Browsed by
Category: Human rights

Tears of joy and sadness as ‘disappeared’ Syrians emerge from Assad’s prisons

Tears of joy and sadness as ‘disappeared’ Syrians emerge from Assad’s prisons

The Guardian reports: As Syrian rebels led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) captured city after city on the road to Damascus, forcing Bashar al-Assad to flee the country, they also opened the doors of the regime’s notorious prisons, into which upwards of 100,000 people disappeared during nearly 14 years of civil war. Many emerged frail and emancipated into the bright December sunlight, greeted by weeping family members who had no idea they were still alive. Some struggled…

Read More Read More

Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza, Amnesty International concludes

Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza, Amnesty International concludes

Middle East Eye reports: Israel is carrying out a genocide in the Gaza Strip, a new report by Amnesty International has concluded. The report, titled ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza is based on research and legal analysis carried out since October 2023 and concludes that Israel’s war on the enclave is being carried out with “the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza”. Amnesty International is arguably the highest profile rights group to…

Read More Read More

Gazans face extreme hunger as ‘real famine’ spreads from north to south

Gazans face extreme hunger as ‘real famine’ spreads from north to south

Ruwaida Kamal Amer reports: Mustafa Al-Darsh, a 35-year-old father of three from Gaza City, spends hours every day searching for food for his family. Some days, he manages to secure a few canned goods; other days, his family has to settle for plain rice. “In the north, we yearn to eat bread with some thyme,” he told +972. He hasn’t been able to find flour for months. Since the start of October, when the Israeli army encircled northern Gaza and began subjecting…

Read More Read More

Joe Biden starts reading Rashid Khalidi ‘four years too late’

Joe Biden starts reading Rashid Khalidi ‘four years too late’

After Joe Biden stepped out of Nantucket Bookworks on Friday, he and his son Hunter looked like they’d just been caught shoplifting: Maybe it was because Biden was clutching a copy of Rashid Khalidi’s book The Hundred Years War on Palestine. During his Thanksgiving visit to Nantucket, Biden said: I’m thankful for a peaceful transition of the presidency. And I’m thankful for the fact that, I think, with the grace of God and the goodwill of the neighbors and a…

Read More Read More

Emboldened ‘manosphere’ accelerates threats and demeaning language toward women after election

Emboldened ‘manosphere’ accelerates threats and demeaning language toward women after election

The Associated Press reports: In the days after the presidential election, Sadie Perez began carrying pepper spray with her around campus. Her mom also ordered her and her sister a self-defense kit that included keychain spikes, a hidden knife key and a personal alarm. It’s a response to an emboldened fringe of right-wing “manosphere” influencers who have seized on Republican Donald Trump’s presidential win to justify and amplify misogynistic derision and threats online. Many have appropriated a 1960s abortion rights…

Read More Read More

Israeli military to remain in Gaza for years, food minister says

Israeli military to remain in Gaza for years, food minister says

The Guardian reports: The Israeli military will remain in Gaza for many years, fighting against fresh Hamas recruits in the territory and could be responsible for delivery of humanitarian aid there, a senior Israeli minister has said. The comments by Avi Dichter, Israel’s minister for food security and a member of the Israeli security cabinet, confirm an emerging picture of a long-term deployment of Israeli troops inside Gaza, with no immediate Israeli plan for any other administration to govern the…

Read More Read More

Gisele Pelicot: Finding sisterhood at France’s mass rape trial

Gisele Pelicot: Finding sisterhood at France’s mass rape trial

Diane de Vignemont writes: On my train back to Paris that evening, I sit next to a group of undergraduate students who, like me, traveled to Avignon to watch the trial. They take a break from their homework to talk to me. They tell me they’ve been following the case through reporters’ “live tweets” from the start. On social media, her supporters petition for Gisele to be made Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, or be given the Nobel Peace…

Read More Read More

The entire history of Zionism’s injustices, in one Bedouin village

The entire history of Zionism’s injustices, in one Bedouin village

Orly Noy writes: Last week, the State of Israel hung the scalp of another Palestinian community on its belt after completing the demolition of Umm Al-Hiran. On the morning of Nov. 14, hundreds of police stormed the Bedouin village — which is located in the Negev/Naqab desert, in southern Israel — accompanied by special forces officers and helicopters. The residents, Israeli citizens who had long feared that this day would come, had already self-demolished most of the structures in the…

