Kathy Kelly

Many decades ago in Chicago, my favorite of several part-time student jobs was operating the “old-style” telephone switchboard at a small hospital called Forkosh Memorial. The console of coils and plugs included a mirror so operators could keep an eye on the hospital entrance, which on weekends and evenings was also monitored by an elderly, … Continue reading “Israel Is Assaulting Hospitals in Gaza with Full US. Support”

Speaking from a hospital ward about 50 meters from where a bomb had just exploded, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder raised his voice over sounds of children screaming. In a video posted on Twitter/X he emphasized that Gaza’s health care system is overwhelmed. Pointing at children packed into the ward of a hospital he said was operating … Continue reading “Predicting Pestilence in Gaza”

Operation Cast Lead, an Israeli aerial assault and massacre of  Gazans begun on December 27, 2008, lasted for 22 days. The Israeli military deployed its navy, air force and army against the people living in Gaza, using U.S.-supplied weapons and killing 1,383 Palestinians, of whom 333 were children. I remember a doctor at the Al … Continue reading “Calling for a ‘Pause’ in Israel’s Assault on Gaza Isn’t Enough”

The Saudis picked us up from the detention center in Daer and put us in a minibus going back to the Yemen border. When they released us, they created a kind of chaos; they screamed at us to “get out of the car and get away.” … this is when they started to fire mortars … Continue reading “Prioritizing Human Rights in Relations with Saudi Arabia”

The United Nations’ goal was to raise more than $4.2 billion for the people of war-torn Yemen by March 15. But when that deadline rolled around, just $1.3 billion had come in. ?​"I am deeply disappointed," said Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council. "The people of Yemen need the same level … Continue reading “The People of Yemen Suffer Atrocities, Too”

During visits to Kabul, Afghanistan, over the past decade, I particularly relished lingering over breakfasts on chilly winter mornings with my young hosts who were on their winter break from school. Seated on the floor, wearing coats and hats and draped with blankets, we’d sip piping hot green tea as we shared fresh, warm wheels … Continue reading “‘Thank You for Hearing Our Afghan Pain’”

Monday, October 11, marked the official closure of the U.N. Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen (also known as the Group of Experts or GEE). For nearly four years, this investigative group examined alleged abuses suffered by Yemenis whose basic rights to food, shelter, safety, health care and education were horribly violated, all while they … Continue reading “Abandoning Yemen?”

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was among a small group of U.S. citizens who sat on milk crates or stood holding signs, across from the US Mission to the United Nations in Manhattan. We had been fasting from solid foods for a month, calling for an end to brutal economic warfare waged … Continue reading “To Counter Terror, Abolish War”

Earlier this week, 100 Afghan families from Bamiyan, a rural province of central Afghanistan mainly populated by the Hazara ethnic minority, fled to Kabul. They feared Taliban militants would attack them in Bamiyan. Over the past decade, I’ve gotten to know a grandmother who recalls fleeing Talib fighters in the 1990s, just after learning that … Continue reading “Reckoning With the US-Caused Destruction of Afghanistan”

"Pardon Daniel Hale." These words hung in the air on a recent Saturday evening, projected onto several Washington, D.C. buildings, above the face of a courageous whistleblower facing ten years in prison. The artists aimed to inform the U.S. public about Daniel E. Hale, a former Air Force analyst who blew the whistle on the … Continue reading “Why Daniel Hale Deserves Gratitude, Not Prison”