tackling the embedded culture at Boeing that led to the deaths of 346 people.

The next CEO might start by holding the executives responsible for those deaths to account. And the next time Ryanair boss O’Leary starts talking about delays, we might ask him instead what he thinks about the ongoing delay in doing that.

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Spare a thought for beleaguered coffee producers 

The proliferation of holidays or dedicated days are often just cynical marketing ploys. Some faux celebrations, though, are harmless, even heartwarming. 

Today’s National Joe Day is perhaps both — a US-inspired initiative calling on all to share a ‘cup of Joe’, the US slang for a cup of coffee.

Any call, even if it is manufactured, to take time out to share a cuppa with a friend is welcome. Though we could also mark National Joe Day by reminding coffee-drinkers that climate change is now putting their daily hit at risk. 

As reported in this paper yesterday, coffee production in parts of Colombia has fallen by 35% because of warming temperatures which have left coffee plants more vulnerable to disease.

The plight of coffee farmers may not always arise when drinking coffee but maybe we can spare a thought for those trying to eke out a living in increasingly difficult conditions and choose Fairtrade and other brands that support them.