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Category: Human rights/civil liberties

Hasan Piker on being banned from the UK, traveling to Cuba & supporting candidates critical of Israel

Hasan Piker on being banned from the UK, traveling to Cuba & supporting candidates critical of Israel

  The British government earlier this week barred left-wing political commentators Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur from entering the U.K. ahead of several speaking events. The Home Office said it was canceling their travel permits because “their presence in the U.K. may not be conducive to the public good.” Piker and Uygur, who are related, are both outspoken in their criticism of Israel. While the government did not cite a specific reason for the ban, some lawmakers and pro-Israel groups…

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The Manhattan Institute helped kill DEI. Now it’s coming for protests

The Manhattan Institute helped kill DEI. Now it’s coming for protests

Wired reports: A right-wing think tank responsible for the emergence of zero-tolerance policing in 1990s New York City and the Trump administration’s scorched-earth campaign against “diversity, equality and inclusion” programs is behind state-level legislative efforts to classify minor protest-related crimes as “civil terrorism.” The Manhattan Institute, cofounded in 1978 by former Central Intelligence Agency director William Casey, is in the midst of a yearlong campaign to pass state-level legislation reclassifying minor crimes like vandalism, blocking a roadway, or trespassing during…

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Israeli minister confirms goal of large-scale expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza

Israeli minister confirms goal of large-scale expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza

The Guardian reports: Israel’s defence minister has said he is committed to the ethnic cleansing of Gaza through large-scale migration of Palestinians as part of Israel’s long-term plans for the territory. Israel Katz said the government would implement a plan for large numbers of Palestinians to leave Gaza “at the right time and in the right manner”, in a statement on Wednesday marking the targeted killing of Mohammed Odeh, Hamas’s most recent military commander. Pushing for mass departures violates Donald…

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Rats, raw sewage, skin diseases: Israel’s siege is ravaging Gaza’s displaced

Rats, raw sewage, skin diseases: Israel’s siege is ravaging Gaza’s displaced

+972 reports: Eman Abu Jame had counted her family among the lucky ones. Israel bombed their home in the southern Gaza Strip at the beginning of the war, forcing them to move from one shelter to another. But throughout the first two years of the genocide, neither she, her husband, nor her children suffered any serious health problems. That all changed in October 2025, when they took refuge in a crowded tent camp in Khan Younis. By the time they…

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‘It’s the West Bank’: Lebanese villagers on life inside Israel’s ‘yellow line’

‘It’s the West Bank’: Lebanese villagers on life inside Israel’s ‘yellow line’

The Guardian reports: For hours, Hussein Abdel al-El and his wife, Um Alaa, did not move. They sat in the bathroom in the dark, not daring to touch their phones; the faint glow of the screen might give them away to the Israeli soldiers outside. It was 1am, the Israelis were raiding their neighbours’ house, and the septuagenarian couple did not want their door knocked on next. In the next house over, Israeli soldiers had forced residents against the wall…

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U.S.-Israel war on Iran driving historic levels of global hunger, UN says

U.S.-Israel war on Iran driving historic levels of global hunger, UN says

The Guardian reports: The continuing US-Israel war on Iran has compounded other global disasters to drive record numbers of people into hunger at a time when funding to combat famine has fallen dramatically, the deputy head of the UN World Food Programme has said. The WFP says 363 million people around the world are now at risk of acute hunger, 45 million of them as a result of conflict in the Middle East and the consequent oil price spike. The…

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The Democratic Party cannot continue giving unconditional support to Israel

The Democratic Party cannot continue giving unconditional support to Israel

Sen. Chris Van Hollen writes: Democrats need to face a hard truth. While Republicans’ approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has failed, so has ours. The Democratic Party has provided reflexive and unconditional support to Israeli governments, even as their actions have increasingly undermined American interests and values. For decades, we have called for a two-state solution, but we’ve failed to use our leverage to make it real. It’s past time that we use that leverage to end the occupation and…

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Israeli security minister Ben-Gvir stirs diplomatic outrage with flotilla activist abuse video

Israeli security minister Ben-Gvir stirs diplomatic outrage with flotilla activist abuse video

The Guardian reports: Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has sparked a diplomatic crisis by publishing footage of Israeli security forces abusing international activists who were detained as they tried to sail to Gaza with aid. Three activists were taken to hospital as result of Israeli violence, lawyers representing the group said. They were subsequently discharged. Dozens of others have suspected broken ribs, resulting in breathing problems. “The team reports systemic violations of due process, and widespread physical and…

