Browsed by
Category: Politics

Boiling weeds, eating animal feed: People in Gaza stave off hunger any way they can

Boiling weeds, eating animal feed: People in Gaza stave off hunger any way they can

NPR reports: In northern Gaza’s shattered streets, people buy and sell canned food, small amounts of flour and grain and a few household items in makeshift markets. Nermeen Tafesh and her five children scour the stalls every day for something affordable to eat, but everything is expensive. With no jobs, most people don’t have an income. Tafesh is shocked that 2 pounds of rotten-looking potatoes now sells for 40 shekels, more than $10. Two pounds of rice, costing less than…

Read More Read More

Israel is a strategic liability for the United States

Israel is a strategic liability for the United States

Jon Hoffman writes: Symbolic acts—such as the recent U.S. executive order sanctioning two Israeli settler outposts in the West Bank or Biden’s decision to reestablish the position that Israeli settlement expansion is “inconsistent with international law”—is not going to stop the carnage in Gaza, absolve Washington of complicity, or contribute to future stability. Likely in direct response to these actions, Israel just authorized the construction of 3,400 new houses in West Bank settlements amid historic levels of violence against Palestinians;…

Read More Read More

Marwan Bishara: ‘How dare European nations sell arms to Israel?’

Marwan Bishara: ‘How dare European nations sell arms to Israel?’

  Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara analyses Ireland’s support for South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Ireland’s backing signifies a universalised call for justice in Palestine, joining nations with histories of oppression. Bishara criticizes the US and Israel’s dismissive response to allegations of genocide, highlighting a growing global momentum for Palestinian justice. He questions Europe’s stance on selling arms to Israel amid accusations of weaponising hunger, urging consistency with universal values.

‘We cannot be silent’: A statement from the Jesuits on Gaza

‘We cannot be silent’: A statement from the Jesuits on Gaza

The Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) has issued the following statement in Rome: Almost six months of war in Gaza, and the guns have not fallen silent. We, the members of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), like so many other Catholics, Christians, men and women of all faiths and non-believers, refuse to be silent. Our voices continue to be lifted up in prayer, in lament, in protest at the death and destruction that continue to reign in Gaza and other…

Read More Read More

Billionaires who once disavowed Trump are coming crawling back

Billionaires who once disavowed Trump are coming crawling back

Bess Levin writes: Once upon a time, some überwealthy individuals who’d previously supported Donald Trump declared that they were done with the 45th president of the United States. After January 6, 2021, billionaire GOP donor Nelson Peltz called the insurrection a “stain on America” and publicly apologized for voting for Trump in 2020. Real estate and aerospace mogul Robert Bigelow said Trump “lost me as a supporter” and showed, during the attack on the Capitol, that “he was no commander.”…

Read More Read More

How Biden boxed himself in on Gaza

How Biden boxed himself in on Gaza

Jonathan Guyer writes: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a knack for making world leaders do the jobs of their subordinates. President Joe Biden had to call Netanyahu himself in October—in the first weeks of Israel’s brutal assault on the occupied territory of Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas attacks of October 7—to urge that Israel allow more than 100 trucks of relief aid a day into Gaza. Normally, that’s a task a low-level economic officer at the embassy might…

Read More Read More

Former State Dept. human rights official: Israel is not engaged in self defense; it is committing war crimes

Former State Dept. human rights official: Israel is not engaged in self defense; it is committing war crimes

“People are shocked & appalled by what the US government is doing.” Annelle Sheline has resigned from the US State Department in protest over the administration’s ongoing support for Israel & the war in Gaza. “I know that I speak for many people” in the department, she tells me. pic.twitter.com/UTX30HWPme — Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) March 28, 2024

Russian actions in Ukraine to pave way for Gaza war crimes case in ICC

Russian actions in Ukraine to pave way for Gaza war crimes case in ICC

The National reports: Allegations that Russia committed a war crime by attacking Ukraine’s water and food supplies could lead the International Criminal Court (ICC) to hear its first starvation case, the lawyer leading the investigation told The National. Catriona Murdoch, a legal consultant to Global Rights Compliance which is examining Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, said the situation in the country had been mirrored in Gaza, where the ICC could also pass judgment on Israel’s tactics in the enclave,…

Read More Read More

Trump’s anti-Ukraine view dates to the 1930s. America rejected it then. Will we now?