Read More Read More

‘Total oppression’: West Bank children being killed at unprecedented rate

‘Total oppression’: West Bank children being killed at unprecedented rate

The Guardian reports: Mohammad was 12, a football-mad teenager who spent his days dreaming of a career on the pitch and his last minutes practising ball skills. Ghassan was 14, a quiet, generous teenager who ran errands for elderly relatives, with an adoring six-year-old brother who stuck to him like a shadow. Both boys were shot dead this summer by Israeli soldiers, victims of an unprecedented surge in attacks on children in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. In…

Read More Read More

‘That is genocide’: Israeli-American Holocaust historian on Gaza

‘That is genocide’: Israeli-American Holocaust historian on Gaza

  Israeli-American historian and esteemed professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, Omer Bartov, sat down with Mehdi Hasan to discuss Gaza, genocide, and the far right in Israel during a live event hosted by Busboys & Poets in Washington, D.C. During the discussion, Bartov explained the extremist direction of the Israeli military, the current far-right Israeli government, the weaponization of antisemitism to shield Benjamin Netanyahu from criticism, and how the United States could have prevented Israel from…

Read More Read More

U.S. to keep sending arms to Israel despite dire conditions in Gaza

U.S. to keep sending arms to Israel despite dire conditions in Gaza

The New York Times reports: The State Department said on Tuesday that it did not plan to decrease weapons aid to Israel, as a 30-day deadline set by the Biden administration passed without the country substantially improving the humanitarian situation in war-devastated Gaza. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III had warned in a letter dated Oct. 13 that the United States would reassess its military aid to Israel if it failed to increase…

Read More Read More

Gaza doesn’t care about Trump or Harris — only survival matters

Gaza doesn’t care about Trump or Harris — only survival matters

Ahmed Najar writes: I spoke to my family in Gaza a day before the US election. Our conversation followed days of silence, of unbearable waiting, with every hour deepening my dread. When I finally heard my nephew’s voice, I felt relief, but it quickly gave way to heartbreak. At just 21, his voice now carries a sadness and exhaustion far beyond his years. “Does it even matter who wins?” he asked me, his tone hollow and resigned. “[Donald] Trump or…

Read More Read More

How Trump could ban abortion without Congress

How Trump could ban abortion without Congress

Mary Ziegler and Reva Siegel write: The Supreme Court rejected a challenge to abortion drugs just a few months ago, but anti-abortion forces are already back with a new lawsuit. The suit would have a devastating impact on abortion rights across the country. But even if it doesn’t succeed, it’s part of a strategy that former President Donald Trump could use to ban abortion nationwide if he wins the White House — even without action from Congress. Trump has said…

Read More Read More

‘There is no hate like Christian love’

‘There is no hate like Christian love’

CNN reports: Greg Jr. says he didn’t tell his parents about his sexuality earlier because he’d heard stories of evangelical parents who refused to pay for their gay kid’s college or kicked them out of the house. Once on the streets, these forsaken youths are more likely to experience sexual assault, HIV infection, hate crimes, depression and suicide, according to True Colors United, a nonprofit group formed to address youth homelessness in the US. The current share of homeless youth…

Read More Read More

The conservative strategy to ban abortion nationwide

The conservative strategy to ban abortion nationwide

  The Lincoln Project: Project 2025 and its evil architects envision an America where women will be monitored, prosecuted, and jailed for exercising their own bodily autonomy. We are not going back! Rachel Monroe writes: In mid-October, at a bank in downtown Amarillo, the local chapter of the League of Women Voters hosted an educational forum about proposed ordinances that would be on the ballot in November. Most were procedural—adding members to the city council, changing the process for a…

Read More Read More

‘Our job is to flatten Gaza. No one will stop us’

‘Our job is to flatten Gaza. No one will stop us’

Ryan Grim writes: Journalists Younis Tirawi and Sami Vanderlip have managed to find and archive all the Instagram stories and daily posts shared by the soldiers of one key unit, Israel’s 749 Combat Engineering Battalion. They’ve mapped out the structure of the unit and identified the individual soldiers and officers involved, along with their various roles in operations. They have tracked the activities of each company in the battalion, including what they were doing, when, and where, as the force…

Read More Read More