The class-based life expectancy gap in the US has widened to more than 8 years

Benjamin Mateus

The recent report by leading Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton (winner of the Nobel Prize in 2015), submitted last month to the fall 2023 edition of the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, makes a conscientious account of the widening mortality gap that exists between Americans with and without a four-year college degree, a proxy for their socioeconomic positions. 

Their primary findings showed that the difference in life expectancy between these two groups has grown from just 2.5 years in 1992 to a staggering 8.5 years by 2021. While those who have obtained a higher education can expect to live to 83.31 years of age, the two-thirds of Americans without a bachelor’s degree will see, on average, life end at 74.82 years of age.

The research recently presented at the Brookings Institution is the latest contribution to the ongoing collaboration between the two economists who have been attempting to address for nearly a decade why the US has faced a decline in life expectancy compared to other high-income nations. In particular, Case and Deaton place into context the decline in life expectancy being observed among less educated working-class Americans while at the same time the growth in gross domestic product (GDP) is outperforming other countries and US economic output is the highest in the world, accounting for 25 percent of global GDP.

During an interview with the Brookings Institution, Anne Case noted, “GDP may be doing great, but people are dying in increasing numbers, especially less educated people. A lot of the increasing prosperity is going to the well-educated elites. It is not going to typical working people.” With these deaths being concentrated among non-Hispanic whites, the phenomenon being observed has more to do with how marginalized working class Americans are being treated and less to do with the constant fixation on race as propagandized in the bourgeois press.

In their opinion piece published on October 3, 2023, in the New York Times, Case and Deaton wrote, “What the economic statistics obscure in the averages is that there is not one but two Americas—and a clear line demarcating the division is educational attainment. Americans with four-year college degrees are flourishing economically, while those without are struggling.”

They then added, “Worse still, as we discovered in new research, the America of those without college degrees has been scarred by death and staggeringly shorter life spans. Almost two-thirds of American adults do not have college degrees, and they have become increasingly excluded from good jobs, political power, and social esteem. As their lives and livelihood are threatened, their longevity declines.”

The findings of the 2023 report

The study makes an exhaustive analysis of mortality by reviewing the death certificates of Americans from 1992 through 2021, which include the first two years of the COVID pandemic. As they note, these documents record the age and sex, cause of death, as well as the highest education attained. Furthermore, they calculate life expectancy at age 25, when most people have completed their education and the distinction between those without and with a bachelor’s degree is more clearly demarcated. The assumption they make in their analysis is that after age 25 the likelihood to attain higher education is considerably diminished.

Adult life expectancy at age 25 for college graduates vs. non- graduates

As their Figure 1 shows, since 1992 (when data was first available), the gap in mortality between the two groups begins to widen, though both continue to make gains until approximately 2010. After the financial crisis of 2008 and the bailout of the banks, those without a college degree saw their life expectancy begin to decline while for those with a college education it continued to climb although at a slower pace. Then in 2020, with the advent of the global COVID pandemic, those without a college degree saw life expectancy plummet by 3.25 years while those with a degree saw their life expectancy drop by 1.09 years. Indeed, the age-adjusted mortality for COVID deaths was 165 versus 57 per 100,000 or almost three-fold higher between the two groups. (Data from table 1 of the Case/Deaton report.)

Figure 2. Age-standardized mortality trends in the United States versus other wealthy nations [Deaths per 10,000]. [Photo: PNAS Nexus]

As the figure above from a May report published in PNAS, titled “Missing Americans: Early death in the United States—1933-2021” depicts, during the post-war period and short-term capitalist stabilization, the gains in life expectancy in the US paralleled those in Western Europe. However, from the early ’70s, with the dollar crisis emerging and the ending of the Bretton Woods agreement pegging dollar exchange rates to gold to the mid-’70s and the ensuing financial crisis, any further concessions by the ruling elites to the working class that saw their earnings and quality of life keep pace had to come to a halt.

The intensification and deepening of the exploitation of workers since then has led to an unprecedented transfer of wealth. For families in the top 10 percent, this layer saw their combined wealth increase from $24.3 trillion to $82.4 trillion from 1989 to 2019. Those in the 51st to 90th percentiles increased their wealth from $12.7 trillion to $30.2 trillion. Meanwhile, those in the bottom half saw their wealth barely budge, rising from $1.4 trillion to $2.3 trillion, but actually declining by nearly half as a proportion of all wealth, from 3.6 percent to 2.0 percent (data from Congressional Budget Office).

