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Category: Politics

Gideon Levy: Israel has achieved nothing with war on Gaza

Gideon Levy: Israel has achieved nothing with war on Gaza

  Given a choice between war and getting all its hostages back, Israel has opted for more war, argues Israeli journalist Gideon Levy. Levy tells host Steve Clemons that Israeli politicians may abandon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but even if he was replaced, Israel would continue its war on Gaza and occupation of the Palestinian people as a whole. “Radical change” in Israeli attitude and U.S. support is needed for any improvement in the situation, says Levy. After Oct. 7,…

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Bernie Sanders says will boycott ‘war criminal’ Netanyahu’s Congress speech

Bernie Sanders says will boycott ‘war criminal’ Netanyahu’s Congress speech

The New Arab reports: US Senator Bernie Sanders has said he will not attend a congressional speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was sent an official invite by the body on Friday. In a statement published to X, formerly Twitter, on Saturday, Sanders said that the congressional invitation was “a sad day for our country”. Sanders’ statement also included a list of things that Israel has no right to do in its war on Gaza following Hamas‘ 7…

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‘No way out without bloodshed’: The right believe the U.S. is under threat and are mobilizing

‘No way out without bloodshed’: The right believe the U.S. is under threat and are mobilizing

The Observer reports: The posts are ominous. “Pick a side, or YOU are next,” wrote conservative talkshow host Dan Bongino on the Truth Social media platform in the aftermath of former president Donald Trump’s 34 felony convictions. The replies were even more so. “Dan, seriously now,” one user wrote in response to Bongino. “I see no way out of all this mess without bloodshed. When you can rig an election, then weaponize the government and the courts against a former…

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Exposed: Max Blumenthal’s Grayzone appears to have financial ties to the Russian and Iranian governments

Exposed: Max Blumenthal’s Grayzone appears to have financial ties to the Russian and Iranian governments

The Washington Post reports: Recently unearthed documents reveal that leaders of an online news site aimed at Americans have received money from both Russian and Iranian government media outlets, showing how widening geopolitical alliances are making it harder to identify and trace foreign influence operations. Hacked emails and other documents from the Iranian government-funded Press TV show payments of thousands of dollars to a writer who is now a Washington-based editor for Grayzone, whose founder regularly appears on Russian television…

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Russian legal foundation linked to Kremlin activities in Europe

Russian legal foundation linked to Kremlin activities in Europe

The Guardian reports: Leaked internal documents have exposed the activities of a Russian state-backed legal defence foundation that European intelligence agencies and analysts say is in fact a Kremlin influence operation active in 48 countries across Europe and around the world. Internal documents from the Fund for Support and Protection of the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad (Pravfond) indicate that the foundation finances propaganda websites targeted at Europeans, helped pay for the legal defence of the convicted arms trafficker Viktor…

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Talking about Zionism

Talking about Zionism

  In the coverage of Israel-Palestine in the Western media, an ideology that is central to the story – Zionism – rarely gets discussed. Instead, we hear a debate about whether opposition to it – anti-Zionism – is anti-Semitic. The Listening Post’s Daniel Turi reports on Zionism, the confusion that surrounds it, and what it tells us about the world’s longest-running occupation. Contributors: Bernard Avishai – Professor, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Sherene Seikaly – Associate Professor of History, University…

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Gaza: The war on hospitals

Gaza: The war on hospitals

  Israel is attacking Gaza’s hospitals in violation of international law, but is it part of a pattern going back to 1948? Hospitals are supposed to be immune from attack in times of war but Israel has repeatedly bombed and shelled them since October 7, 2023. This film looks at Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s hospitals in the context of its historical expansion at the expense of the Palestinian population, going back to 1948. The Israeli army cut off water, power,…

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Samuel Alito’s king complex is warping reality on and off the bench

Samuel Alito’s king complex is warping reality on and off the bench

Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern: Dahlia Lithwick: I think the merits can get lost when we talk about the flags. But there is a substantive problem that we’re starting to pick up on, and that is Justice Alito, in recent weeks, making very real and serious errors in his opinions. They’re actually prompting corrections from sources that he cites, who say, “No, my work reflects the opposite of what you’re claiming.” I’d love for you to unpack that. Mark…

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Would Biden deal ‘stop the war,’ or (as Netanyahu’s office says) ‘enable Israel to continue the war’?

