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Category: War

Israel has declared war on the promise of a strong, democratic Syria

Israel has declared war on the promise of a strong, democratic Syria

Omar Sabbour writes: The end of 2024 delivered a surprising turn of events in the 13-year-long war in Syria. Bashar al-Assad’s regime collapsed spectacularly when faced with a limited operation by rebel forces. Amid the turmoil, Israel expanded its occupation of Syrian land in the south of the country, expelling hundreds of Syrians from their homes. It also launched a devastating campaign of aerial bombardment, wiping out the Syrian air force and military capabilities. Some of the bombardment was so…

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Ceasefire: Trump envoy swayed Netanyahu more in one meeting than Biden did all year, say Arab officials

Ceasefire: Trump envoy swayed Netanyahu more in one meeting than Biden did all year, say Arab officials

  The Times of Israel reports: A “tense” weekend meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and incoming Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff led to a breakthrough in the hostage negotiations, with the top aide to US President-elect Donald Trump doing more to sway the premier in a single sit-down than outgoing President Joe Biden did all year, two Arab officials told The Times of Israel on Tuesday. Witkoff has been in Doha for the past week to take part in the…

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No child should ever see the horrors of Gaza

No child should ever see the horrors of Gaza

Hadeel Awad writes: For 15 months now, Gaza’s children have been reduced to a statistic. The death toll reported gives a specific count for children. Malnourishment and starvation are reported in terms of numbers of children they have affected and killed. Even the cold weather is measured in terms of how many babies it has killed in makeshift tents. But behind these numbers lie heartbreaking stories of Palestinian children whose childhood has been cut short. As a nurse working at…

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The Assads’ houses of death

The Assads’ houses of death

Yezid Sayigh interviews Anne-Marie McManus: Yezid Sayigh: It’s been over a month since a coalition of groups led by the Islamist militia, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, overthrew Bashar al-Assad’s regime, ending a 50-year family dictatorship. Can you give some context to the images that came out of Syrian prisons during and after those events? Anne-Marie McManus: The liberation of the prisons and intelligence branches was not marginal to the fall of the regime. In ways that are really unparalleled in modern…

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Israeli officials struggle to conceal frustrations as Gaza truce nears

Israeli officials struggle to conceal frustrations as Gaza truce nears

Middle East Eye reports: A ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas is at its closest point, according to officials involved in negotiations in Doha. With expectations that an announcement is immininent, Majed al-Ansari, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson, said that final details were being discussed on Tuesday. “Negotiations are taking place on final details but we have ironed out the main obstacles,” he told a news conference. “Today we are closest to any time in the past to a deal. The…

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Could other countries prosecute soldiers in Gaza?

Could other countries prosecute soldiers in Gaza?

Annie Hylton writes: Last spring, a video spread across social media. Filmed at night, it shows several soldiers in olive-green army fatigues transporting a group of prisoners. The captured men wear white jumpsuits and blindfolds, and they have their hands tied behind their backs. The person holding the camera begins to narrate, in French, “Did you see those motherfuckers?” Referring to a prisoner whose jumpsuit has fallen to his waist, he says, “Look, he’s pissed himself. . . . I…

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Sweden neither at war nor at peace, says prime minister, as warships sent to Baltic Sea

Sweden neither at war nor at peace, says prime minister, as warships sent to Baltic Sea

The Guardian reports: The Swedish prime minister has said that his country is neither at war nor at peace as he announced that Sweden would be sending armed forces into the Baltic Sea for the first time as part of increased surveillance efforts amid a spate of suspected sabotage of undersea cables. The country announced it will contribute up to three warships and a surveillance aircraft to a Nato effort to monitor critical infrastructure and Russia’s “shadow fleet” as the…

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Russia’s crisis of depopulation is at the heart of Putin’s paranoia

Russia’s crisis of depopulation is at the heart of Putin’s paranoia

Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes write: We live in a strange time marked by widespread and ongoing depopulation. The entire world is grappling with a crisis of childlessness. By 2015, the global fertility rate had dropped to half of what it was in 1965, and most people now lives in societies with fertility rates below replacement levels. Populations are shrinking across rich and poor nations, secular and religious societies, democracies and autocracies alike. As the eminent American demographer Nicholas Eberstadt…

