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Category: War

Pope Francis: ‘this is not war, it is terrorism’

Pope Francis: ‘this is not war, it is terrorism’

The Guardian reports:Pope Francis has faced criticism for allegedly drawing equivalence between Israel and Hamas. During a general audience after meeting with Israeli and Palestinian delegations at the Vatican, the pope reportedly remarked, “They suffer so much, I heard how they both suffer.” This statement referred to testimonies brought by the Israeli group, who shared their experiences of having relatives taken hostage by Hamas during the 7 October attacks, as well as the Palestinians with family members living in the…

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While a fire rages in Gaza, the West Bank smolders

While a fire rages in Gaza, the West Bank smolders

Omar Shakir writes: While global attention is focused on Israel and Gaza, Israeli authorities are tightening their repression in the West Bank and Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians are surging. That repression was already at a peak before the October 7 Hamas-led attack that killed some 1200 people, mostly civilians, in Israel, but it has gotten much worse since. Between January 1 and October 6, Israeli security forces killed more Palestinians in the West Bank – 192, including 40 children…

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Gaza’s next tragedy: Disease risk spreads amid overcrowded shelters, dirty water and breakdown of basic sanitation

Gaza’s next tragedy: Disease risk spreads amid overcrowded shelters, dirty water and breakdown of basic sanitation

By Yara M. Asi, University of Central Florida After more than a month of being subjected to sustained bombing, the besieged people of the Gaza Strip are now confronted with another threat to life: disease. Overcrowding at shelters, a breakdown of basic sanitation, the rising number of unburied dead and a scarcity of clean drinking water have left the enclave “on the precipice of major disease outbreaks,” according to the World Health Organization. As an expert in Palestinian public health…

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U.S. has sent Israel data on aid group locations to try to prevent strikes, but the strikes continue

U.S. has sent Israel data on aid group locations to try to prevent strikes, but the strikes continue

Politico reports: The Biden administration has been providing Israel with the location of humanitarian groups in Gaza for weeks to prevent strikes against their facilities. But Israel has continued to hit such sites. The information included GPS coordinates of a number of medical facilities and information on movements of aid groups in Gaza to the Israeli government for at least a month, according to three people familiar with the communications. All were granted anonymity because they feared speaking publicly would…

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Ex Obama adviser says killing 4,000 Palestinian children ‘wasn’t enough’

Ex Obama adviser says killing 4,000 Palestinian children ‘wasn’t enough’

Vice News reports: A lobbying group has cut ties with an ex-adviser to former President Barack Obama after videos surfaced that show the man making Islamophobic comments and threats to a food cart employee in New York City. The videos, posted on X (formerly Twitter) by a Columbia University student, shows Stuart Seldowitz asking someone off camera, “Did you rape your daughter like Muhammad did?” and saying that killing 4,000 Palestinian children “wasn’t enough.” Seldowitz was acting director for the…

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Pro-Israel groups are weaponizing civil rights law to suppress dissent on campuses across America

Pro-Israel groups are weaponizing civil rights law to suppress dissent on campuses across America

The Intercept reports: In front of Columbia University’s Low Memorial Library, seven infant-sized bundles of white cloth rested on the steps, splattered with red paint. Behind the swaddles, plywood boards read “10,600 lives slaughtered,” “4,412 children,” and “let Gaza live,” alongside images of Palestinian flags and olive trees. This was the scene where Columbia students gathered last Thursday for a “peaceful protest art installation” and demonstration organized by the campus chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice…

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Biden’s loyalty to Israel may result in Trump’s return to the White House

Biden’s loyalty to Israel may result in Trump’s return to the White House

NBC News reports: President Joe Biden’s approval rating has declined to the lowest level of his presidency — 40% — as strong majorities of all voters disapprove of his handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. What’s more, the poll finds Biden behind former President Donald Trump for the first time in a hypothetical general-election matchup, although the deficit is well within the poll’s margin of error for a contest that’s…

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In a shift, U.S. Jewish lawmakers ramp up criticism of Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza

In a shift, U.S. Jewish lawmakers ramp up criticism of Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza

