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Category: War

‘I couldn’t cry over my children like everyone else’: the tragedy of Palestinian journalist Wael al-Dahdouh

‘I couldn’t cry over my children like everyone else’: the tragedy of Palestinian journalist Wael al-Dahdouh

Nesrine Malik writes: Wael al-Dahdouh was live on air when he realised something was wrong. It was 25 October 2023, about 5pm, and Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Gaza was standing on the roof of the channel’s office building, speaking about the day’s airstrikes. “It’s going to be a bloody night,” said Dahdouh, his voice playing over live images of the skyline, as explosions flared on the horizon. Out of the corner of his eye, Dahdouh noticed his nephew Hamdan,…

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Trump would be worse for Palestinians

Trump would be worse for Palestinians

Nicholas Kristof writes: If Donald Trump is elected president on Tuesday, one factor may be anger at Biden administration policies in the Middle East. Some Arab Americans, including those in swing states like Michigan, are enraged at President Biden’s support for Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon. Their taxes are paying for weapons that may be killing their relatives. A poll found Arab American support for Kamala Harris is 18 percentage points below support for Biden in 2020. Many young…

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Black people recognize what is happening to Palestinians

Black people recognize what is happening to Palestinians

Vann R. Newkirk II writes: In April 1952, W. E. B. Du Bois stepped onto the stage of the ballroom of the Hotel Diplomat in Midtown Manhattan. His beard was grizzled and he was still working out how to lecture through new dentures. In a word, he was old. During his long life, he’d witnessed the dawn of Jim Crow and the glow of the first atom bombs; the slaughter of the Comanche and the rivalry between the Soviet Union…

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The doctor who saw children shot in the head in Gaza—and tried to tell the world

The doctor who saw children shot in the head in Gaza—and tried to tell the world

Sophie Hurwitz writes: Dr. Feroze Sidhwa has volunteered as a trauma surgeon in Ukraine, Haiti, Burkina Faso, and Ghana. But when he went to Gaza in March and April of this year, it changed him. Sidhwa had never seen so much horror in his life. “There’s nothing like Gaza right now,” he said. “Almost 100 percent of Gaza’s population is homeless and displaced…does that sound like a place where people are going to survive?” With international journalists banned from Gaza…

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Israeli parliament votes to ban UNRWA from Israel within 90 days

Israeli parliament votes to ban UNRWA from Israel within 90 days

The Guardian reports: Israel’s parliament has voted to ban the UN relief and works agency (Unrwa) from the country within 90 days, in defiance of US and other international pressure to maintain the largest provider of humanitarian assistance to the country’s Palestinian population. In a 92-10 vote late on Monday, the Knesset banned the agency, which operates in Israel according to a 1967 treaty, from conducting “any activity” or providing any service inside Israel, including the areas of annexed East…

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Poll shows Israelis massively favor Trump over Harris in U.S. election

Poll shows Israelis massively favor Trump over Harris in U.S. election

The Times of Israel reports: A poll published by Channel 12 TV shows that Israelis massively favor Republican Donald Trump over Democrat Kamala Harris, in the upcoming US presidential elections. Asked who they prefer to be the next US president, 66 percent chose the former president, while only 17% say they want to see the US vice president win the election. A further 17% said they did not know. The channel noted that US President Joe Biden was briefly favored…

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Iran mocks Israel’s ‘weak’ attacks as hardliners call for reprisal

Iran mocks Israel’s ‘weak’ attacks as hardliners call for reprisal

Patrick Wintour writes: The Iranian government has belittled the scale and effectiveness of the Israeli attack on its military sites, but hardliners in the parliament insisted the strikes breached Iranian red lines and required a swift response, preferably at a time when Israel is already enmeshed in Lebanon and Gaza. The internal Iranian debate on how to respond to the long-awaited Israeli attack turns on whether to treat Israel’s breach of Iranian national sovereignty as too grave to be ignored,…

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Satellite images show major expansion at Russian site with secret bioweapons past

Satellite images show major expansion at Russian site with secret bioweapons past

The Washington Post reports: A few months after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, satellite imagery captured unusual activity at a restricted military research facility nestled among the birch forests northeast of Moscow. The Russian site, called Sergiev Posad-6, had been quiet for decades, but it had a notorious Cold War past: It had once been a major research center for biological weapons, with a history of experiments with the viruses that cause smallpox, Ebola and hemorrhagic…

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Trump signals to Netanyahu he supports the war his campaign claims he opposes

Trump signals to Netanyahu he supports the war his campaign claims he opposes

The Washington Post reports: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump expressed support for Israel’s offensives against Hamas and Hezbollah in a recent call with the country’s prime minister — a position that could complicate his campaign’s outreach to Arab Americans claiming he opposes the war. Trump told Benjamin Netanyahu in one call this month, “Do what you have to do,” according to six people familiar with the conversation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive and confidential information….

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Inside the siege of northern Gaza, where ‘death waits around every corner’

Inside the siege of northern Gaza, where ‘death waits around every corner’

+972 Magazine reports: For over two weeks, the Israeli military has been waging one the most brutal and destructive campaigns of the war in northern Gaza. Residents of Jabalia, Beit Lahiya, and Beit Hanoun are living through an unrelenting siege that has stripped them of food, water, and any illusion of safety. Survivors describe a nightmare beyond comprehension: airstrikes and shelling so incessant that their bodies haven’t stopped trembling. The Israeli military operation, which began during the early hours of…

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Iranian dissidents fear that Israeli attacks will strengthen the Islamic Republic

Iranian dissidents fear that Israeli attacks will strengthen the Islamic Republic

Arash Azizi writes: There is something ironic about the fact that, of all the countries in the Middle East, Iran is the one that now finds itself on the brink of war with Israel. Iran is not one of the 22 Arab states party to the decades-long Arab-Israeli conflict. Its population, unlike those of many Arab countries, harbors little anti-Israel sentiment. During the past year, mass rallies in support of the Palestinians have taken place in cities all over the…

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Kamala Harris acknowledges the reality of the genocide in Gaza

Kamala Harris acknowledges the reality of the genocide in Gaza

The Jerusalem Post reports: US presidential candidate Kamala Harris appeared to claim that Israel is committing genocide, calling it “real” during a talk in Milwaukee on Thursday. In the videos circulated on social media on Saturday evening, Kamala Harris can be seen addressing a group of students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee before being interrupted by a student who asks her to speak about “the genocide” in Gaza. Harris tells the students she is “so invested” in them before being…

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The West has to believe that democracy will prevail

The West has to believe that democracy will prevail

Anne Applebaum writes: When I began working on the history of the Soviet Union, in the 1990s, survivors and historians alike were free to speak as they wished. Many of them felt as if a new Russia could be constructed on top of the fundamental, historical truths that were emerging. That possibility faded. I can even tell you the exact moment when it finally came to an end: the morning of February 20, 2014, when Russian troops illegally marched across…

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Raytheon admits to defrauding the Pentagon

Raytheon admits to defrauding the Pentagon

The Intercept reports: RTX Corporation, the weapons giant formerly (and better) known as Raytheon, agreed on Wednesday to pay almost $1 billion to resolve allegations that it defrauded the U.S. government and paid bribes to secure business with Qatar. “Raytheon engaged in criminal schemes to defraud the U.S. government,” said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kevin Driscoll of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division on Wednesday. “Such corrupt and fraudulent conduct, especially by a publicly traded U.S. defense contractor, erodes public trust…

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Pro-Iranian Telegram account leaks alleged U.S. intel on Israel’s attack plans on Iran

Pro-Iranian Telegram account leaks alleged U.S. intel on Israel’s attack plans on Iran

Axios reports: U.S. officials are extremely concerned about a potentially major security breach after two alleged U.S. intelligence documents about Israel’s preparations for an attack on Iran were published by a Telegram account affiliated with Iran. Why it matters: The alleged leak comes as Israel completes weeks of preparations for a retaliation against Iran, which attacked Israel with a barrage of ballistic missiles on Oct. 1. The leak could be an attempt to disrupt the Israeli operation. The Pentagon and the Office of the Director…

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There are no ‘safe zones’ in Syria for refugees forced to return home

There are no ‘safe zones’ in Syria for refugees forced to return home

Rena Netjes and Sophie Fullerton report: Israel’s escalating war in Lebanon has displaced more than 1.2 million people across the country in recent weeks. Those displaced are not only Lebanese civilians but also an estimated 250,000 Syrian refugees who have fled back into neighboring Syria since Israel’s bombing campaign began last month. Some 1.5 million Syrian refugees living precariously in Lebanon for more than a decade, after fleeing civil war in their own country, have faced the threat of detention…

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