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Category: War

Israeli citizenship has always been a tool of genocide — so I am renouncing mine

Israeli citizenship has always been a tool of genocide — so I am renouncing mine

Avi Steinberg writes: I recently entered an Israeli consulate and submitted papers to formally renounce my citizenship. It was an unseasonably warm fall day and office workers on break were lounging by the pond in Boston Common. The night before had seen a particularly gruesome series of aerial attacks by Israel on refugee tent camps in Gaza. Even as Palestinians were still counting bodies or, in many cases, collecting what remained of loved ones, the suburban woman in front of…

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Turkey’s jailed PKK leader is reported to suggest he might be ready to end insurgency

Turkey’s jailed PKK leader is reported to suggest he might be ready to end insurgency

Reuters reports: The jailed leader of Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, has been quoted as indicating he may be prepared to call for militants to lay down arms, after a key ally of President Tayyip Erdogan urged him to end the group’s decades-old insurgency. Two parliamentarians from the pro-Kurdish DEM Party met Ocalan for talks on his island prison on Saturday, in the first such visit nearly in a decade. DEM requested the visit after a key…

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Behind the dismantling of Hezbollah — decades of Israeli intelligence

Behind the dismantling of Hezbollah — decades of Israeli intelligence

The New York Times reports: Right up until he was assassinated, Hassan Nasrallah did not believe that Israel would kill him. As he hunkered inside a Hezbollah fortress 40 feet underground on Sept. 27, his aides urged him to go to a safer location. Mr. Nasrallah brushed it off, according to intelligence collected by Israel and shared later with Western allies. In his view, Israel had no interest in a full-scale war. What he did not realize was that Israeli…

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How Putin tapped a well of ethnic hatred in Russia

How Putin tapped a well of ethnic hatred in Russia

Anna Nemtsova writes: Far-right activists from Russia’s largest nationalist movement, Russkaya Obshchina, donned black camouflage and patrolled multiple cities last month hunting for “ethnic criminals.” They raided dormitories, parks, and construction sites in search of migrants from Central Asia, nabbing six on November 24. On social media, the activists celebrated their “joint raid with law-enforcement officials,” posting a video of themselves leading migrants in chains on their way to deportation. Russkaya Obshchina is working in concert with the Russian state…

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How the U.S. unwittingly laid the groundwork for the Taliban’s victory long ago

How the U.S. unwittingly laid the groundwork for the Taliban’s victory long ago

The New York Times reports: The Taliban were inching closer, encroaching on land that had once seemed secure, the American officer warned. Four of his men had just been killed, and he needed Afghans willing to fight back. “Who will stand up?” the officer implored a crowd of 150 Afghan elders. The people in Kunduz Province were largely supportive of the Americans and opposed to the Taliban. But recruiting police officers was slow going and, by the summer of 2009,…

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Israel storms northern Gaza’s last hospital as remaining residents forced south

Israel storms northern Gaza’s last hospital as remaining residents forced south

+972 reports: In the morning hours of Dec. 27, Israeli army forces stormed the Kamal Adwan Hospital compound in Beit Lahiya, culminating a nearly week-long siege of the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza. Soldiers forcibly moved patients out of Kamal Adwan to the Indonesian Hospital further south in the city, which had itself been subjected to an evacuation order by the military several days earlier. “Surgical departments, laboratory, maintenance, and emergency units have been completely burned, and the fire…

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U.S.-funded report, suppressed by Biden administration, says North Gaza on threshold of famine

U.S.-funded report, suppressed by Biden administration, says North Gaza on threshold of famine

A report by the U.S.-funded Famine Early Warning System Network published on December 23, says: Israel’s near-total blockade of humanitarian and commercial food supplies to besieged areas of North Gaza Governorate (including Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya, and Beit Hanoun) has been in place for nearly 80 days. As of November 16, OCHA estimated 65,000-75,000 people remained in North Gaza Governorate, including civilians who have been unable to or prevented from evacuating. More recent satellite-derived imagery suggests thousands of people evacuated in…

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Russia launches major Christmas Day attack on Ukraine’s energy system

Russia launches major Christmas Day attack on Ukraine’s energy system

The Guardian reports: Christmas morning in Ukraine was overshadowed by a massive Russian aerial attack using cruise missiles to target energy infrastructure across the country, which Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned as “inhuman”. “Today, Putin deliberately chose Christmas to attack. What could be more inhuman? More than 70 missiles, including ballistic missiles, and more than a hundred attack drones,” the Ukrainian president said on Telegram. He said there had been hits and blackouts in several regions. “The targets are our energy. They…