By 2010, the gains made in life expectancy in the US had not only dropped below other high-income countries, but it had essentially stalled. However, when Case and Deaton overlaid their graphs for those with and without a college degree what emerged was astounding. 

Figure 3. Adult life expectancy for Americans by college degree and for 22 rich countries. Source Case and Deaton Brookings Papers on Economic Activity Conference Draft, September 28-29,2023.

By the early 1990s, the gains in life expectancy for those without a college degree began to diverge and falling below the leading nations before 2000. Indeed, by 2010 when mortality rates began to climb, this group never even reached the life expectancy levels experienced by college graduates in 1992. However, for those with a college degree, life expectancy continued to trend alongside the best performers, hence, the apt reference by Case and Deaton to the “two Americas.” 

Given that there have been, between 1980 and 2019, 11 million excess US deaths, as noted in the report on “missing Americans,” the lion’s share of this staggering loss of life then was borne by those without a college education. In fact, the entire decline in life expectancy in the last 30 years is attributable to the socioeconomic dynamics that fell on the working class.

Indeed, if one were to ask how these “two Americas” fare, those with a college education are comparable to Japan, Switzerland, South Korea, Norway and Iceland. Those without a college education could be compared to countries in Eastern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. They would lead North Korea by just under two years. 

Interestingly, Case and Deaton proceed along the counterfactual, asking what would have happened if rates of deaths of despair, such as suicide, drug overdose and alcoholism and mortality from cardiovascular diseases or cancers were held at their 1992 baselines? Even excluding COVID deaths, the mortality gap continued to climb for those without a higher education.

While deaths of despair accrued predominately for those without a college education, the benefits attained from advances made in treatment of heart disease and cancer went mostly to those with a college education regardless of gender.

Figure 4. Table of college gaps in age-adjusted mortality by age group. Source Case and Deaton Brookings Papers on Economic Activity Conference Draft, September 28-29, 2023.

 Even when the age-adjusted mortality was grouped by age brackets, the mortality gap increased over the three decades and was further exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. As the authors noted, “As a percentage of baseline mortality, younger age groups saw larger increases in education gradients over this period; for the age group 25 to 34, the increase in the gap exceeds baseline mortality [emphasis added]. Two-thirds of the increase among the youngest group was from deaths of despair.” 

Indeed, rates of suicide and homicide for youth and young adults have been climbing in the last decade. The provisional rate according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was nearly 50,000 for 2022. Meanwhile, 2023 is on track for another devastating year for drug overdoses with 111,000 people dying in the last 12 months. Overdoses jumped 30 percent between 2019 and 2020 and then another 15 percent between 2020 and 2021. 

Case and Deaton, alongside the widening mortality gap, also take stock in the social determinants of the population’s well-being such as looking at marriage rates, extreme mental distress, sciatic pain and difficulty socializing. The data indicate that those without an education are facing hardships that further undermine their well-being, making the promise of the pursuit of happiness a farcical insult created out of the mirage called the American dream.

The authors note that since 1970, those without a college degree have seen their median incomes stagnate for nearly half a century. Meanwhile, those families with a member with a college degree have seen their wealth climb 24 percent. Where wealth was held equally between the two groups in 1990, three-quarters of the wealth is now owned by college graduates. In simple terms, the mortality gap has followed the wealth gap. 

Case and Deaton call for the defense of capitalism and reform

Like many principled academic researchers, Case and Deaton’s study provides significant insight into the social ailments caused by capitalist relations. They are meticulous in their research and elucidate through careful analysis the realities faced by the underprivileged. However, having arrived at these results, like so many others, they turn back from the edge of the precipice and fail to make the necessary conclusions. 

As upholders of capitalism, they look to combining stark depictions and stern warnings with mild reforms. In the preface to their 2020 book, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, they wrote, “We believe in capitalism, and we continue to believe that globalization and technical change can be managed to the general benefit. Capitalism does not have to work as it does in America today. It does not need to be abolished, but it should be redirected to work in the public interest.”

The graphs above are not simply shifts in life expectancy as they underscore the very real growth of social and economic inequality that manifests in real-life consequences such as poor health, mental distress and a shorter life. To assert that these are merely mistakes made by captains of industry in their direction of capitalist relations is to turn a blind eye to the real nature of capitalism and the history of the class struggle in the last 200 years. 

