The Darrell McClain show
Independent media that won't reinforce tribalism. We have one Planet; nobody's leaving so let’s reason together!! Darrell McClain is a Military veteran with an abnormal interest in politics, economics, religion, philosophy, science, and literature. He's the author of Faith and the Ballot: A Christian's Guide to Voting, Unity, and Witness in Divided Times. He was born and raised in Jacksonville FL, and went to Edward H white High School,l where he wrestled under Coach Jermy Smith and The Late Brian Gilbert. He was a team wrestling captain, District champion, and an NHSCA All-American in freestyle Wrestling. He received a wrestling scholarship from Waldorf University in Forest City, Iowa. After a short period, he decided he no longer wanted to cut weight, effectively ending his college wrestling journey. Darrell McClain is an Ordained Pastor under the Universal Life Church and is still in good standing. He's a Believer in The Doctrines of Grace, Also Known as Calvinism. He joined the United States Navy in 2008 and was A Master at Arms (military police officer) He was awarded several awards while on active duty, including an expeditionary combat medal, a Global War on Terror medal, a National Defense Medal, a Korean Defense Medal, and multiple Navy achievement medals. While In the Navy, he was also the assistant wrestling coach at Robert E Lee High School. He's a Black Belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under 6th-degree black belt Gustavo Machado, Darrell Trains At Gustavo Machado Norfolk under the 4th-degree black belt, and Former Marine Professor Mark Sausser. He went to school for psychology at American Military University and for criminal justice at ECPI University.
The Darrell McClain show
The Fire of Division: Violence Against Public Servants
Welcome to the.
Speaker 2:Darrell McLean show independent media that won't reinforce tribalism. We have one planet. Nobody is leaving, so let us reason to gather. So I'm gonna talk about something that happened in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Today has something to start off this conversation and today. So I'm going to start off this conversation and let's get to the straight news portion of it before I try to explain it in a fuller context.
Speaker 2:So what actually happened was a Danville city councilman, lee Volger, age 38, was violently attacked at his workplace showcase magazine office. He was reportedly doused with gasoline from a five gallon bucket and set on fire around 11 30 am in a shared office building in downtown danville. The suspect was the assailant uh shot to see michael buck hayes, 29, a known acquaintance of vulgar, and he is in custody facing charges of attempted first degree murder and aggravated malicious wounding. He remains held without bond in Danville City Jail. The investigators' findings indicate the motive behind the attack was personal in nature and not politically motivated or tied to vulgar. Public service Authorities confirmed the two men knew each other and the assault was unrelated to his role on city council and the assault was unrelated to his role on City Council. Witnesses' accounts and statements from the Showcase magazine owner, andrew Books, described how Hayes forced his way into the locked office, poured gasoline over Volga, who fled through the office and out the front where Hayes ignited him. Two employees were present at the time and helped summon emergency services. Vogler's condition is. He sustained serious burn injuries but was conscious and able to identify his attacker while being treated and airlifted to a burn unit in North Carolina, initially Lynchburg, then to the UNC burn clinic. Local officials, including Danville Mayor Alonzo Jones, vice Mayor James Bunker and Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, have publicly condemned the attack and called for prayers for Volger and solidarity across the community, for Volger and solidarity across the community.
Speaker 2:Volger was first elected to Danville City Council May of 2012 at the age of 24, becoming the youngest council member in the city history. He is currently serving his fourth term, which began in January 2025 and runs through December of 2029. And runs through December of 2029. He's also a managing partner of Andrew Book's media group and actively involved in community life. The attack adds to a troubling wave of violence targeting public officials in recent months. Though the case investigators emphasize no political motivations, focus recovery remains the focus and the community support continues to grow. So this is kind of how I'm going to address it here. When we say public service and for some people that just means a city council meeting once a month, some zoning disputes, ribbon cuttings and occasional parade but for others, those who really serve, it's a commitment deeper than a title. And today we have to talk about what happens when that community is met not with respect or disagreement, but with violence.