The Times of Israel reports: In the span of two days, one Jewish lawmaker became the first to call on Israel to ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, another called the Palestinian death toll in the Israel-Hamas war “unacceptable,” and a third said suffering in Gaza was a “moral failure.” On Wednesday, Sen. Jon Ossoff, who has been a consensus-seeking voice on Israel within the Democratic party and who has carefully avoided overly criticizing the Jewish state since entering Congress in…

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Here’s what the mass violence in Gaza looks like to a scholar of genocide

Here’s what the mass violence in Gaza looks like to a scholar of genocide

Raz Segal writes: I cannot stop thinking about the dozens of Israeli children held in captivity by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in underground tunnels in Gaza, while above them Israel’s attack has killed, so far, nearly 4,500 Palestinian children. Stopping the violence, and returning the hostages, is urgent for any person who values all lives. That it is very difficult to imagine how this happens tells a terrible truth: Those with the most power to effect change refuse to…

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Nakba generation relive trauma of displacement in Gaza

Nakba generation relive trauma of displacement in Gaza

The Guardian reports: Umm Ghadeer’s earliest memories are of the Nakba, or catastrophe, of 1948 in which about 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homeland after the creation of Israel. She was three years old. Last month she was forced to abandon her home all over again, fleeing Shejaiya, a neighbourhood of Gaza City, after the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas. “I cried very hard because I relived the experience of displacement when we fled our homes in…

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Israel has killed more children in Gaza than have died in all other conflict zones globally over the last year

Israel has killed more children in Gaza than have died in all other conflict zones globally over the last year

The New York Times reports: Barefoot and weeping, Khaled Joudeh, 9, hurried toward the dozens of bodies wrapped in white burial shrouds, blankets and rugs outside the overcrowded morgue. “Where’s my mom?” he cried next to a photographer for The New York Times. “I want to see my mom.” “Where is Khalil?” he continued, barely audible between sobs as he asked for his 12-year-old brother. A morgue worker opened a white shroud, so Khaled could kiss his brother one final…

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Israel could lose

Israel could lose

  Jon B. Alterman writes: Israel’s army has a remarkable record of winning. It won conventional wars in 1948, 1967, and 1973; it forced the Palestine Liberation Organization to give up armed struggle in 1996; and it has deterred Hezbollah since a 2006 campaign laid waste to the group. The military is strong not merely because of U.S. support, but also because everything about Israeli military—from its doctrine, organization, and training to its leadership and personnel—makes it by far the…

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These evangelicals are cheering the Gaza war as the end of the world

These evangelicals are cheering the Gaza war as the end of the world

Talia Lavin writes: On Tuesday, approximately 300,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., to show their support for Israel in an ongoing war that has claimed the lives of thousands of people. The lineup of speakers at the March for Israel included Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Sen. Chuck Schumer, Jewish-American celebrities like Debra Messing and Tovah Feldshuh, as well as rabbis and cantors. It also included an evangelical Christian pastor from Texas, infamous for his fire-and-brimstone prophecies about the end of…

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Israel’s ludicrous propaganda wins over the only audience that counts

Israel’s ludicrous propaganda wins over the only audience that counts

Jeet Heer writes: On November 11, an Arabic-language Twitter account maintained by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted a video purporting to be a selfie by a nurse in al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, a major battlefield in the current conflict that was taken over by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) a few days later. In the startling video, as bombs went off in the background, the tearful nurse warned Gazans to heed the call of the IDF to flee to…

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Israel fails to produce evidence supporting its claim that Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital sits atop Hamas’s HQ

Israel fails to produce evidence supporting its claim that Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital sits atop Hamas’s HQ

The Washington Post reports: The Israeli raid of the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital stretched into its second day Thursday as troops searched for evidence of the extensive Hamas infrastructure that Israeli and U.S. officials have said lies beneath the facility. The Israel Defense Forces said Thursday that searches had uncovered the body of a captive Israeli woman in a house near the hospital, along with weapons. On Wednesday, the IDF released photographs and video of small caches of weapons it…

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