Indeed, the data in these graphs clearly demonstrate why these historic surges in the class struggle that are occurring in every industry across every country are taking place. Simply put, workers are facing an existential threat to their existence. 

Meanwhile, those in academia and the upper 10 percent, who have made substantial gains in the same period, fear the loss of their petty personal wealth. They have turned to weaponizing gender and race to maintain their unsteady hold on the crumbs they have managed to accumulate from the table of the financial aristocracy.

The privately owned banks and corporations, which have tremendous influence over the entire political edifice of the state, are, in the final analysis, themselves enchained by the contradictions of diminishing rates of profit and seek to extract ever more surplus value from workers to secure their profits. 

Case and Deaton have taken great pains to expose inequality. Their appealing to the better nature of the capitalists to make capitalism work for everyone only undermines their analysis which, when considered carefully, raises the most pressing revolutionary questions.

COVID-19 infections rise sharply across Canada as hospitalizations reach highest level since last winter

Penny Smith

Following the beginning of the school year and the return of children to cramped classrooms, COVID-19 infections are rising sharply once again across Canada. Tens of thousands are being infected and more than a hundred people are dying every week.

Nurses in Ontario in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic [Photo: Ontario Council of Hospital Unions]

According to the COVID-19 Resource Center, roughly 1 in 25 people across the country are currently infected, a number roughly 14 times higher than the lowest point in the pandemic to date. In this context, most provinces and territories have been labelled “severe risk” or “extremely high risk” for COVID-19 infection.

Federal data is also showing a marked rise in infections, with 10,000 confirmed new cases and 129 deaths registered during the first week in October. As of October 10, COVID-19 patients occupied 3,797 hospital beds across the country—the highest occupancy rate since last winter.

Official figures provided by the Canadian government are a gross undercount of actual infections. According to figures from Worldometer, 778,300 Canadians are currently infected with COVID-19.

COVID PCR testing in the general public has largely stopped. Wastewater monitoring, functioning in a severely reduced capacity, currently covers less than 30 percent of the Canadian population. The other metric available—testing of symptomatic patients in hospitals—is a lagging indicator of new infections as patients being tested have been infected for days or weeks even before presenting serious symptoms. The reduction of testing is part of a systematic cover-up of the pandemic in order to sell the lie that the pandemic “is over.”

Roughly half of new infections are located in the province of Quebec, where more than 100 long-term care homes, transformed into scenes of mass death during the first and second waves of the pandemic, are currently grappling with new COVID-19 outbreaks.

In Canada’s most populous province of Ontario, wastewater testing has shown that COVID-19 activity has risen sharply since early August and is now at levels not seen since March. Anger among healthcare workers, who were overwhelmed by seasonal respiratory illness last fall, has compelled the provincial authorities to reinstate a mask mandate at several provincial hospitals.

The hard-right Tory government led by Doug Ford, which long ago enforced the dismantling of all remaining COVID-19 protections, made explicit that this would be only a “temporary measure.” Despite the sharp rise in respiratory infections among school children, his government refuses to require masks in school.

In Alberta, COVID-19 outbreaks in acute care settings have exhibited exponential growth in the past few weeks. In mid-September, there were 129 patients in units listed in an outbreak. As of October 10, that number more than doubled to 296. COVID-denying far-right premier Danielle Smith has begrudgingly brought back “enhanced masking” only in healthcare settings with the caveat that regions and hospitals can opt out if they choose, effectively nullifying the mandate.

In early October, infections in British Columbia reached their highest point in more than a year. New infections have multiplied sixfold since August, having increased notably among people 60 and older. In the epidemiological week ending October 7, hospitalizations were up 58 percent with over 800 new infections reported. It was only after an open letter penned by Protect Our Province BC, a group of physicians, nurses and health scientists calling for universal masking, that the provincial New Democratic Party brought back masking in healthcare settings. 

In the province’s Northern Health region, a COVID-19 outbreak quickly overwhelmed nursing staff at Prince George’s chronically underfunded University Hospital of Northern BC, compelling the province to begin transferring severely ill COVID-19 patients to hospitals further south.

The fall surge is the direct result of the criminal policies of capitalist governments everywhere who long ago adopted the homicidal “forever COVID” strategy which prioritizes profits over lives. The dismantling of virtually all public health measures that limit the spread of COVID-19 all but guarantees preventable mass infection, death and debilitation for months and years to come. 