Speaker 2:This is not just a story about Lee Volger, a city councilman from Danville, virginia. It's not about a man set on fire with a five gallon basket of gasoline at his workplace in broad daylight. What we are witnessing, what we're being forced to reckon with, is the disintegration of the basic social fabric that holds this republic together, a society where disagreements are handled not with words, not even with protests, but with fire. Let me say this very plainly A man was set on fire while doing his job, and that haunts Councilman. Lee Volker wasn't caught in some war zone, he wasn't out in Gaza, he wasn't in Ukraine or Yemen. He was in an office at a local magazine, doing the kind of work that builds communities, the kind of work that rarely is glamorous but is always necessary. And into that space, into that routine, civic, small town normalcy, walks a man known to Volga personally, carrying the kind of hatred you don't just pick up overnight. To Volger personally, carrying the kind of hatred you don't just pick up overnight. He had gasoline, he had fire, he had intent and he used it. The fire was not a metaphor, it was not symbolic rage or performance art or protest. It was real. It melted skin, it threatened life, it left trauma in its wake, not just for Lee Volger's body, but for the souls of every person who watched the news and realized we are not safe even in spaces where we serve.
Speaker 2:We've entered a very dangerous era in this country, where violence has become the native tongue of grievance, whether it's school boards or city councils, grocery stores or churches. Some folks have decided that if they are angry enough, they don't have to argue. They have to burn something down. And that's not new. We've seen it before in Tulsa, in the civil rights movement, in the assassinations of public servants who dared to dream differently. But what makes this moment chilling is how normalized the madness has become A man lit another man on fire and in less than 24 hours it will be buried in the news cycle under the weight of political indictments and celebrity deaths.
Speaker 2:This isn't just about right or left. It's about rage replacing reason. It's about a slow drip of dehumanization and how it has allowed us to look at someone we disagree with and stop seeing them as human altogether. And that is not just the internet doing it, it's pulpits, it's pundits, it's podcasts Everywhere you turn somebody's telling you that the person who disagrees with you isn't just wrong, they're wicked. They aren't just mistaken, they're monsters. And monsters, you see, don't deserve mercy. Monsters deserve death. Monsters deserve mercy. Moxers deserve death. Moxers deserve flames. When you run for city council in a place like Danville, virginia, you don't do it for glory, you don't do it for money. You do it because you care, because something in your gut tells you that potholes matter, that school board policy matters, that how the trash gets picked up and how parks get funded and how budgets are balanced matters.
Speaker 2:Lee Volger was elected at 24 years old. He was young, idealistic, a little scrappy, and he stuck with it. Over a decade of service already. He helped revitalize his town. He poured energy into his community and for that for showing up he got doused in gasoline and lit like a warning sign. Now let me ask you something. Who in their right mind is going to want to serve after seeing that? What pastor is going to want to run for a school board? What teacher is going to want to volunteer for town council? What single parent is going to want to take time off of their work schedule to advocate for a better library when they know stepping into public life might get them burned Literally? We are decentivizing decency, we are scaring away the servants and when the good people sit it out, the only people who are going to step in are the cowards, the grifters and the extremists.
Speaker 2:Now some folks will say this wasn't political, it was personal, and on paper, sure it was. The man was arrested, apparently had a personal connection to Volger. Maybe there was some unresolved beef, some grievance boiling under the surface. But I ask you, what kind of culture do we live in where personal anger turns so easily into public violence? It's all connected. We are training people, through years of rage politics and performative masculinity and zero-sum tribalism, to handle pain with destruction, to meet disappointment with blood, to process humiliation through fire. We are not raising citizens anymore, we are raising avengers.
Speaker 2:The mayor spoke out, the governor gave thoughts and prayers, local pastors offered vigils, and all that is good and all that is necessary. But let's be real, it is not enough. This isn't the kind of wound you patch up with a press conference. This is a sickness in the American soul when a man is set on fire. Your community doesn't just need healings, it needs repentance. Not just individual spiritual repentance, but civic repentance, the kind that makes us ask what have we become? How did we let ourselves get so numb that a headline like a city council person set ablaze doesn't make us all fall to our knees?
Speaker 2:Now to the people who are the regular church goers. I have to speak plainly. Where are we, where are you? Where is the outcry? Not just for Lee Volger, but for every teacher, for every journalist, for every doctor, for every city clerk or electrician worker who has been harassed, stalked, doxxed or assaulted simply for showing up and doing their job? We have preachers warning about the spirit of Jezebel. We have people talking about wokeness in Disney, but you won't hear very many sermons on the spirit of violence in the land. How do we continue to claim to follow Jesus and stay silent while your neighborhood burns? And I don't say that with condemnation, I say it with a broken spirit, because I am compelled not just to pray, I am compelled also to try to protect, to be a peacemaker, not just a peace lover.
