Browsed by
Category: Human rights/civil liberties

Trump wants to force Palestinians out of Gaza permanently

Trump wants to force Palestinians out of Gaza permanently

The New York Times reports: President Trump said the nearly two million Palestinians that he wants to displace from the Gaza Strip would not be allowed to return to the territory under his hypothetical plan to rebuild it. In a clip from a Fox News interview scheduled to air on Monday, Mr. Trump elaborated on his recent proposal for an American-led takeover of Gaza. Asked if Palestinians who would be removed from the territory while it is cleared would have…

Read More Read More

I saw illegality and complicity with war crimes. That’s why I quit the UK Foreign Office

I saw illegality and complicity with war crimes. That’s why I quit the UK Foreign Office

Mark Smith writes: My name is Mark Smith. I am a former diplomat and policy adviser at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). I spent my career working in the Middle East directorate and serving in the Arab world. As a lead officer on arms sales policy, I was responsible for assessing whether the UK government’s arms sales adhered to legal and ethical standards under domestic and international law. In August 2024, I resigned over the UK government’s refusal…

Read More Read More

Trump’s gutting of foreign aid is a threat to global health

Trump’s gutting of foreign aid is a threat to global health

Jeremy Youde writes: In its chaotic first few weeks, one of the new Trump administration’s many targets has been global health. With a few strokes of a Sharpie, President Donald Trump halted nearly all U.S. foreign assistance programs, including those for global health, and started the process of pulling the United States out of the World Health Organization. Trump made a range of false claims about foreign aid to support his moves, including spreading the lie that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) sent…

Read More Read More

Trump’s talk of a Gaza takeover masks a more immediate disaster

Trump’s talk of a Gaza takeover masks a more immediate disaster

Neil Hicks writes: The most important outcome of President Donald Trump’s White House press conference this week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not Trump’s lawless and immoral musing that the U.S. would “take over” Gaza to create a new “Riviera of the Middle East.” While Trump’s outrageous comments, as they so often do, ignited dutiful praise from his supporters and instant condemnation from his opponents, the intense focus on the U.S. occupying Gaza and forcibly displacing its entire…

Read More Read More

A Palestinian father and journalist reflects on the ceasefire in Gaza

A Palestinian father and journalist reflects on the ceasefire in Gaza

Mohammed Mhawish writes: On the morning of Sunday, Jan. 19, I turned to my son, Rafik. He was building something with blocks, his small hands working furiously to stack them higher and higher. I watched as the tower wobbled and fell. He laughed and started over again. He kept rebuilding, and it kept falling, over and over. I could feel it inside me, somehow — joy and sorrow fighting for control, just like my son’s toy tower. One moment, his…

Read More Read More

Trump’s Gaza proposal rejected by allies and condemned as plan for ethnic cleansing

Trump’s Gaza proposal rejected by allies and condemned as plan for ethnic cleansing

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump’s proposal that large numbers of Palestinians should leave Gaza to “just clean out” the whole strip has been rejected by US allies in the region and attacked as dangerous, illegal and unworkable by lawyers and activists. The US president said he would like hundreds of thousands of people to move to neighbouring countries, either “temporarily or could be long-term”. Destinations could include Jordan, which already hosts more than 2.7 million Palestinian refugees, and Egypt, he…

Read More Read More

Fear permeates every aspect of life in Chicago, under threat of mass immigration deportations

Fear permeates every aspect of life in Chicago, under threat of mass immigration deportations

Chicago Tribune reports: “People are scared,” said Alvarez Vasquez [a legal permanent resident], 56, as she watched as her grandchildren Antonio, 9 and Yulisa, 5 — both U.S. citizens — played on the steps outside their Southwest Side school on Thursday afternoon. “They don’t want to go out. They don’t even go to work much because they’re afraid of being caught or deported.” Indeed, the week saw streets in the Little Village neighborhood, which typically bustle with crowds and businesses,…

Read More Read More

‘My neighborhood was one of the most beautiful in Gaza. All that’s left is rubble’

‘My neighborhood was one of the most beautiful in Gaza. All that’s left is rubble’

Ahmed Ahmed reports: As soon as the ceasefire came into effect in Gaza on Sunday, Hamza Othman had only one thought in his mind: to go and see whether his home was still standing. The 22-year-old had refused to leave the Fallujah neighborhood of Jabalia refugee camp for over a year — even after he was wounded by an Israeli airstrike that killed his mother and brother as they sold candy from a stall in front of the house last…