According to the COVID-19 Tracker, 126 Canadians died from COVID-19 this past week, underscoring the bankruptcy of a vaccine-only strategy to protect the population. The updated mRNA vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, and the protein-based vaccine Novavax approved by the Canadian government, correspond to the variant XBB.1.5, which dominated throughout the spring and summer. However, XBB.1.5 has quickly been superseded by EG.5 (Eris), now the dominant strain around the world, threatening greater transmissibility and vaccine resistance.

Additionally, years of official pandemic health policy increasingly dominated by pseudo-science and reactionary far-right politics have fueled the growth of vaccine hesitancy. A new survey indicates that almost half of residents in the prairie province of Saskatchewan likely will not be getting a vaccine or vaccine update this fall because of “vaccine fatigue.” In British Columbia, delays in the new vaccine rollout, which is only taking place amid the fall surge, further eroded confidence in the program’s critical role in saving lives. To this point, only 33 percent of British Columbians have received a fourth dose. 

Fueling the skepticism is a host of false information circulating in far-right “news” rags, including the Epoch Times, which ran a patently absurd headline on September 28 falsely linking COVID-19 vaccines to 17 million excess deaths globally. In fact, excess deaths have come from the capitalist governments’ criminal mishandling of the pandemic and the decades-long assault on the healthcare system. In Canada, it was the federal Liberal Trudeau government, which is backed by the trade unions and New Democratic Party, that spearheaded the scrapping of all remaining COVID-19 public health measures in response to the far-right “Freedom” Convoy’s occupation of downtown Ottawa in early 2022.

Bond prices fall, financial risks rise

Nick Beams

The selloff in the $25 trillion US bond market, one of the foundations of the global financial system, is continuing. The yield on benchmark 10-year US Treasuries rose to above 5 percent on Thursday, its highest level since 2007 on the eve of the global financial crisis.

The immediate cause of the selloff, which has seen the yield on the 10-year Treasury rise by nearly one percentage point since the end of July—an unusually large increase in such a short period of time—is the rate tightening by the US Federal Reserve. Since March 2022, the Fed has lifted its base rate by more than 5 percentage points.

There are indications that it is planning to keep rates steady at the next meeting concluding on November 1. However, it is expected that rather than rates being cut any time soon, they will continue to remain higher for longer.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell at news conference following the Federal Open Market Committee meeting, Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023, in Washington. [AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin]

In an event at the Economic Club of New York on Thursday, chair Jerome Powell said the Fed would proceed “carefully.” This was taken as a sign that rates would not be lifted at the next meeting.

In the midst of heightened geo-political tensions and conflicts—the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and now the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza—Powell pointed to new risks.

“A range of uncertainties, both old and new, complicate our task of balancing the risk of tightening monetary policy too much against the risk of tightening too little,” he said.

The “highly elevated” geopolitical tensions “pose important risks to global economic activity.”

While appearing to downplay the prospect of an immediate rate rise, Powell did not rule one out in the future. Although it is never directly referenced, the crucial question is whether the trade union bureaucracy can continue to suppress wages struggles of the working class and impose sub-inflation-rate contracts.

Powell again made clear, as the Fed has indicated from the time tightening began, that the central bank’s key target is not inflation but the wages of the working class.

He noted that while conditions remained “tight,” the labour market was “gradually cooling.” Powell then indicated there was further to go and that “a sustainable return to our 2 percent inflation goal is likely to require a period of below-trend growth and some further softening in labour market conditions.”

He underscored this meant further rate increases if necessary.

“We are attentive to recent data showing the resilience of economic growth and the demand for labour. Additional evidence of persistently above-trend growth, or that tightness in the labour market is no longer easing, could put further progress inflation at risk and could warrant further tightening of monetary policy.”

The fall in bond prices and the rise in yields (the two move in opposite directions) has deeper causes than the immediate policies of the Fed. One of the key questions is the ability of the market to absorb the already elevated and increasing levels of US government debt, much of it the result of increased military spending. Now standing at $33 trillion, it has doubled over the past decade.

Writing in the Financial Times (FT), economic analyst and former bond trader Mohamed El-Erian said turbulence in the Treasury market pointed to deeper causes than inflation and the intentions of the Fed. The US bond market was “losing its strategic footing.”