Would Biden deal ‘stop the war,’ or (as Netanyahu’s office says) ‘enable Israel to continue the war’?

Politico reports: “The deal does stop the war,” said a senior administration official, who briefed reporters on the situation on condition of anonymity. The official added: “What’s on the table now is very close to the deal Hamas said they would take” in earlier negotiations. Hamas rejected previous cease-fire deals, as they didn’t offer a pathway to end the war for good. The first phase of the three-phase deal would last six weeks and include a “complete” cease-fire, a withdrawal…

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Can Palestinians imagine a future with Israelis after this war?

Can Palestinians imagine a future with Israelis after this war?

Mahmoud Mushtaha writes: “We were free. It was the most beautiful life. We had everything — our heritage, our trade, and our sea.” My grandfather, who is now 85, still remembers life in Palestine before 1948. There were no restrictions on travel, no checkpoints, no sieges, and no curfews. He grew up in a small village in Jaffa, where life was bustling with activity during the day, and filled with social gatherings at night. His was a community rich in…

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Ghent University severs ties with Israeli universities; calls on EU to expel Israel from academic cooperation treaty

Ghent University severs ties with Israeli universities; calls on EU to expel Israel from academic cooperation treaty

VRT News reports: Ghent University (UGent) has said that it is to halt all cooperation and joint projects that it currently has with Israeli research institutes and universities. However, the pro-Palestinian activists that have been occupying a building at the university for over 3 weeks are not satisfied. They are demanding that the university also cease cooperation with Israeli companies. Under pressure from the pro-Palestinian activists and following fresh advice issued by the university’s Human Rights Committee, UGent has decided…

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Off Leash: Inside the secret, global, far-right group chat started by Erik Prince

Off Leash: Inside the secret, global, far-right group chat started by Erik Prince

Ken Silverstein writes: In his book In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, Erik Larson cites a cable sent to the State Department in June 1933 by a U.S. diplomat posted in Germany that provided a far more candid assessment of the Nazi leadership than the one that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration was then conveying to the public. “With few exceptions, the men who are running this Government are of a mentality…

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Trump’s guilty verdict isn’t scaring off his donors

Trump’s guilty verdict isn’t scaring off his donors

Business Insider reports: Former President Donald Trump’s conviction Thursday of falsifying business records hasn’t dissuaded high-profile supporters in the world of business — some of whom are newly energized by the historic verdict. In a post Thursday on X, the venture capitalist Shaun Maguire expressed his support for Trump, saying “the timing isn’t a coincidence” as he announced a $300,000 donation to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. “Bluntly, that’s part of why I’m supporting him,” Maguire, a partner at Sequoia Capital, wrote on X about…

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Trump bungled the trial

Trump bungled the trial

Ankush Khardori writes: It may not have been the trial that the country deserves, but it’s the trial that we got. On Thursday, Donald Trump became the first president in U.S. history to become a convicted felon thanks to a jury of 12 New Yorkers. The verdict was swift, coming after less than two days of deliberations in the hush money trial. But a conviction was not inevitable. The legal issues were intricate and in some key respects novel, and…

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‘Catastrophic consequences’ in Rafah due to Israel’s actions, bystander Power warns as more staffers resign

‘Catastrophic consequences’ in Rafah due to Israel’s actions, bystander Power warns as more staffers resign

Politico reports: USAID head Samantha Power warned on Wednesday that Israel’s military operation in southern Gaza is having “catastrophic consequences” despite Biden administration efforts to minimize the negative impacts. “Despite currently more limited military operations around Rafah and the Egypt/Gaza border, the catastrophic consequences that we have long warned about are becoming a reality,” Power said during a virtual event with governments that aid the humanitarian response in Gaza. Her comments are one of the harshest assessments yet from the…

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Veteran State Dept. official says she quit over Biden administration ‘twisting the facts’ on Gaza

Veteran State Dept. official says she quit over Biden administration ‘twisting the facts’ on Gaza

HuffPost reports: Veteran State Department official Stacy Gilbert quit the agency because the Biden administration is “twisting the facts” to make a “patently, demonstrably, quantifiably false” claim that Israel is not blocking humanitarian aid for Gaza in order to justify his administration’s continued military support to the country, she told HuffPost on Wednesday in the first interview since her resignation. Gilbert, who has over 20 years experience in U.S. policy toward global crises and conflicts, said she is convinced Israel’s…

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