Read More Read More

Israel can no longer ignore the Palestinian cause after failing to quash it by force

Israel can no longer ignore the Palestinian cause after failing to quash it by force

Meron Rapoport writes: It is still too early to say who won and who lost Israel’s war on Gaza, especially since the ceasefire has not yet begun. But if at least the first stage of the agreement goes ahead, it can be said that Israel has not achieved its war goals. Israel has not succeeded in achieving its pronounced goals: wiping out Hamas and returning the captives by military force. More importantly, its undeclared goal was to eliminate the Palestinian…

Read More Read More

A visual guide to the destruction of Gaza

A visual guide to the destruction of Gaza

Gaza: What does it mean to return "home" when Israel has made your home a dangerous toxic waste site of rubble and destruction? https://t.co/o7Qk8ei9XG — Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) January 18, 2025 The Guardian reports: Israel’s war in Gaza has killed tens of thousands of people and laid waste large swathes of the territory. Schools and hospitals have been destroyed, and aid flows into the territory have fallen sharply. As Israel and Hamas reach a deal to pause the war for…

Read More Read More

‘Bye Genocide Joe’: Social media reflects on Biden’s legacy on Gaza

‘Bye Genocide Joe’: Social media reflects on Biden’s legacy on Gaza

Middle East Eye reports: As Joseph Biden’s US presidency comes to an end, many on social media this week are saying that his legacy boils down to one thing: his active role in Israel’s fifteen-month war on Gaza, which has been widely defined as a “genocide” by human rights organisations, international bodies and scholars. Biden’s last day as president, on 19 January, is also the first day of the planned Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal that was reportedly pushed to the finish…

Read More Read More

Biden’s new constitutional amendment on women’s rights is nothing more than his opinion

Biden’s new constitutional amendment on women’s rights is nothing more than his opinion

Vox reports: Three days before leaving office, President Joe Biden has made a surprising announcement: He declared that a decades-old proposed Constitutional amendment enshrining equal rights on the basis of sex is now “the law of the land.” Except it isn’t. A senior administration official told CNN that Biden was not taking executive action but merely “stating an opinion” that the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was in effect. The National Archives — the federal government agency that is the official…

Read More Read More

A ceasefire won’t stop Israel’s genocidal agenda

A ceasefire won’t stop Israel’s genocidal agenda

Tariq Kenney-Shawa writes: Steven Witkoff, Donald Trump’s incoming Middle East envoy, reportedly didn’t bother with pleasantries when he informed the Israelis that he would be arriving to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last Saturday. When told his visit coincided with Shabbat, meaning the prime minister would be unavailable until the evening, Witkoff made it clear that the Jewish holiday would not interfere with his schedule. Netanyahu, understanding the stakes, went to his office that afternoon to meet the envoy,…

Read More Read More

Ceasefire: Trump envoy swayed Netanyahu more in one meeting than Biden did all year, say Arab officials

Ceasefire: Trump envoy swayed Netanyahu more in one meeting than Biden did all year, say Arab officials

  The Times of Israel reports: A “tense” weekend meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and incoming Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff led to a breakthrough in the hostage negotiations, with the top aide to US President-elect Donald Trump doing more to sway the premier in a single sit-down than outgoing President Joe Biden did all year, two Arab officials told The Times of Israel on Tuesday. Witkoff has been in Doha for the past week to take part in the…

Read More Read More

No child should ever see the horrors of Gaza

No child should ever see the horrors of Gaza

Hadeel Awad writes: For 15 months now, Gaza’s children have been reduced to a statistic. The death toll reported gives a specific count for children. Malnourishment and starvation are reported in terms of numbers of children they have affected and killed. Even the cold weather is measured in terms of how many babies it has killed in makeshift tents. But behind these numbers lie heartbreaking stories of Palestinian children whose childhood has been cut short. As a nurse working at…

Read More Read More

The Assads’ houses of death

The Assads’ houses of death

Yezid Sayigh interviews Anne-Marie McManus: Yezid Sayigh: It’s been over a month since a coalition of groups led by the Islamist militia, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, overthrew Bashar al-Assad’s regime, ending a 50-year family dictatorship. Can you give some context to the images that came out of Syrian prisons during and after those events? Anne-Marie McManus: The liberation of the prisons and intelligence branches was not marginal to the fall of the regime. In ways that are really unparalleled in modern…

Read More Read More