The major function of the market is the financing of US government debt. But according to El-Erian, despite the rise in interest rates “there is now genuine doubt who will readily absorb the additional supply of government debt associated with high deficits.”

The Fed had reversed its previous policy and was selling bonds rather than buying them as took place under quantitative easing, he wrote.

Foreign buyers, notably Japan and China, were pulling back. A “significant portion” of the large domestic institutional investor base—pension funds and insurance companies, already holding quantities of bonds on which they had made large book-value losses because of the fall in prices—were not eager to acquire more.

El-Erian did not go further but the danger in such a situation is that an event, sometimes of an accidental character, can trigger a sell-off and then a rush for the exits as large-scale investors, who have often financed their operations with the large levels of debt, try to get out.

A number of commentators and analysts have pointed to the dangers building up in financial markets.

In an interview with the FT earlier this week, private equity investor J Christopher Flowers warned that an increase in investments by life insurance companies, searching for higher yields, in private credit investments was creating systemic risk.

“Too many people have piled into private credit and it has a special feature that a chunk of it is funded with life insurance assets,” he said. “One of these days, some life insurance company is going to get whacked on their private credit.… You can have a run on a life insurance company.”

Assets managed by private credit investments funds are at a record of $1.5 trillion with their annual rate of growth more than doubling to 23 percent between 2020 and 2022.

Australian Financial Review columnist Karen Maley has also noted the worsening situation in financial markets.

In an article last month, she pointed to the $16.5 billion takeover of the US cloud computing company Citrix by two private equity groups backed by a consortium of 30 banks led by Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse.

The takeover was organised in January. But since then financial conditions had deteriorated to such an extent that the banks were not able to sell off their loans as planned “presumably because investors were insisting on such eye-watering discounts,” and so kept them on their books.

In another article published earlier this week she wrote: “If there’s one thing senior bankers can agree upon, it’s that the next blow-up in financial markets will be centred on the massive US leveraged loan market.”

Highly geared companies, she noted, that have taken out large loans are about to be hammered when it comes to refinancing because of the “huge rise” in their borrowing costs due to the rise in interest rates.

As Maley explained, it is hard to get a handle on the extent of the problems because, some bankers are worried that the rise of the private credit industry “has shifted a large amount of financial power into the hands of a few large, opaque asset managers outside the view of prudential regulators.”

It seems there are new problems at every turn. On Friday, the FT ran an editorial on the warning by US Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the financial system.

According to the editorial, Gensler “puts the likelihood of an AI-driven financial crisis within a decade as ‘nearly unavoidable’ without regulatory intervention.”

However, there are major problems for containment by regulation to which the editorial indirectly points. One of the risks is that AI can leading to “herding” in which participants in the market make similar decisions based on what their AI models are telling them.

Furthermore, it continued, “the opaque nature of the systems also makes it difficult for regulators and institutions to assess what data set they are reliant on.”

The case of AI underscores a broader issue. Its development is a major scientific and technological advance that could bring enormous gains. But under the capitalist system, based on private ownership and the anarchy of the market, its use threatens to spark a financial crisis, bringing devastating social consequences for billions of people as the experience of the 2008 crash demonstrated.

Millions march in global protests against Israeli genocide in Gaza

Jacob Crosse

Over the past two weeks, tens of millions of people around the world have participated in mass demonstrations, protests and marches against the US and NATO-backed Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

The international and mass character of the protests is a reflection of the broad sympathy workers and youth around the world have for the Palestinian people.

Millions of workers and youth of all religions and ethnicities are horrified by and outraged at the terror-bombing campaign being conducted by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The IDF’s campaign, with the support of the Biden administration and all the imperialist powers, is in preparation for an expected ground invasion that will cost thousands of lives.

As of this writing, the Ministry of Health in Gaza has reported more than 4,100 people killed since October 7, including over 1,600 children. Nearly 13,000 people have been injured, including 3,983 children and 3,300 women.

While the mainstream press has largely ignored or tried to downplay the protests as only occurring in a few countries that have large Muslim populations, in reality they have taken place on every continent, except for Antarctica, in hundreds of cities nearly every day.

On Friday, as they have for over a week, thousands of protesters took to the streets in Seoul, South Korea where they chanted in Korean and English to “Free, free Palestine.”

