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Category: War

Biden administration doesn’t have ‘the guts and the moral courage’ to stand up to the Israeli government

Biden administration doesn’t have ‘the guts and the moral courage’ to stand up to the Israeli government

U.S. policymakers "don't have the guts and the moral courage" to stand up to the Israeli govt, says top Middle East watcher @FawazGerges. “I really have no trust in American foreign policy anymore,” he tells me. pic.twitter.com/KjvqMeglLl — Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) December 9, 2023 Fawaz Gerges is Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and holder of the Emirates Professorship in Contemporary Middle East Studies.

Peter Beinart & Omer Bartov on UPenn president resignation, Gaza & the weaponization of antisemitism

Peter Beinart & Omer Bartov on UPenn president resignation, Gaza & the weaponization of antisemitism

  University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill voluntarily resigned her position Saturday after a House Education Committee hearing last Tuesday on how colleges have handled antisemitism. Magill has faced demands to resign since September, when she refused to bow to pressure to cancel the Palestine Writes Literature Festival on campus. More universities face accusations that they have failed to protect Jewish students since the October 7 Hamas incursion into southern Israel amid a broader effort to restrict pro-Palestinian speech on…

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Will America abandon Ukraine?

Will America abandon Ukraine?

George Packer writes: In the summer of 1940, when Great Britain was fighting Nazi Germany alone, Winston Churchill asked to borrow a few dozen aging American destroyers to defend the English coast from imminent invasion. Churchill wrote to Franklin D. Roosevelt: “Mr. President, with great respect, I must tell you that in the long history of the world, this is a thing to do now.” Today Ukraine is fighting Russia alone. American aid—never timely or sufficient, but enough to help…

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Republicans to meet allies of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán on ending Ukraine aid

Republicans to meet allies of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán on ending Ukraine aid

The Guardian reports: Allies of Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán will hold a closed-door meeting with Republicans in Washington to push for an end to US military support for Ukraine, the Guardian has learned. Members of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs and staff from the Hungarian embassy in Washington will on Monday begin a two-day event hosted by the conservative Heritage Foundation thinktank. The first day includes panel speeches about the Ukraine war as well as topics such…

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Half of Gaza’s population is starving, warns UN

Half of Gaza’s population is starving, warns UN

The Independent reports: Half of Gaza’s population is now believed to be “starving” as Israel’s attack on the besieged strip continues to escalate, a senior UN official warned. Calling for an immediate “humanitarian ceasefire”, Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the UN World Food Programme, took to X saying: “There’s not enough food. People are starving. “WFP has reached over one million people, but the situation is untenable. We need to get our supplies in [and we need] a humanitarian…

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IFJ: Almost 100 journalists killed, mostly in Gaza, and 400 imprisoned in 2023

IFJ: Almost 100 journalists killed, mostly in Gaza, and 400 imprisoned in 2023

The Guardian reports: A leading organisation representing journalists worldwide has expressed deep concern at the number of media professionals killed around the globe doing their jobs in 2023, with more journalists killed during Israel’s war with Hamas than in any other conflict in more than 30 years. In its annual count of media worker deaths, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said 94 journalists had been killed so far this year and almost 400 others had been imprisoned. The figure…

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Humanitarian catastrophe is Israeli policy

Humanitarian catastrophe is Israeli policy

B’Tselem reports: The humanitarian crisis currently underway in the Gaza Strip is not a side effect of the war, but the direct intended result of the policy implemented by Israel. The people behind this policy see inflicting a humanitarian crisis on more than two million people as a legitimate way to put pressure on Hamas. Energy Minister Israel Katz, who signed an order to stop the supply of electricity to the Gaza Strip on the very first day of the…

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Civilians make up 61% of Gaza deaths from airstrikes, Israeli study finds

Civilians make up 61% of Gaza deaths from airstrikes, Israeli study finds

The Guardian reports: The aerial bombing campaign by Israel in Gaza is the most indiscriminate in terms of civilian casualties in recent years, a study published by an Israeli newspaper has found. The analysis by Haaretz came as Israeli forces fought to consolidate their control of northern Gaza on Saturday, bombing the Shejaiya district of Gaza City, while also conducting airstrikes on Rafah, a town on the southern border with Egypt where the Israeli army has told people in Gaza…