Speaker 2:So let me bring it back to Lee Volkter. He's more than a victim. He's a father, he's a friend, he's a servant, and now he's a survivor. He's laying in a hospital bed scarred by a flame, carrying the memory of a man he once knew who walked into his office to try to end his life. That's not something you bounce back from with ointment. That's something that tries to change your soul. And yet, by all accounts, lee Volger is holding on. He identified his attacker, he's receiving care and when asked how he was doing, he reportedly said I'm alive.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, survival is the first act of resistance. So here we are Another act of resistance. So here we are. Another act of violence, another headline we wish we hadn't read. Another chance for us to either look away or to look inward. And I beg you, don't turn the page, don't scroll past. Let the horror sit with you, let the fire be more than a flicker on our feeds, let it burn through our apathy, because this story about Lee Vogler today, but tomorrow it could be your pastor, your teacher, your coach, your city councilman, your own child, who just happens to be standing up for something and getting punished for it, not with an argument, but with ash. We must decide Will we be the people who settle disputes with votes or with violence? Will we be a country that debates or one that burns? The time for silence is over. The fire is not a metaphor anymore. It's real, it's here, and what we have got to choose is who we will be before this fire consumes us all great and perhaps a big part of your evolution in thinking.
Speaker 3:Have you discussed the crisis in Gaza and the terrifying I have? She thinks it's terrible and she sees the same pictures that you see and that we all see I think everybody unless they're pretty cold-hearted or worse than that nuts. There's nothing you can say other than it's terrible. When you see the kids and those are kids you know whether they talk starvation or not. Those are kids that are starving. I mean they are starving. And you see the mothers. They love them so much. There's just nothing they seem to be able to do. They got to get them food.
Speaker 2:It was a stunning moment to hear the president of the United States, donald Trump, actually say what even Democrats like John Fenneman are saying is not happening. Donald Trump said that there is starvation happening in Gaza, and the president is right on that issue.
Speaker 4:I feel like I'm watching something that is so self-evidently inhumane and horrific and to be told that I have to shut up because I risk the Jewish state by speaking out. I would say the opposite. I think they're putting the likelihood of a surviving Jewish state much more at risk with this type of action. I think they're the ones that are being anti-Semitism. If you want to define Netanyahu, the definition of anti-Semitism would probably have to bomb himself. How the definition of anti-Semitism would probably have to bomb himself. But there's an urgency about it now because, like right now, in the situation we can't be like, but Jews are not getting along with other Jews, like that's not the important thing right now. How is the world not stepping in and stopping this atrocity? I don't understand this in any way shape or form.
Speaker 3:It's boggling my mind. It's worse than just not stepping in. It's our weapons that are enforcing this siege, that is enforcing this mass starvation. It's a siege. It's a military siege, yes, that we are deeply complicit in. It could not happen without us.
Speaker 2:That last person you heard was Jon Stewart and Peter Barnard, who wrote a book on the atrocities going on, and it actually the book is titled um, being Jewish after the destruction of Gaza, and so, and so the conversation about this is starting to change. Even Marjorie Taylor Greene has been courageous and correct on this issue when it comes to Gaza, and it's making, I guess, different political bedfellows, and that's making, I guess, different political bedfellows, and that's what's needed A coalition that crosses party lines, so much now that even you're hearing the language from Obama world. So that's the pot save America, guys. Uh, john Fabro, and, and that crew, you know Obama's old speech writers, uh, um, and some, some other of his staffers are starting to say the same thing. And if the pod saved the world guys are starting to say it, then that means that the establishment of the Democratic Party is about to change their tone on this issue.
Speaker 5:And I don't think Democratic candidates should take money from AIPAC or vote to fund military support for Israel anymore, Like I really don't. This government absolutely not, and that especially includes, I think, the next Democratic nominee for president. Things I want to see.
Speaker 6:Democrats at least calling for is cutting off military assistance to Israel. It's a rich country, by the way. They don't need our $3 billion a year and hands up right. Barack Obama signed a 10-year MOU for $3.3 billion a year, like so we're part of the problem here. Let let's correct it. I would like to see talk about sanctioning israeli government officials who use genocidal rhetoric or talk about ethnic cleansing openly. We should support a ceasefire resolution at the un. We should demand that international press be allowed into the gaza strip to report on what's happening without an ibf minder. It's insane.
