Vicky Grut

So pleased to have my #ShortStory 'My Own True Name' chosen by novelist Gina Chung for inclusion in next year's @MastersReview Anthology XIII. Publication in the States early 2025.

HORRIFIC: The Israeli army raided the village of Aboud in the West Bank, firing tear gas that sparked a fire in the home of an elderly woman. In this video, she was still trapped inside. Thankfully, people managed to rescue her, and she is now in the hospital receiving treatment. Aboud is a Palestinian village, half Muslim and half Christian.

This genocide will not end without sacrifice, without compromise, without rage! An honorable few are imprisoned and on hunger strike for the liberation of Palestine. Now imagine if tens of thousands took action for Palestine, what would happen? The Sameer Project asks its community to help us in ending the suffering in Palestine. To rise and fight, to advocate and disrupt, to boycott and divest ✊🏽✊🏽 The fight continues and so does the mutual aid. Donate to the Give Warmth to Gaza campaign today so we can keep providing winter items: chuffed.org/project/149178… Other ways to donate include: paypal.me/mahertali (Paypal option, please make sure to add a message saying "Winter") account.venmo.com/u/Maher-Ali (Venmo option, please make sure to add a message saying "Winter")

I learned the word valley before I learned thirst. In school they told us a valley is a place where water gathers, where land bends to receive life. I believed this because children believe words when they are spoken calmly. They took us there once, to Wadi Gaza. The land did not argue with the word. It simply failed it. It lay open and dry, hollowed out, as if something vital had been removed with intention. There was no water, no trace of it, only weeds hardened by survival and thorns that grow where hope has already been disciplined into silence. Even the wind carried dust instead of moisture. We asked the teacher where the water was. It was not defiance. It was confusion, the quiet shock of realizing that reality did not match what we had memorized. She said dams had been built. That the water no longer came. I accepted this. One accepts what is presented as inevitable, especially when one is young and has no other framework for understanding the world. Years later, I heard farmers speak of the valley. I come from people who know land, and I recognized their tone immediately. It was not anger. Anger still hopes. This was resignation. They said the dryness ruined their crops. They said the soil no longer answered their labor. They said what once sustained life now exhausted it. No one raised their voice. Facts, repeated long enough, stop sounding like accusations. From then on, the valley existed only as a name. Yesterday, the weather turned. Wind tore at the tents where people live now, because there are no houses left to resist it. Fabric strained. Ropes tightened. Rain followed, heavy and cold. Inside the tents, blankets were pulled closer around children. Shoes were placed carefully, as if order still mattered. People stayed awake, listening, not for help, but for morning. Then the water came. Not gradually, not as rain returns to land, but all at once. The sound arrived first, low and spreading, then undeniable. The dams were opened. The water moved with force and direction. It did not go to fields. It went to what lay lowest, tents, paths, sleeping bodies. It entered fabric, then bedding, then skin. Blankets grew heavy. Clothes clung. Children were lifted first. Possessions were gathered, then abandoned. The ground softened and gave way. There was nowhere higher to stand. The valley, denied water until it ceased to be land, received it only when water had become harm. This must be stated precisely: the same water that was withheld for years was released in a single moment. Those who survived hunger now stood soaked. Those who endured bombardment now waded through flood. Those who fled destruction found the ground itself unreliable. First, the water was stopped. Then, the water was released. The timing was exact. We have learned many forms of suffering. Hunger. Displacement. Cold. Fear. And now drowning, on land that once begged for water. #WoundedGaza

HEY FIFA, STOP THIS FOOTBALL DEMOLITION IN THE WEST BANK ⚽ Israeli forces have issued a demolition order against the only football field in Aida Refugee Camp, built right beside the separation wall. 🧒 This field is where hundreds of Palestinian children play, train, and escape daily violence. It is safety. It is routine. It is hope. 📢 FIFA talks endlessly about inclusion, youth development, and protecting the game. Football is being erased here for children who dream of one day playing in a World Cup! If football means anything beyond branding and slogans, then silence here is complicity.