A group of Palestinian supporters march during a rally to urge Israel to suspend attacks on the Gaza Strip in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Oct. 20, 2023. [AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon]

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In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia over 1,000 people rallied in the capital demanding a stop to Israel’s war crimes. Protesters chanted, in English, “Free, Free, Palestine” and “Down, down, Israel” while marching towards the US embassy. Outside the embassy, protesters denounced Biden’s backing of the Netanyahu regime, without which the IDF would be incapable of carrying out their ethnic cleansing campaign.

Protests continued to take place in the United States, including among students. On Friday in Dearborn, Michigan, home of the largest Muslim population in the US per capita, hundreds of students walked out of class to protest the war.

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Detroit Free Press reporter Niraj Warikoo reported that all three high schools in Dearborn had walk-outs this week in support of Palestine, with “hundreds” of students walking out at Dearborn and Edsed Ford High on Friday, and at Fordson High on Thursday. Crestwood High in Dearborn Heights also had walkout.

On Wednesday, an estimated 1,500 Bay Area students in California walked out of class in support of Palestinians.

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Student-led walkouts occurred in San Francisco, Oakland, and the surrounding suburbs encompassing dozens of schools.

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In New York City, thousands of people took to the streets Friday night chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, the occupation has got to go.” Many were carrying signs accusing President Joe Biden of carrying out a genocide of the Palestinian people.

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Significantly on Friday, thousands of Egyptians, in the face of the El-Sisi dictatorship, took to Tahir Square in Cairo, Egypt where the denounced not only the Zionist government of Israel, but the former general turned-dictator’s attempt to corral the mass movement behind his administration.

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Prior to the demonstrations, government-friendly media outlets had circulated information on public areas where protests, which are illegal, would be allowed. Tahir Square, the site of massive protests in 2011 that eventually toppled the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak, was not one of the “approved” protest sites.

“We’re not here to give a new mandate to anybody,” France 24 reported the crowd chanting. “It’s a genuine demonstration.”

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In Jakarta, Indonesia, well over a thousand demonstrators marched from several different mosques to the militarized US embassy where they denounced US support for Israeli war crimes. AP reported that protests also occurred outside the United Nations mission, which is located a few miles from the embassy. Waving the red, green and black flag of Palestine, protesters chanted “Save Palestinians.”

Thousands protest in Sanaa, Yemen, October 20, 2023. [Photo: QudsNewsNetwork]

Major protests also took place throughout the Middle East including in Doha, Qatar; Driaz, Bahrain; and Samaa, Yemen, where hundreds of thousands took to the streets.

In Ankara, Turkey, where the government has called for three days of mourning following the intentional bombing of the al-Ahli Arab Hospital by the IDF, thousands of protesters flooded the streets demanding a stop to the genocide. On Thursday, Israel withdrew its diplomats from Turkey over security concerns.

Outside the US embassy in Tunis, Tunisia on Friday, thousands of Tunisians refuted the US and Israel’s lies justifying the slaughter. Protesters held signs pointing to US lies that justified invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya while pointing out that “None of us is free until Palestine is.”

Tunisians demonstrate during a rally in solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza, outside the U.S embassy in the Berges du Lac, outside Tunis, Friday, October 20, 2023. [AP Photo/Hassene Dridi]

Since the IDF assault on Gaza, Al-Jazeera has documented protests in support of Palestinians taking place in Adelaide, Australia; Algiers, Algeria; Amman, Jordan; Athens, Greece;

Auckland, New Zealand; Baghdad, Iraq;

Barcelona, Spain; Beirut, Lebanon; Berlin, Germany; Brasilia, Brazil; Calgary, Canada; Cape Town, South Africa; Damascus, Syria;

Dublin, Ireland; Geneva, Switzerland; Glasgow, Scotland; Islamabad, Pakistan; Kargil, India; Mumbai, India; London, England; Manama, Bahrain; Mexico City, Mexico; Paris, France; Rome, Italy; Tehran, Iran; The Hauge; and in Tokyo, Japan, among dozens of other cities.

Dozens of protests are scheduled to be held throughout North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East over the weekend.

Death toll in Israeli genocide against Gaza more than 4,100

Andre Damon

Palestinians boy walks by the buildings destroyed in the Israeli bombardment on al-Zahra, on the outskirts of Gaza City, Friday, October 20, 2023. [AP Photo/Ali Mahmoud]

Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people, carried out with the support of the US, UK, French and German governments, continued Friday with the murder of another 352 Palestinians. Since October 7, Israel has launched a systematic campaign to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza and systematically demolish the area’s housing, hospitals and schools, while starving and dehydrating its population.