Speaker 6:The press still can't go into gaza and cover what's happening I also think like there has to be a total mindset change in the democratic party when the war ends. We are not going back to the pre-October 7th status quo. It's not where the party is. It's not where the world is. We're not going to shovel billions a year in military aid. We're not going to veto every effort to recognize the Palestinian state at the UN. We should not take money from AIPAC and, like I, will hold out hope for better political leadership in the US and in Israel. But we also have to recognize that the Biden era hug Bibi Netanyahu strategy has to be thrown in the trash can for fucking ever. Netanyahu is a bad actor. He's continuing a war for political purposes. He bombs Lebanon when he wants to. He bombs Iran when he wants to. He bombs Syria when he wants to. This is not a partner we can count on. This is not someone who is like leading to calm and stability in the region, which should be a core interest.
Speaker 5:Like at this point. Cutting off military funding for a government that is starving two million people and advertising how they're ethnically cleansing the Palestinians seems like the least we can do, Especially if we're going to head into a primary like, table stakes is going to be no more military aid for Israel.
Speaker 7:So there will just will have to be a shift, and I do think that will mean putting far more pressure on Israel, and that's what I think Democrats want. By the way, that's what the country wants, and when you pull Israelis, they say they want a fucking ceasefire. Israelis want the hostages returned through a negotiated settlement and, by the way, that's the way in which the vast majority of hostages who were returned were able to be returned.
Speaker 2:So there we have it. What we are witnessing in Gaza is not merely a tragedy. It's, more precisely, a deliberately engineered catastrophe, what some have actually called a famine by design. So we have to be clear on this Starvation is not an unintended consequence of war. It is the byproduct of a tragic misunderstanding. It is policy implemented and sustained by powerful actors with full knowledge of the human cost the people of Gaza, which, over two million of them, are trapped and what has been long described by international observers as the world's largest open-air prison. But even that term now falls short, because, you see, in prison there's at very least a baseline assumption that you're going to get food and that you're going to get water and that you're going to get basic care. Gaza, on the other hand, has been systematically deprived of even that. And we're no longer talking about just a blockade, we are talking about siege warfare with a very specific intent of collective punishment. So let's recall the history for a moment. The Geneva Convention had hard-won principles carved out after the destruction and the devastation that came after World War II. Explicitly, it forbade the use of starvation as a weapon against civilian populations. It is actually considered a war crime.
Speaker 2:Yet when we examine the Israeli military and the political discourse surrounding Gaza, the language is often disturbingly frank. Former Israeli officials have spoken of putting the population on a diet and creating conditions of pressure into the people. Quote turn against hamas. This is not ambiguous. This is starvation deployed as a strategic lever. Now, of course, there will be those who insist that hamas is to blame for the suffering of the palestinian people, and it is important to scrutinize all actors. But the asymmetry here is overwhelming. We are not talking about equivalent powers locked in a conflict. We're talking about one of the world's most advanced militaries, targeted A targeting a besieged and stateless population. Half of those people in that population whom are children? So I'm going to repeat that again Half of the population of Gaza are children. Children who have no say in politics of the region, no voice in the international media and no protection from the economic, physical or psychological warfare being waged around them.
Speaker 2:And what the international community is doing? What about the United States? What about the European Union? What about the so-called rules-based order? Well, what we see is what we have seen for decades Rhetorical concern followed by material complicity. Billions of military aid flow freely, diplomatic cover is given reflexively and media narratives are carefully framed to suggest complexity where there is in fact profound, profound moral clarity.
Speaker 2:This is actually not a hard case. Starving people is wrong. Withholding food and medicine is wrong. Trafficking population, then cutting off their means to survival, is wrong. What is difficult is confronting the reality that those policies are being carried out with our tax dollars, our political alliances, our silence, and I already talked about this on the show yesterday.
Speaker 2:What about the church? What about the institution that claims to speak on behalf of moral truth? Well, I would suggest that their silence is not neutral, it's structural. The American church, particularly its evangelical wing, has for decades sacralized the state of Israel, not in theological nuance, but in nationalist abstraction. Gaza doesn't fit into the eschatology, so it is ignored conveniently and comfortably. But silence in the case, especially in this case, is not the absence of noise, it is the presence of consent. So what are we left with? We're left with a choice. What are we left with? We're left with a choice Either we continue to remove ourselves with geopolitical justifications, or we recognize the plain horror of what is happening and name it for what it is a siege, a starvation campaign, a war crime. History will not be kind to people who looked away, but, more importantly, neither will the children of Gaza. If they survive this and many will not they will remember that the world watched them go hungry and said nothing. So perhaps it's time to say something Anything.
