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Category: War

Actors and filmmakers condemn film industry’s silence ‘while genocide is taking place in Gaza’

Actors and filmmakers condemn film industry’s silence ‘while genocide is taking place in Gaza’

Variety reports: Joaquin Phoenix, Juliette Binoche, Pedro Pascal, Riz Ahmed and Guillermo del Toro are among a group of figures to have added their names to a letter condemning the film industry for its “silence” over the ongoing and deadly impact of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. The letter, published on the first day of Cannes and initially signed by more than 370 actors and filmmakers, also condemned Israel’s killing of Fatma Hassona, the protagonist of festival-bound doc “Put Your…

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Kremlin cites past wars as it threatens long conflict in Ukraine

Kremlin cites past wars as it threatens long conflict in Ukraine

Pjotr Sauer writes: Peter the Great’s long war against Sweden – a grinding conflict that claimed countless Russian lives – is rarely held up as a model for modern diplomacy. Yet behind closed doors on Friday, during the first direct peace talks with Ukraine in three years, Russia’s lead negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, cited it as an explicit warning: Moscow was prepared to fight for as long as it took. Just like when Russian troops rolled into Ukraine in 2022, the…

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Trump’s sanctions on International Criminal Court prosecutor have halted tribunal’s work

Trump’s sanctions on International Criminal Court prosecutor have halted tribunal’s work

The Associated Press reports: The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor has lost access to his email, and his bank accounts have been frozen. The Hague-based court’s American staffers have been told that if they travel to the U.S. they risk arrest. Some nongovernmental organizations have stopped working with the ICC and the leaders of one won’t even reply to emails from court officials. Those are just some of the hurdles facing court staff since U.S. President Donald Trump in February…

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Palestinians in Gaza face widespread starvation, some Israeli officials admit in private

Palestinians in Gaza face widespread starvation, some Israeli officials admit in private

The New York Times reports: Some Israeli military officials have privately concluded that Palestinians in Gaza face widespread starvation unless aid deliveries are restored within weeks, according to three Israeli defense officials familiar with conditions in the enclave. For months, Israel has maintained that its blockade on food and fuel to Gaza did not pose a major threat to civilian life in the territory, even as the United Nations and other aid agencies have said a famine was looming. But…

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Americans are losing interest in Gaza at the worst possible moment

Americans are losing interest in Gaza at the worst possible moment

Zack Beauchamp writes: Israel’s war in Gaza, which has long been a moral atrocity, is on the brink of becoming unimaginably worse. Earlier this month, Israel’s security cabinet approved a plan that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as “the concluding moves” of the war in Gaza. Called “Gideon’s Chariots,” the operation’s plan calls for the mass destruction of remaining buildings in Gaza and the “conquest” of much of the Strip by Israel. The more than 2 million Palestinian civilians would…

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Pope Leo calls for peace and aid in Gaza as Trump heads to Middle East to strike business deals

Pope Leo calls for peace and aid in Gaza as Trump heads to Middle East to strike business deals

Vanity Fair reports: “Never again war,” Pope Leo XIV exclaimed during his first Sunday address to an estimated 100,000 people gathered in St. Peter’s Square. The new pontiff called for an “authentic, just and lasting peace” in Ukraine and an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Leo, continuing in the advocacy of his predecessor, Pope Francis, advocated for humanitarian aid to be allowed into Palestine and delivered “to the exhausted civilian population,” adding that “all hostages” held by Hamas in Gaza must…

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Are we heading for World War III – or has it already started?

Are we heading for World War III – or has it already started?

Patrick Wintour writes: In a week in which former allies in a redividing globe separately commemorated the 80th anniversary of the end of the second world war, the sense of a runaway descent towards a third world war draws ever closer. The implosion of Pax Americana, the interconnectedness of conflicts, the new willingness to resort to unbridled state-sponsored violence and the irrelevance of the institutions of the rules-based order have all been on brutal display this week. From Kashmir to…

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India’s strikes on Pakistan show how warfare has been normalised again

India’s strikes on Pakistan show how warfare has been normalised again

Dan Sabbagh writes: India’s string of attacks on Pakistan overnight – a response, Delhi says, to the killing of 26 in a terror attack in Kashmir last month – comes at a time when warfare has become increasingly normalised internationally and the restraints of the global diplomatic system weakened. Though flare-ups between the two south Asian powers are nothing new, India’s Operation Sindoor is already notably more aggressive than recent military actions launched by Delhi against its neighbour in 2016…