“Some scholars and scientists estimate the real death toll in Gaza at 680,000.” “If confirmed, 380,000 of them are infants under five.” —Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur

💥Israeli occupation helicopter has been hovering over the east of Al Zaytoun neighbourhood —about 500m far from my location.. 20 minutes ago, it started shooting heavily towards the destroyed homes. At the same time, Israeli tanks have been firing at people in Rafah.

The moment slain fisherman Mohammed Bakr was recovered after Israeli warships opened fire and injured him while he was working in the sea in Gaza.

“How on earth can we ever pass critical judgments on the Russians for what they do in Ukraine when we are so actively supporting what Israel is doing in Gaza! sheer levels of hypocrisy...” —Retired British Army Major General Charlie Herbert

Israel becomes the first country in the world to ban the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders. Let that sink in. File under "Things you do when you are committing genocide"...

🚨BREAKING : While journalist Abdullah Abu Kamil was live on air from Gaza, reporting that Israel has committed 975 ceasefire violations in 80 days, killing more than 400 Palestinians, Israeli artillery shells could be heard exploding in the background, underscoring the ongoing violations on the ground.

The issue with @jimmycarr’s argument that simply increasing medical school places will solve NHS staffing shortages, is that it ignores what happens after medical students graduate. This year, around 40,000 doctors applied for roughly 10,000 NHS training posts. These posts are not optional. They are the required pathway for doctors to become a GP or Consultant. Without access to training jobs, doctors cannot progress in their careers, regardless of how many years they have already spent working in the NHS. Expanding medical school places without a matching increase in specialty training numbers and post-CCT jobs does not fix workforce shortages. It shifts the pressure further down the system. Today’s additional medical students become tomorrow’s doctors competing for the same limited number of progression posts. This is a structural workforce planning problem, not a problem of motivation or willingness to work. The NHS already has doctors who want to stay, train, and contribute long-term; but there are not enough funded training and senior jobs for them. A credible workforce plan must be joined up. Medical school expansion needs to be matched by expansion in specialty training posts and substantive consultant and GP roles, otherwise we risk worsening career bottlenecks and destabilising the workforce we already have. Alongside this, it is reasonable to prioritise UK trained doctors for NHS training posts while also protecting international colleagues who are already working here and are essential to the functioning of the NHS. These aims are not in conflict. If we want a sustainable NHS workforce, we need planning that looks beyond entry into medicine and focuses on the entire training and career pipeline; from medical school through to senior clinical roles.

This post seems to have generated a lot of attention - which I’m glad about as we need to talk seriously about the NHS workforce issues. I’ll expand on it a bit more in a video later on today (time permitting!)

💥One minute ago, Israeli bombing in Al Zaytoun neighbourhood of the Gaza City..

“We were asleep. They came in and told us, ‘You have 5 minutes to leave’” Last night, Israeli army entered the homes of Palestinian families in the eastern area of Nablus while they were asleep and ordered them to evacuate their homes so that Jewish settlers could visit Joseph’s Tomb located in their neighbourhood

VIDEO | Israeli forces abduct Palestinian farmer Saeed al-Amour as he attempted to stop Israeli settlers from vandalizing the area surrounding his home in Khirbet al-Rakeez, in the occupied West Bank. Amour is disabled after previously being shot by an Israeli settler at point-blank range while defending his land in the occupied West Bank, an attack that resulted in the loss of his leg.

If the driver was Palestinian, IDF protocol is to shoot him at point blank; prevent medics from aiding him; make him bleed to death; demolish his family's home; revoke movement/work permits for his entire family; & hold his body hostage A settler gets a free pass! Apartheid...

My condolences to the martyrs killed in the mosque attack in Syria.. They are the hidden hands of the US and Israel regardless to whoever the perpetrator was..

The hunger strikers are still in mortal danger. Keep showing up, keep rallying, keep talking about them. Do not let them die

The israelis shoot a UN peacekeeper on patrol in southern Lebanon – a shocking and serious violation of the Security Council resolution 1701 middleeastmonitor.com/20251223-media…

Just in time for Christmas, Beit Sahour, a majority-Christian Palestinian village outside of Bethlehem [the birthplace of Jesus] was informed that an illegal Israeli settlement will soon be built on top of their land, turning the village into two heavily militarized enclaves and surrounded by violent Israeli settlers. A letter from Dr. Elias Iseed, the Mayor of Beit Sahour: