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Category: War

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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Israel’s assassination campaign has renewed Israelis confidence that they can do anything anywhere

Israel’s assassination campaign has renewed Israelis confidence that they can do anything anywhere

Isaac Chotiner interviews political scientist Dahlia Scheindlin, a longtime expert on Israeli public opinion and analyst of the country’s domestic political scene: You mentioned April as a turning point. That was when the war against Hamas broadened regionally— It exactly lines up with April. I think we shouldn’t take the responsibility off of Hezbollah for its fateful decision, in the early morning hours of October 8th, to attack Israel—which basically internationalized or regionalized the conflict. But what happened in April?…

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America, Afghanistan and the price of self-delusion

America, Afghanistan and the price of self-delusion

John F. Sopko writes: The collapse of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan on Aug. 15, 2021, revealed what little American lives and money had purchased over 20 years there. It also laid bare a gaping disconnect between reality and what senior U.S. officials had been telling Americans for decades: that success was just around the corner. As the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction since 2012, my staff and I have audited and investigated U.S. programs and spending to rebuild…

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Where is Russia finding new soldiers? Wherever it can

Where is Russia finding new soldiers? Wherever it can

The New York Times reports: Russia has ground through repeated waves of soldiers in Ukraine. It lost some of its most experienced troops at the very start of the invasion, then shipped off tens of thousands of convicts without seeming to care whether they survived. Now, still desperately seeking sufficient manpower to maintain pressure on Ukraine, Russia has expanded recruitment even more. Men (and women) no longer have to be convicted of a crime — under new laws, any suspects…

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Pro-Palestinian activists lambasted Biden and Harris. Trump will be an even bigger dilemma

Pro-Palestinian activists lambasted Biden and Harris. Trump will be an even bigger dilemma

Politico reports: Pro-Palestinian groups in the U.S. are staring down a new challenge: Donald Trump and Republicans. The movement has tended to focus its efforts on who controls the White House and Democrats, whom its leaders view as more persuadable to soften support for Israel. But 15 months into the war in the Middle East, as the GOP trifecta prepares to control the White House and Congress, leaders in the movement find themselves with far less leverage — and much…

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With Gaza war and Trump’s return, Silicon Valley embraces a military renaissance

With Gaza war and Trump’s return, Silicon Valley embraces a military renaissance

Sophia Goodfriend reports: On Dec. 10, Israeli military officials, weapons manufacturers, and American venture capitalists gathered at Tel Aviv University for the first ever DefenseTech Summit. The two day affair featured panels on “The Future of Global Conflict,” “Challenges of Iron Swords” (the IDF’s name for the war in Gaza) and “Exploring Innovation in Drone Technology.” Representatives from Palantir, Sequoia Capital, and Elbit shared the stage with the Director General of the IDF and the head of LOTEM, the army…

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