Trump’s anti-Ukraine view dates to the 1930s. America rejected it then. Will we now?

Robert Kagan writes: Can Republicans really be returning to a 1930s worldview in our 21st-century world? The answer is yes. Trump’s Republican Party wants to take the United States back to the triad of interwar conservatism: high tariffs, anti-immigrant xenophobia, isolationism. According to Russ Vought, who is often touted as Trump’s likely chief of staff in a second term, it is precisely this “older definition of conservatism,” the conservatism of the interwar years, that they hope to impose on the…

Read More Read More

Here’s what it would look like to remove Judge Cannon

Here’s what it would look like to remove Judge Cannon

Philip Rotner writes: While a motion to remove a judge generally has to be filed initially with the judge herself, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals—the appellate court that has jurisdiction over Judge Cannon’s court—has “the authority to order reassignment of a criminal case to another district judge as part of our supervisory authority over the district courts in this Circuit”: If a district judge’s continued participation in a case presents a significant risk of undermining this public confidence, this…

Read More Read More

Trump’s unbearable temptation to dump his Truth Social stock

Trump’s unbearable temptation to dump his Truth Social stock

Timothy Noah writes: Remember in Godfather II when the mobster Hyman Roth tells Michael Corleone, his co-investor in President Fulgencio Batista’s Cuba, “Michael, we’re bigger than U.S. Steel”? U.S. Steel is no longer the colossus it was in 1958, when that scene takes place. But it still caught my attention when The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the valuation of Donald Trump’s Truth Social was almost as big as U.S. Steel’s. This was the very first day of trading for the app’s parent company,…

Read More Read More

Majority in U.S. now disapprove of Israeli action in Gaza

Majority in U.S. now disapprove of Israeli action in Gaza

Gallup reports: After narrowly backing Israel’s military action in Gaza in November, Americans now oppose the campaign by a solid margin. Fifty-five percent currently disapprove of Israel’s actions, while 36% approve. The latest results are from a March 1-20 survey. The Israel-Hamas war has continued for five months and has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians and over 1,000 Israelis. Major parts of Gaza have been destroyed, complicating efforts to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians…

Read More Read More

Ireland backs bid to include blocking of aid in definition of genocide

Ireland backs bid to include blocking of aid in definition of genocide

The Guardian reports: Ireland is to seek to widen the definition of genocide to include blocking humanitarian aid in a landmark international court of justice (ICJ) case against Israel. The Irish government will intervene in the case taken by South Africa and argue that restricting food and other essentials in Gaza may constitute genocidal intent, the foreign minister Micheál Martin said on Wednesday. “We believe there is a case, given how this war has been conducted,” Martin told the Guardian….

Read More Read More

The children who lost limbs in Gaza

The children who lost limbs in Gaza

Eliza Griswold writes: Just off the acacia-lined highway to the Qatari capital of Doha is a three-story, whitewashed apartment complex built to host visitors at the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Until recently, the gated compound was unoccupied. Yet in the past several months, as part of a deal Qatar struck with Israel, Hamas, and Egypt to evacuate as many as fifteen hundred wounded Gazans in urgent need of medical care, it has begun to fill. The new residents are eight…

Read More Read More

Why I’m resigning from the State Department

Why I’m resigning from the State Department

Annelle Sheline, PhD, served for a year as a foreign affairs officer at the Office of Near Eastern Affairs in the Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor: Since Hamas’ attack on October 7, Israel has used American bombs in its war in Gaza, which has killed more than 32,000 people — 13,000 of them children — with countless others buried under the rubble, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. Israel is credibly accused of starving…

Read More Read More

The interlocking political fates of Biden and Netanyahu

The interlocking political fates of Biden and Netanyahu

Lisa Goldman and Danny Postel writes: This week’s diplomatic contretemps between the Israeli and American governments is being described as the worst rupture in the “special relationship” in decades. In 1962 President John F. Kennedy remarked to Golda Meir (then Israel’s foreign minister) that America’s bond with the Jewish state was comparable only to the one the U.S. shared with Britain. On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled the trip of a delegation of top officials that was set…

Read More Read More