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More than 145,000 U.S. citizen children have had one or both parents detained in immigration sweeps

More than 145,000 U.S. citizen children have had one or both parents detained in immigration sweeps

Brookings reports: The Trump administration has made detention and deportation the centerpieces of its immigration policy. Around 60,000 people are being held in detention currently, and around 400,000 people have been booked into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention from an interior arrest since the administration began. Detention capacity is likely to expand, with $45 billion allocated to expanding detention facilities in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Though it is mostly adults who are detained and deported, many children…

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How a new Israeli policy cuts off humanitarian aid in Gaza

How a new Israeli policy cuts off humanitarian aid in Gaza

Clayton Dalton writes: On a hazy morning in November, a group of aid workers with Médecins Sans Frontières (M.S.F.), known in English as Doctors Without Borders, crossed into Gaza for a two-month mission. Jennifer Hulse, an emergency physician from the U.K., led a medical team. “We all had as many bags as we could physically carry,” Hulse said. Inside were essential supplies such as surgical tools and engine oil for generators. Her assignment was to help the Gaza Health Ministry…

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Investigation indicates U.S. boat strikes were never a serious counter-drug operation

Investigation indicates U.S. boat strikes were never a serious counter-drug operation

The Guardian reports: A five-month investigation has named 13 previously unidentified victims of US attacks on boats allegedly carrying narcotics in a campaign that has killed nearly 200 people in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific. It is unclear if the US has ever identified any of its 194 victims before attacking them, and the names of just three had previously emerged, after their families launched legal cases against the White House. The Trump administration has consistently sought to justify…

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The silence that meets the rape of Palestinians by Israelis

The silence that meets the rape of Palestinians by Israelis

Nicholas Kristof writes: It’s a simple proposition: Whatever our views of the Middle East conflict, we should be able to unite in condemning rape. Supporters of Israel made that point after the brutal sexual assaults against Israeli women during the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Benjamin Netanyahu and many U.S. senators, including Marco Rubio, condemned that sexual violence, and Netanyahu rightly called on “all civilized leaders” to “speak up.” And yet in wrenching…

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Israeli army chief says West Bank troops ‘killing like we haven’t killed since 1967’

Israeli army chief says West Bank troops ‘killing like we haven’t killed since 1967’

The Guardian reports: The Israeli army chief in the West Bank has said his troops were “killing like we haven’t killed since 1967”, including fatally shooting Palestinian stone-throwers, according to an Israeli report of his comments. The remarks by Maj Gen Avi Bluth, head of the army’s central command, were made in a recent closed forum but were leaked to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. Bluth has so far not denied the authenticity of the Haaretz account. The Israel Defense Forces did…

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Trump’s deportation campaign has harmed scores of kids with tear gas, pepper spray

Trump’s deportation campaign has harmed scores of kids with tear gas, pepper spray

By Lisa Song, Maya Miller and Melissa Sanchez, with research reporting by Mariam Elba This story was originally published by ProPublica The children were walking to school in Broadview, Illinois, or leaving a shopping center in Columbus, Ohio. They were at home in Minneapolis, or sitting in a stroller in Chicago, or at an afternoon protest in Portland, Oregon, alongside dogs on leashes and older people pushing walkers. They were mostly going about their days when federal immigration agents shot…

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Mirroring Gaza, Israel is destroying towns and villages in southern Lebanon

Mirroring Gaza, Israel is destroying towns and villages in southern Lebanon

NPR reports: The center of the village lies in ruins. A row of single-story shops blown out, goods scattered on the ground, glass shattered along the sidewalk. Homes and buildings are crumpled into themselves, unrecognizable. The mosque is blackened and burned, the minaret split in two. A Lebanese civil defense emergency vehicle is crushed next to the rubble, its windshield smashed. Mansouri, a small village in the undulating hills of Lebanon’s south is about six miles from the country’s ‘s…

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Betrayed: Trump is said to be in talks to send Afghans who aided U.S. forces to Congo

Betrayed: Trump is said to be in talks to send Afghans who aided U.S. forces to Congo

The New York Times reports: After halting a U.S. resettlement program for Afghans who helped the American war effort, President Trump is in talks to send as many as 1,100 of them to the Democratic Republic of Congo, an aid worker briefed on the plan said Tuesday. The group includes interpreters for the U.S. military, former members of the Afghan Special Operations forces and family members of American service members. More than 400 children are among them. The Afghans have…

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