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Trump team urged Ukraine to accept U.S. deportees amid war, documents show

Trump team urged Ukraine to accept U.S. deportees amid war, documents show

The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration earlier this year urged the Ukrainian government to accept an unspecified number of U.S. deportees who are citizens of other countries, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post, an extraordinary request of a nation at war and dependent on American military and financial support for its survival. The documents do not indicate how officials in Kyiv responded to the late-January proposal, relayed by a senior U.S. diplomat, that called for sending third-country…

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Trump strikes a ceasefire deal with the Houthis

Trump strikes a ceasefire deal with the Houthis

Reuters reports: President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday the U.S. will stop bombing the Houthis in Yemen, saying that the Iran-aligned group had agreed to stop interrupting important shipping lanes in the Middle East. After Trump made the announcement, Oman said it had mediated the ceasefire deal, marking a major shift in Houthi policy since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza in October 2023. Under the agreement, neither the U.S. nor the Houthis would target the other, including U.S….

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Israel plans to occupy and flatten all of Gaza if no deal by Trump’s trip to the Middle East

Israel plans to occupy and flatten all of Gaza if no deal by Trump’s trip to the Middle East

Axios reports: Israel has set President Trump’s visit to the Middle East next week as a deadline for a new hostage and ceasefire deal, with a massive ground operation to commence if no deal is reached, Israeli officials say. Why it matters: Israel’s Security Cabinet approved a plan Sunday night to gradually reoccupy all of Gaza and hold it indefinitely if no deal is reached by May 15. Plans for the operation call for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to flatten any buildings that remain…

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Israel wages war for land and water in Syria’s south

Israel wages war for land and water in Syria’s south

Natacha Danon writes: Early last month, Abed, 45, was harvesting zucchini in the fertile valley of Syria’s southwestern Houran region when military vehicles barreled through the fields, kicking up dust and crushing his crops. “They surrounded us, and of course we couldn’t understand them because they spoke Hebrew. They took us in cars, blindfolded us, and brought us to the Israeli border,” he says, gesturing with his weathered hands toward a hill, its ridge sparsely lined with trees. His name…

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Many in Gaza face malnutrition and hunger as Israel’s blockade enters its third month

Many in Gaza face malnutrition and hunger as Israel’s blockade enters its third month

The Associated Press reports: Malnutrition and hunger are becoming increasingly prevalent in the Gaza Strip as Israel’s total blockade enters its third month. A shortage of food and supplies has driven the territory toward starvation, according to aid agencies. Supplies to treat and prevent malnutrition are depleted and quickly running out as documented cases of malnutrition rise. The price of what little food is still available in the market is unaffordable for most in Gaza, where the United Nations says…

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Waltz was seen as more closely aligned with Netanyahu than with Trump

Waltz was seen as more closely aligned with Netanyahu than with Trump

The Washington Post reports: Waltz’s troubles built up over time, and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles increasingly felt he was not a good fit for the president, according to a senior White House official, a Trump adviser and one additional person familiar with the matter on Friday. They and others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal personnel considerations. In announcing the shift, Trump on Thursday vowed in a social media post that “together, we will…

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For the last two months, absolutely no supplies have been entering Gaza

For the last two months, absolutely no supplies have been entering Gaza

Isaac Chotiner writes: In mid-January, Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire, putting a temporary stop to the war in Gaza, which began after the attacks of October 7, 2023, and which has killed more than fifty thousand Palestinians. (The combined Israeli death toll from the Hamas attack and the ensuing war is around three thousand people.) Throughout the first fifteen months of the conflict, Israel’s behavior, specifically in refusing to allow sufficient amounts of aid into Gaza, drew international…

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Did ‘Vatican diplomacy’ change Trump’s mind on Ukraine? Three reasons for being skeptical

Did ‘Vatican diplomacy’ change Trump’s mind on Ukraine? Three reasons for being skeptical

Orysia Lutsevych writes: Hope can lift the spirit, but it’s not a good strategy. Trump’s second term has torpedoed the world order, in a manner that is especially dangerous for Ukraine and the rest of Europe. Three factors make the diplomatic efforts to defend Europe and achieve a good outcome in Ukraine precarious. First, the disturbing alignment in worldview between the White House and the Kremlin. Both Trump and Putin believe the world is a superpowers’ playground, where the powerful…

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