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How Israel’s plan to carve up Syria was thwarted by Assad’s downfall

How Israel’s plan to carve up Syria was thwarted by Assad’s downfall

David Hearst writes: The overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s government thwarted an Israeli plan to divide Syria into three blocks in order to sever its ties with Iran and Hezbollah, according to regional security sources briefed about the plot. Israel planned to establish military and strategic ties with the Kurds in the northeast and the Druze in the south, leaving Assad in power in Damascus under Emirati funding and control. This would have also served to limit Turkey’s influence in Syria…

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Israel’s massive attack on free Syria — background and motivations

Israel’s massive attack on free Syria — background and motivations

Michael Karadjis writes: It didn’t take long: from the moment the Assad regime collapsed and the rebels entered Damascus, Israel’s massive land and air attack began. As long as all these arms depots, military airports, intelligence centres, scientific research centres, air bases, air defence systems, ammunition manufacturing facilities, “small stockpiles of chemical weapons,” and Syria’s entire naval force were safely in the hands of the Assad regime, Israel never touched them. As Syrian revolutionary commentator Rami puts it, Israel has…

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Syria: The rise of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham

Syria: The rise of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham

  In this episode of Centre Stage, Patrick Haenni, an author and researcher specialising in Syria, shares his expertise on Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Haenni discusses HTS’s origins and ideological transformation and reveals how the armed group played a key role in achieving what no other faction could — ending the Assad regime.

With Assad’s fall, Putin’s dream of world domination is turning into a nightmare

With Assad’s fall, Putin’s dream of world domination is turning into a nightmare

Peter Pomerantsev writes: As Bashar al-Assad fell, Russian nationalist military bloggers turned on the Kremlin. “Ten years of our presence,” fumed the “Two Majors” Telegram channel to its more than one million subscribers, “dead Russian soldiers, billions of spent roubles and thousands of tonnes of ammunition, they must be compensated somehow.” Some didn’t shy away from lambasting Vladimir Putin. “The adventure in Syria, initiated by Putin personally, seems to be coming to an end. And it ends ignominiously, like all…

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Syria has been liberated from Russia and Iran – but outsiders still threaten its new freedom

Syria has been liberated from Russia and Iran – but outsiders still threaten its new freedom

Robin Yassin-Kassab writes: The liberation of Syria was long hoped for, but unexpected. Over the past weeks, Syrians have experienced the full range of human emotions, with the exception of boredom. On the first two Assad-free Fridays, millions of celebrants swelled the streets to chant and sing and speak formerly forbidden truths. There was a huge presence of women, who had been less visible during the years of war. Relatives are meeting again and assuaging their pain as hundreds of…

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Assad’s fall is the Middle East’s 1989

Assad’s fall is the Middle East’s 1989

Lina Khatib writes: The spectacularly rapid fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and his regime is the Middle East’s 1989. Like the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of 54 years of Assad family rule signals an earthquake in the regional order—with tremors that will be felt for decades to come. Just as 1989 was marked by a series of falling dominoes in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, and elsewhere, the collapse of the Syrian regime is part of a chain…

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In the post-Assad Middle East, Iran’s loss is Turkey’s gain

In the post-Assad Middle East, Iran’s loss is Turkey’s gain

Vali Nasr writes: Israel’s celebration for all but ending Iran’s presence in the Levant will be cut short by the challenges inherent in facing a Turkish sphere of influence there. An ascendant HTS-led government, once it consolidates power in Syria, will reject Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights and will likely not remain neutral on the plight of the Palestinians. Its Sunni Arab links with Palestinians are more organic than those of Iran and Hezbollah. The menace on Israel’s borders…

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Inside Aleppo, the city Assad left to rot as a lesson in the price of rising up

Inside Aleppo, the city Assad left to rot as a lesson in the price of rising up

The Guardian reports: Bashar al-Assad’s face has been ripped away from posters at the abandoned checkpoint that separates Sheikh Maqsoud, a neighbourhood in the north of Aleppo, from the rest of the city. No cars dare use the wide boulevard any more because the road is still watched by Kurdish snipers allied to the regime. The units retreated into the warren of bombed and burnt-out buildings when Islamist rebel groups launched an unprecedented attack on the city at the end…

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