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Category: War

Pope condemns Israeli attack on Catholic church in Gaza as ‘terrorism’

Pope condemns Israeli attack on Catholic church in Gaza as ‘terrorism’

  BBC News reports: Civilians trapped in a church in Gaza City are living in an “unreal” sense of fear, a relative of one of those confined there has said. Fifi Saba, whose sister is trapped inside the Holy Family Church, said people were scared to move out of fear of being shot. A mother and her daughter were killed inside the church by sniper fire on Saturday, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said. Pope Francis condemned the attack. “A…

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Mehdi Hasan interviews Jewish journalist Masha Gessen on comparing Gaza to a Nazi-era ghetto

Mehdi Hasan interviews Jewish journalist Masha Gessen on comparing Gaza to a Nazi-era ghetto

  Russian-American writer Masha Gessen received backlash in Germany and a scaled-back ceremony for a prominent award after they compared conditions in Gaza to those of Nazi-era Jewish ghettos in Eastern Europe in a recent piece. MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan speaks with Gessen, a staff writer at The New Yorker, about the controversy.

Give Russia’s $300 billion frozen assets to Ukraine now

Give Russia’s $300 billion frozen assets to Ukraine now

Anne Applebaum writes: A majority of Americans and a majority of Congress want to help Ukraine win the war against Russia, and to stop the spread of autocracy into Europe. A majority of people in the European Union and a majority of EU leaders want the same. But small minorities of lawmakers—some inspired by Russian President Vladimir Putin or his money, some bent on bargaining for other things—have managed to block or delay that aid. On both sides of the…

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Pressure mounts on Israel to renew cease-fire talks after killing of hostages raises alarm about its conduct in Gaza

Pressure mounts on Israel to renew cease-fire talks after killing of hostages raises alarm about its conduct in Gaza

The Associated Press reports: Israel’s government faced calls for a cease-fire from some of its closest European allies and from protesters at home on Sunday after a series of shootings, including of three hostages who waved a white flag, added to mounting concerns about its conduct in the 10-week-old war in Gaza. The protesters urge the government to renew hostage negotiations with Gaza’s Hamas rulers, whom it has vowed to destroy. Israel could also face pressure to scale back major…

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UN commissioner: ‘Gazans could start dying of hunger’

UN commissioner: ‘Gazans could start dying of hunger’

Bruno Maçães writes: Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), was two days back from the city of Rafah in southern Gaza when we spoke earlier today (15 December). He compared this latest trip with a previous visit he made on the eve of the November truce between Israel and Hamas. Lazzarini had been shocked by the squalid conditions of the shelters at the UNRWA refugee camp,…

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Israel should make Gaza look like Auschwitz, says council head

Israel should make Gaza look like Auschwitz, says council head

The Jerusalem Post reports: Israel should be sending Palestinian Gazans fleeing the fighting to refugee camps in Lebanon, with the entire Gaza Strip being emptied and leveled and turned into a museum like the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, Metula Council head David Azoulai told 103FM. “After October 7, instead of urging people to go south, we should direct them to the beaches. The Navy can transport them to the shores of Lebanon, where there are already sufficient refugee camps….

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Why Samantha Power would resign over Gaza — if she had any integrity

Why Samantha Power would resign over Gaza — if she had any integrity

Jon Schwarz writes: A State Department official resigned on October 14, writing in a letter that the U.S. support for Israel’s assault on Gaza “will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and Palestinian people.” The director of the New York office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights resigned on October 31, stating that “once again we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes and the organization we serve appears powerless to…

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Israel tempers claims of imminent Hamas defeat as both sides seem set on long war

Israel tempers claims of imminent Hamas defeat as both sides seem set on long war

Peter Beaumont writes: Israel’s insistence to the Biden administration that it needs more time to defeat Hamas has raised questions over the level of damage inflicted on the Islamist militant organisation, and whether it is changing tactics in its fight against the Israel Defense Forces. In a week in which nine Israeli soldiers were killed, including two senior commanders and several other officers in a single complex ambush in the Shejaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City, analysts and commentators have begun…