Over the past week, US President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak have all visited Israel to give their unequivocal endorsement of the genocidal policies of the Netanyahu regime, which is widely despised within Israel and by Jewish people around the world.

The death toll in Gaza has reached 4,137, with 70 percent of these killed being women and children, according to figures cited by the United Nations. Another 1,000 people are missing or trapped beneath the rubble, many fighting for life amid heroic rescue efforts by volunteers and humanitarian organizations.

International humanitarian organizations fighting to save lives are themselves being targeted by the Netanyahu government. Two more United Nations personnel were murdered in airstrikes in the past 24 hours. “We are devastated to confirm that two more @UNRWA colleagues have been killed in #Gaza. The entire Agency is grieving,” wrote the UN agency for Palestine refugees on Twitter. At least 16 UN personnel have been killed in airstrikes and “the actual number is likely to be much higher,” it wrote. There have been 33 separate Israeli airstrikes against UN installations.

The UN estimated that there are 1.4 million refugees within Gaza, including half a million sheltering in UN-designated emergency shelters. Amid the relentless bombings, Israel is blocking all food, fuel and water from entering Gaza, threatening famine and mass dehydration.

“The complete siege of Gaza continues for the tenth consecutive day,” the United Nations wrote. “The Rafah, Kerem Shalom, and Erez crossings remained closed, preventing the entry of desperately needed humanitarian aid, including food, water, medicines, and fuel.”

At least 30 percent of all housing units inside the Gaza Strip have been either destroyed or damaged over the past two weeks, according to figures from the Ministry of Housing in Gaza cited by the UN. In one striking example of the systematic destruction of Gaza’s housing, 24 multi-story residential towers were destroyed on Friday, displacing up to 8,000 people.

The UN noted, “Entire neighborhoods have been largely destroyed, including Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia, Shuja’iyeh, and Abbassan Kabeera.”

On Thursday, Israel bombed Gaza’s oldest operating Christian church, which was sheltering approximately 400 refugees. At least 18 people have been killed in the attack, with another 18 people trapped under the rubble. Former US Representative Justin Amash revealed Friday that members of his family were killed in the bombing.

Gaza’s educational infrastructure is being systematically dismantled. Nearly 200 educational institutions have been damaged, including 29 schools operated by the UN. The UN noted, “Hospitals are on the brink of collapse due to the shortage of power, medicine, equipment, and specialized personnel. Yet, the number of patients treated or awaiting treatment is at 150 percent of their capacity; many lay on the floors and corridors. To keep emergency rooms operational, vital procedures such as sterilization and dialysis may soon be halted.”

On Tuesday, Israel bombed a Christian hospital in northern Gaza where thousands of people were sheltering, killing nearly 500 people.

On Friday, Al-Quds hospital, serving 12,000 people, was ordered to evacuate by Israeli authorities, raising the prospect that it, too, will be targeted. “Evacuation is not possible,” said Nebal Farsakh of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. “The intensive care unit is full of children, and we cannot disconnect their life support.”

World Health Organization Secretary General Tedros Adhanom wrote on Twitter of “Disturbing reports about evacuation order to Al-Quds Hospital.” He continued, “It is impossible for these overcrowded hospitals to safely evacuate patients. They must be allowed to perform their lifesaving functions. They must be protected.”

In an initial report on Israeli war crimes in Gaza over the past week, Amnesty International wrote that there is “Damning evidence of war crimes as Israeli attacks wipe out entire families in Gaza.” Amnesty International “has documented unlawful Israeli attacks, including indiscriminate attacks, which caused mass civilian casualties and must be investigated as war crimes.”

It notes, “Israeli attacks violated international humanitarian law, including by failing to take feasible precautions to spare civilians, or by carrying out indiscriminate attacks that failed to distinguish between civilians and military objectives, or by carrying out attacks that may have been directed against civilian objects.”

The report calls on the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to “Urgently expedite its ongoing investigation in the situation of Palestine, examining alleged crimes by all parties, and including the crime against humanity of apartheid against Palestinians.”

While all of the imperialist governments are united in their support of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians, hundreds of thousands of people have taken part in mass demonstrations against the genocide in nearly every country in the world.