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Unexploded bombs, many U.S.-made, could make parts of Gaza uninhabitable

Unexploded bombs, many U.S.-made, could make parts of Gaza uninhabitable

The Washington Post reports: Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip has reduced entire neighborhoods to dust. The resumption of fighting and intensified airstrikes on southern Gaza after a week-long pause could mean that even more of the territory could meet the same fate. But the war, however long it continues, is only the beginning. Parts of a postwar Gaza could long be dangerous to inhabit, let alone rebuild. Riddled with hundreds if not thousands of unexploded ordnance, ranging from makeshift…

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State Department bypasses Congress to approve Israel’s order for tank ammunition

State Department bypasses Congress to approve Israel’s order for tank ammunition

The New York Times reports: The State Department is pushing through a government sale to Israel of 13,000 rounds of tank ammunition, bypassing a congressional review process that is generally required for arms sales to foreign nations, according to a State Department official and an online post by the Defense Department on Saturday. The State Department notified congressional committees at 11 p.m. on Friday that it was moving ahead with the sale, valued at more than $106 million, even though…

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Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are openly talking about conditioning U.S. aid to Israel

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are openly talking about conditioning U.S. aid to Israel

Business Insider reports: Over the last several weeks, members of Congress have openly discussed the idea of conditioning US aid to Israel. The conversation has been driven by the climbing death toll and worsening conditions for Palestinian civilians in Gaza, far-right policies pursued by the Netanyahu government, and a sense that Israel has not been interested in pursuing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in recent years. Conditions aren’t likely to happen, at least in the near term. The…

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The ‘darkest hour’ in the UN’s history as the U.S. vetoes a call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza

The ‘darkest hour’ in the UN’s history as the U.S. vetoes a call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza

This is how 'concerned' the USA is about Palestinians being killed in Gaza. They just vetoed a UN security council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. pic.twitter.com/xBrORvQMJz — Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) December 8, 2023 The Guardian reports: The UN is at “breaking point” in Gaza, its most senior official has warned, as his colleagues described the “untenable” humanitarian catastrophe in the territory, with 700 people sharing a single toilet and people burning plastic to keep warm. One official said UN…

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Save the Children: We are failing the children of Gaza

Save the Children: We are failing the children of Gaza

Inger Ashing, Save the Children’s Chief Executive Officer,says: We are running out of words to describe the horror unfolding for Gaza’s children. Most of them have been forcibly displaced, squeezed into a tiny sliver of land that cannot accommodate them. Those who haven’t been forced from their homes are cut-off from the basics needed for survival, far away from the little amount of humanitarian assistance that can be delivered. Those who have survived the bombardment so far face the imminent…

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Israel is getting away with murder — with American support

Israel is getting away with murder — with American support

Avi Shlaim writes: On 7th January 2009, while Operation Cast Lead was in full swing, I wrote an article in the Guardian. “How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe”. This was Israel’s first major assault on the Gaza Strip after its unilateral withdrawal in 2005. Further major military offensives followed in 2012, 2014, 2021 and 2022, not counting minor flare-ups and nearly 200 dead during the border protests in 2018 known as the March of Return. By…

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UN Secretary-General invokes Article 99 in letter to Security Council on Gaza

UN Secretary-General invokes Article 99 in letter to Security Council on Gaza

Just Security reports: On Dec. 6, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sent an urgent letter to the Security Council on the desperate humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, using the seldom invoked authority in Article 99 of the UN Charter. In his letter, the Secretary-General reiterates his previous appeals for a humanitarian ceasefire and warns that public order in Gaza will “completely break down soon due to the desperate conditions.” A rarely used diplomatic tool, Article 99 allows the head…

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Republicans block aid to Ukraine, jeopardizing its fight against Russia

Republicans block aid to Ukraine, jeopardizing its fight against Russia

The New York Times reports: Republicans on Wednesday blocked an emergency spending bill to fund the war in Ukraine, demanding strict new border restrictions in exchange and severely jeopardizing President Biden’s push to replenish the war chests of American allies before the end of the year. The failed vote highlighted waning support in the United States for continuing to fund Ukraine’s war effort at a perilous time in the conflict, with Kyiv’s counteroffensive failing to meet its objectives and Russia’s…

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