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Gaza death toll has been significantly underreported, study finds

Gaza death toll has been significantly underreported, study finds

CNN reports: The number of people killed in Gaza is significantly higher than the figure reported by authorities in the enclave, a peer-reviewed study by researchers from a leading health research university in the UK has found. According to findings announced by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and published in The Lancet journal, there were an estimated 64,260 “traumatic injury deaths” in Gaza between October 7, 2023 and June 30, 2024. The Palestinian Ministry of Health…

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The Syrian women who want a say in running the country: ‘We’ve proved we can do anything’

The Syrian women who want a say in running the country: ‘We’ve proved we can do anything’

The Guardian reports: The feminist activist Ghalia Rahhal recalls with wry laughter her visit to the “blue building” in Idlib three years ago, an office where the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) monitored civil society organisations such as hers. Her colleague at a women’s rights organisation was once called there to hear a list of issues they were banned from working on: child marriage, divorce, and anything related to gender equality. Rahhal had already survived an assassination attempt in her…

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Biden notifies Congress of $8 billion arms sale to Israel

Biden notifies Congress of $8 billion arms sale to Israel

Axios reports: The State Department has notified Congress “informally” of an $8 billion proposed arms deal with Israel that will include munitions for fighter jets and attack helicopters as well as artillery shells, two sources with direct knowledge tell Axios. Why it matters: This will likely be the last weapons sale to Israel the Biden administration approves. It comes amid claims from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters in recent months that Biden had imposed a silent “arms embargo” on Israel. Some Democrats pushed the…

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‘From Ground Zero’: Oscar-shortlisted film features stories from Palestinian filmmakers in Gaza

‘From Ground Zero’: Oscar-shortlisted film features stories from Palestinian filmmakers in Gaza

  As the genocide in Gaza enters its 15th month, we look at From Ground Zero, a collection of 22 short films made in Gaza by Palestinian filmmakers surviving Israel’s bombings and brutal blockade. The film has been shortlisted for this year’s Academy Awards in the category for best international feature. “In spite of all what happened, we were trying to search for hope,” says filmmaker Rashid Masharawi, director of From Ground Zero, now playing in U.S. theaters. Masharawi was…

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How regenerative agriculture can foster peacebuilding in conflict areas

How regenerative agriculture can foster peacebuilding in conflict areas

Drew Marcantonio writes: In the dry valley between the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and the Serranía del Perijá mountain ranges, in northern Colombia, former combatants in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerilla group, or FARC, are leading a surprising new revolution: regenerative agriculture. The region was once plagued by violence between antagonistic groups, including FARC, and is currently under pressure from both climate crisis and deforestation. But through an agricultural cooperative called COOMPAZCOL, former FARC members are forming…

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U.S. military service is the strongest predictor of carrying out extremist violence

U.S. military service is the strongest predictor of carrying out extremist violence

Nick Turse reports: The two men who carried out apparent terror attacks on New Year’s Day — killing 15 people by plowing a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers in New Orleans, and detonating a Tesla Cybertruck outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas — both had U.S. military backgrounds, according to the Pentagon. From 1990 to 2010, about seven persons per year with U.S. military backgrounds committed extremist crimes. Since 2011, that number has jumped to…

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What is the duty of the Israeli left in a time of genocide?

What is the duty of the Israeli left in a time of genocide?

Hadas Binyamini writes: This past June, the news of a merger between two veteran Israeli political parties on the left of the Zionist spectrum, Labor and Meretz, passed without much fanfare. With the once-hegemonic Labor Party occupying only four of the Knesset’s 120 seats, and Meretz having been wiped out altogether in the 2022 election, that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Lacking a compelling alternative vision to the perpetual subjugation of Palestinians under the boot of the Israeli…

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Biden has ‘done more damage to the foundations of international law than Trump did’

Biden has ‘done more damage to the foundations of international law than Trump did’

The New York Times reports: No foreign policy issue has been more divisive for Mr. Biden than his support for Israel throughout its war in Gaza. Emma Ashford [a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan research group] said the administration’s hypocrisy was exposed by “the split-screen much of the world sees on Gaza and Ukraine — with an administration who says one conflict is an unacceptable war crime, and the other self-defense.” The Israeli military, supplied with American…

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