Esteban Volkov was just 13 when, in May 1940, Stalin’s assassins tried to kill him. Why? Because his grandfather was Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky.
Layan Kayed, a student activist at Birzeit University in the West Bank, was arrested in the early hours of 7 June by Israeli occupation forces. Kayed has previously spent sixteen months in Israeli prisons for her student activism in support of Palestinian liberation.
“I’m exhausted”, declared West Australian Premier Mark McGowan, announcing his resignation at a press conference on 29 May. So too are the state’s 40,000 nurses, who, under McGowan’s government, have confronted daily staff shortages, declining real wages and attacks on their union.
Israeli occupation forces carried out a four-hour killing spree in the Jenin refugee camp in late January that left ten dead, including a 61-year-old woman, Majda Obaid, and two teenagers. Their killers arrived in a cheese truck. Before departing, they fired tear gas at a nearby hospital, leaving children choking and coughing.
On the evening of 11 December, 15-year-old Palestinian Jana Majdi Zakarneh went onto the roof of her home in the West Bank city of Jenin to find her cat. Soon after, the sound of gunfire echoed across Jenin’s streets, as Israeli occupation forces carried out yet another night-time raid. After the gunfire ceased, Jana’s father and younger brother went looking for Jana. When they reached the roof, they confronted a terrible sight. Jana lifeless body lay in a puddle of blood, riddled by bullets from sniper fire.
Thousands of West Australian nurses went on strike on 25 November, rallying at parliament and in regional cities across the state, including Broome, Karratha and Bunbury. The strike took place in defiance of an Industrial Relations Commission ban and amid hostile media coverage and outrageous attacks by state Labor politicians.