Speaker 8:Ever since the start of the destruction of Gaza by the Israeli government following the October 7th attack, there have been all kinds of concerns that one of the things the Israeli government would do is impose mass starvation and famine on the population of 2.2 million people of Gaza. At least, that was the population when all this began, half of whom half of that population 1.1 million are children, are under the age of 18. And this has been something we've seen evidence of and in part, people were concerned about it because the Israeli government immediately announced that that was their intention. And we've now gotten to the point after a full scale Israeli blockade and by blockade I don't mean that Israel is failing to feed the people of Gaza. I mean that the people and groups and organizations that are trying to bring food into Gaza are physically impeded from doing so by the IDF. As a result of official Israeli policy, there was a complete and full blockade for three months. At the same time, they've imposed policies such as destroying any fields or plants where food could grow. They are now killing or at the least arresting anybody who tries to just go a little bit out Remember, gaza has a beach and a sea to try and fish for food that is prohibited. It clearly is a policy designed to starve the population to death, which is why even israeli experts in genocide, who long resisted applying the word genocide to what israel is doing in gaza, have now relented and said it's the only word that applies, and the number of groups and governments and people who previously supported what israel was doing or at least refused to acknowledge the full extent of the atrocities, have now, in their view, no choice to do so.
Speaker 8:The evidence is starting to become so overwhelming that only the hardest core Israel loyalists are allowed to try and deny it or blame somebody else for it. Here from ABC News today, more than 108 groups warned of quote mass starvation in Gaza amid Israel's war with Hamas. Their statement warned of quote record rates of acute malnutrition. And it's eight groups and World Health Organization and groups from all over the planet that have immense credibility in having worked with conflicts many times before. A leading Israeli newspaper, which has been more critical of the Netanyahu government than most but which, at the same time, was supportive for months of what Israel was doing in Gaza following October 7th, which is the Israeli Daily Heretz, had in its lead editorial yesterday the editorial under this headline Israel is starving Gaza. And the language they used was so clear, straightforward, direct that it's unimaginable to think of any Western media outlet, large, corporate Western media outlet, saying anything similar Quote the famine that has been created in Gaza is another facet of Israel's cruel inhumanity toward the people of Gaza. It constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity and is a clear violation of the orders issued a year and a half ago by the International Court of Justice in the Hague.
Speaker 8:The famine does not contribute anything to the war effort against Hamas. Its gunmen will be the last to suffer hunger in Gaza. War effort against Hamas. Its gunmen will be the last to suffer hunger in Gaza. Before that, it will be children, women and Israeli hostages still captive there who starve.
Speaker 8:Last week we interviewed a leading scholar of famine Actually, I believe that was this Monday who has studied famines around the world for his entire life, and not only did he describe how what's taking place in gaza is unprecedented, at least since world war ii, because of how minutely planned it is and because they're unlike famine, say, in ethiopia or sudan or yemen. There are all sorts of organizations with immense expertise and resources who, just a couple of miles away from where children are starving to death, have huge amounts of food and other aid that they want to bring to the people of Gaza, yet are blocked from doing so by the IDF. And although I suppose it's encouraging, or at least better than the alternative, that even Western governments and the longstanding Israel supporters who are American politicians are now issuing statements about how disturbed they are by the mass famine in Gaza, how Israel needs to immediately cease this inhumane activity, none of this is surprising. None of it is new. Israel made very clear from the very beginning what exactly their intentions were, and people just decided that they were too scared to stand up and object at the time. Here's a reminder this is september. I think this is october second, october 10th, not september. Right, it's october 10th. I live on date on the screen I 2023.