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Russia’s Hamas stance puts it on a collision course with Israel

Russia’s Hamas stance puts it on a collision course with Israel

  Battle lines are being drawn around the war with Hamas as the United States and Russia comfortably slide into their Cold War-era roles as backers of opposite sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Insider’s Simon Ostrovsky gets to the bottom of what Russia’s deteriorating relationship with Israel could mean for the war in Ukraine as well as its position in the Middle East.

Bernie Sanders demands answers on Israel’s ‘indiscriminate’ Gaza bombing

Bernie Sanders demands answers on Israel’s ‘indiscriminate’ Gaza bombing

The Guardian reports: The US’s support for Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza is facing new scrutiny in Washington following a proposed resolution by the independent senator Bernie Sanders that could ultimately be used to curtail military assistance. It is far from clear whether Sanders has the support to pass the resolution, but its introduction in the Senate this week – by an important progressive ally of the US president, Joe Biden – highlights mounting human rights and political concerns by…

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U.S. has collected intel that could be used to judge the legality of Israel’s conduct of war

U.S. has collected intel that could be used to judge the legality of Israel’s conduct of war

Politico reports: While American officials say they are not making judgments in real-time about whether Israel is abiding by the laws of war, the U.S. has gathered intelligence that might allow it to make such assessments. The U.S. has collected intelligence and formulated detailed assessments related to both Israel and Hamas military movements and tactics in Gaza since the war began in October, according to two people familiar with the intelligence. That has included data on targeting by both sides,…

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Award ceremony suspended after writer compares Gaza to Nazi-era Jewish ghettos

Award ceremony suspended after writer compares Gaza to Nazi-era Jewish ghettos

  The Guardian reports: A German foundation has said it will no longer be awarding a prize for political thinking to a leading Russian-American journalist after criticising as “unacceptable” a recent essay by the writer in which they made a comparison between Gaza and a Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe. Masha Gessen was due to be presented with the Hannah Arendt prize for political thought on Friday. But the award ceremony will now not take place as planned after the…

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Hungary blocks €50bn in EU aid for Ukraine hours after membership talks approved

Hungary blocks €50bn in EU aid for Ukraine hours after membership talks approved

The Guardian reports: Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has blocked a €50bn EU aid package for Ukraine, hours after leaders side-stepped his opposition to agree to open talks with Kyiv on joining the bloc. A crunch summit in Brussels broke up close to 3am on Friday with the Hungarian leader refusing to green light funding to help Ukraine’s government over the next four years. EU leaders will postpone their discussion on the budget to January, concluding that after seven hours…

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Vigil outside the White House: ‘President Biden, your staff demands a ceasefire’

Vigil outside the White House: ‘President Biden, your staff demands a ceasefire’

  CNN reports: Political appointees and Biden administration staffers held a vigil in front of the White House on Wednesday to call on President Joe Biden to support a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. More than three dozen people, including political appointees, administration staffers and civil service career staff, attended the early evening vigil in front of the White House. The participants wore sunglasses and masks to conceal their identities. Josh Paul, a former State Department official who resigned from his…

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Nearly half of the Israeli munitions dropped on Gaza are imprecise ‘dumb bombs,’ U.S. intelligence finds

Nearly half of the Israeli munitions dropped on Gaza are imprecise ‘dumb bombs,’ U.S. intelligence finds

  CNN reports: Nearly half of the air-to-ground munitions that Israel has used in Gaza in its war with Hamas since October 7 have been unguided, otherwise known as “dumb bombs,” according to a new US intelligence assessment. The assessment, compiled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and described to CNN by three sources who have seen it, says that about 40-45% of the 29,000 air-to-ground munitions Israel has used have been unguided. The rest have been…

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