Speaker 8:Quote no electricity, food, water or gas. Israel orders quote a complete Gaza siege. Oftentimes you hear that it's only far right extremist ministers in Netanyahu's government who say things like this, like Ben-Gavir or Strombich or people like that. But in reality, the Israeli defense minister was one of the moderate people, comparatively, at the start of the war, to the point where net now who ended up ousting him, and he was the one who announced the following quote israel, israel's defense minister, yoav galant, has ordered a complete siege on the gaza strip, saying israeli authorities would cut electricity and block the entry of food, water and fuel In April of this year. Just three months ago, another Israeli minister, smatrich, said at a conference quote not even a grain of wheat will enter Gaza, proudly boasting of the actions that the Israeli military, the Israeli government, intended to take, and then took in his words to ensure that not even a grain of wheat entered a place where 2.2 million people, or 2 million people, or 1.9 million people are clinging to survival in between, dodging shelling from tanks and bombs and having everything from schools and UN refugees and even their own tents from being blown up. From CNN, may 1st 2025, gaza edges closer to famine as Israel's total blockade near its third month.
Speaker 8:So, just as a reminder, it was in February, after Trump was inaugurated, that Israel explicitly announced to the world that it was blockading all food from entering Gaza. They didn't hide it, it wasn't in dispute, it wasn't in doubt. It was an official Israeli policy to starve the entire population, which is collective punishment, as a way of forcing Hamas to negotiate or to surrender that the Nazis, who did things similarly like starve entire cities, starve entire ghettos of Jews, were treated as war criminals and held responsible and actually executed. So none of this is new for all the people who are now just seeing the babies who are emaciated in skin and bones and dying of malnutrition, and increasingly older children and adults as well, to suddenly come out and say oh my God, I can't believe this. What have we been supporting? This has to stop. This is all months in the making and, as hunger experts and famine groups will tell you, once it gets to this stage where people are actually dying now of famine in large numbers, it becomes irreversible. Irreversible physically because, even if you get the food in, their bodies aren't equipped to process it. They need much more extensive medical care than that and, of course, in children it impedes brain growth for life and physical vitality for life, to say nothing of the mass death from starvation which we're now starting to see.
Speaker 8:Here is from the NPR on May 13th. Quote since early March, shortly before the breakdown of a tenuous ceasefire, israel has been imposing a blockade of Gaza, denying the entry of all goods, including food, medical supplies and critical supplies. Quote. Now the entire population is facing high levels of acute food insecurity, with one in five people facing starvation, according to the most recent report from the Integrated Food Security Phase classification. That's why all these sudden attempts to distance oneself that we're seeing from Western governments and Western politicians is utterly nauseating. They're the ones who enabled it, they're the ones who have been paying for it, they're the ones who have been arming it, they're the ones who have been cheering for it, despite Israeli vows to starve to death the people of Gaza.
Speaker 8:We've been hearing for a year and a half about stories of doctors in Gaza having to perform major surgeries, amputations on children, without so much as any painkillers, let alone anesthesia. Horror stories of the worst kind imaginable, of evidence so conclusive and so indisputable from so many different sources, that it's essentially become impossible for denialists of these atrocities to maintain their denialism any longer. There's been a long trend, basically Israel and it has trained its loyalists throughout the West Anytime there's a study, anytime there's a pronouncement, anytime there's a finding or a criticism, to immediately say, oh, you can't listen to them. They're anti-Semitic, they hate Israel, they lie to attack Israel, they're even guilty of blood libel. So if you present a UN report, that's instantaneous. If you hear from journalists in Gaza, even showing video. They're all liars. They're all anti-Semitic haters of Israel, the Israeli daily heretics oh, throw everything they say out.
Speaker 8:But now we're starting to see all sorts of Western doctors, and these doctors are people who belong to groups like Doctors Without Borders, which I've always described as one of the noblest things you can do. You go to school for years, you have medical training, you become a surgeon, you become a specialist in your field, treating all kinds of major injuries, and instead of staying in London or Beverly Hills or Miami or Paris and making massive amounts of money treating wealthy people, you volunteer to go around the world to war zones that are very dangerous, where countries don't have the sufficient medical expertise to treat people who are being harmed or killed by the byproducts of war, in order to save as many lives as you possibly can. These people don't just go to places where there are Israeli bombs falling. They've been all over the world in multiple war zones, and the bravest of them have been going to Gaza. We've been hearing from them American nurses, american doctors, western doctors and medical workers and what they're now coming back and saying are some of the most horrifying things you will ever hear.
Speaker 8:And how is it possible for Israel loyalists to just constantly dismiss all of these people as anti-Semitic liars or fabulous or guilty of theater? These are people describing what they've seen with their own eyes and, unlike in the United States, where there's still mostly a blackout of this kind of reporting, in the UK it's starting to really seep through into mainstream television outlets. Despite the long history of the UK's steadfast support for Israel, including right up until this day where the Starmer government the government of Sarkir Starmer, the Labour government flies reconnaissance missions over gaza, provides weapons to israel. Here is, uh, nick maynard. He's a british physician who was on the mainstream program good morning britain it's just like good morning america in the united states and he got back from gaza.
Speaker 9:He's a surgeon and here's what he described in his own words now, of course, you know the idf will claim that their intention is not mass starvation. However and I want to warn people here, because what we're about to talk about now, which I've already talked about already, is just astonishing, and I don't think this is it doesn't matter which side you're on, even if, indeed, you are on a side this particular account of what you've seen about the pattern of injuries, your claims of what you think the idf soldiers are doing to cause these injuries, is alarming. Would you mind explaining?
Speaker 1:that to us. Yes, I mean I. One of the big differences between this most recent trip these last four weeks I've been in gaza was the large number of gunshot wounds. I've seen in previous trips as predominantly explosive injuries from bombs, but I saw on this occasion multiple gunshot wounds, almost exclusively on young teenage males, some of them as young as 11, 12, 13, 14, all of whom had been shot at the food distribution points so-called Ghazi Humanitarian Foundation food distribution points and the pattern of injuries, the stories I was getting from their families, from the patients and indeed from GARS and healthcare workers who went to these food points to get food for themselves.
Speaker 1:One of the nieces used to go between operations to get food, but I saw terrible injuries to the abdomen and the chest. But there was a very clear pattern of injuries, a cluster of injuries to specific body parts on particular days. So one day, for example, we'd see patients coming in with gunshot wounds just to the head and neck. On another day they'd be coming in with gunshot wounds to the chest or the abdomen. The next day, the legs. On one day, about 12 days ago, we saw four young teenage boys 13, 13, 14, all of whom had been shot specifically in the testicles. So the very clear clustering of these injuries appeared to us like a target practice. A game was being played.
Speaker 10:We should point out, yeah, that Israel have said, you know they don't intentionally shoot civilians.
Speaker 8:Troops near the aid sites have been firing warning shots and they say they work to minimize friction between the population and forces as much as possible he just gets done saying exactly what he's been seeing that every day they kind of for fun, almost idf soldiers pick which part of the body they're going to snipe young children, teenagers, young teenagers, with oh today, their heads. They'll, their chest, how about their kneecaps? How? How about their testicles? And they come in with clutches with all the same injury. We've been hearing stories of IDF soldiers purposely targeting young boys who come in with bullets in their brains. We've been hearing about this for quite a long time now he's in Gaza. He's seen exactly what he's describing. Quite a long time now he's in Gaza. He's seen exactly what he's describing. Here he is again talking about something, in one way, not quite as brutal, but in another way, almost more horrific in terms of the intentionality that it shows in terms of what the Israeli government and the IDF are actually up to in terms of their objectives in Gaza.
Speaker 10:You were saying to us that your colleagues that have tried to help who've tried to take baby formula in, for example have been prevented from doing so.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely. I mean I spent quite a bit of time on the pediatric intensive care unit because I have patients there appalling malnutrition and a lot of doctors I know who have taken in formula feed because they knew there was such a shortage.
Speaker 9:None has been allowed in by the Israelis since the last week you go through a checkpoint, you get searched as a doctor and if you've got any baby formula in your pockets or in your bag, they want to confiscate it from you, very specifically confiscating that Nothing else.
Speaker 1:They confiscated every single, specifically confiscating that nothing else. Um, they confiscated every single carton of formula feed that these doctors would take, can you?
Speaker 9:think of any other, any reason other than they just don't want you to give it to the baby.
Speaker 1:We, we we're very cautious in what we're, what we take in, because we know much will be confiscated and certainly they always say anything that could be remotely used as a weapon, such as surgical, surgical instruments, we can't take in. But I cannot think of any reason why they would confiscate a formula feed.
Speaker 8:If you are deliberately preventing the entrance into Gaza of baby formula, knowing that there is severe malnutrition among the women giving birth to these babies, and not when Hamas operatives are trying to bring them in, but from Western doctors who work with organizations known around the world for treating people with injuries in war zones. If that isn't evidence of genocidal intent, someone needs to tell me what is.