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Category: War

Gaza: ‘highest number of people facing catastrophic hunger ever recorded… anywhere, anytime,’ new report warns

Gaza: ‘highest number of people facing catastrophic hunger ever recorded… anywhere, anytime,’ new report warns

CNN reports: Famine is imminent in northern Gaza where 70% of the population are already suffering with catastrophic levels of hunger, a UN-backed report said Monday, as the EU’s top diplomat accused Israel of using “starvation as a weapon of war.” All 2.2 million people in Gaza do not have enough food to eat, with half of the population on the brink of starvation and famine projected to arrive in the north “anytime between mid-March and May 2024,” according to…

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Jared Kushner: Palestinians should be moved to the Negev desert to ‘clean up’ Gaza’s ‘valuable’ waterfront

Jared Kushner: Palestinians should be moved to the Negev desert to ‘clean up’ Gaza’s ‘valuable’ waterfront

The Daily Beast reports: Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has offered his own solution to the mass bloodshed and displacement in Gaza: some good, old-fashioned real estate development. During an interview with Tarek Masoud, the faculty chair of Harvard’s Middle East Initiative, Kushner proposed moving Palestinians to Israel’s arid desert region to “clean up” Gaza’s “valuable” waterfront. “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable to—if people would focus on building up livelihoods,” Kushner said, without clarifying who exactly would profit…

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‘Catastrophic levels of hunger’ in Gaza mean famine is imminent, says aid coalition

‘Catastrophic levels of hunger’ in Gaza mean famine is imminent, says aid coalition

The Guardian reports: Famine is imminent in northern Gaza with people suffering “catastrophic levels of hunger”, a coalition of aid groups has warned. The situation was called “man-made starvation”, as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a group that includes the World Food Programme and the World Health Organization, said that 1.1 million people, half of Gaza’s population, faced famine. The IPC report came as Philippe Lazzarini, the head of Unrwa – the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees –…

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Israel’s Shifa raid shows its grip is slipping as a ‘forever war’ looms

Israel’s Shifa raid shows its grip is slipping as a ‘forever war’ looms

Jason Burke writes: The latest raid on al-Shifa hospital reveals that the Israeli military’s hold on the areas of Gaza supposedly cleared of Hamas militants is considerably more tenuous than the country’s political leaders have claimed – and suggests the region’s military superpower is facing its own “forever war” in the territory with enormous costs for everyone involved, particularly civilians. The fighting around the Shifa hospital and its eventual seizure was the climactic moment of the first phase of Israel’s…

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Claims that UNRWA is Hamas ‘proxy’ are ‘just flat-out lies,’ says Sen. Chris Van Holle

Claims that UNRWA is Hamas ‘proxy’ are ‘just flat-out lies,’ says Sen. Chris Van Holle

  Sen. Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, tells “Face the Nation” that claims by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others that the relief group UNRWA, which provides relief for Palestinian refugees, is a “proxy” for Hamas are “just flat-out lies.” The Hill reports: Funding for the United Nations (U.N.) agency that provides relief for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, has emerged as a serious obstacle as congressional negotiators race to prevent a partial government shutdown at the end…

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Belgian PM warns Israel against using hunger as ‘weapon of war’ in Gaza

Belgian PM warns Israel against using hunger as ‘weapon of war’ in Gaza

Politico reports: Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo warned Israel on Saturday against using hunger as a “weapon of war” in the Gaza Strip, urging the Israeli government to open more access points for humanitarian aid. “I see today there is a very large population [in Gaza] at risk of famine,” the Belgian leader told journalists in Amman, Jordan, during a whistle-stop tour of the Middle East. “It’s up to Israel to prove that famine won’t be used as a…

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Remembering Frans de Waal and the origins of war

Remembering Frans de Waal and the origins of war

  John Horgan writes: I was scrolling through Twitter last night when I came across an RIP for primatologist Frans de Waal. The news caught me off guard. How could de Waal be dead? He was just out there promoting Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist, the latest of his 16 popular books. But a release from Emory University, de Waal’s long-time academic home, confirmed that he succumbed to stomach cancer on March 14. I interviewed de Waal…

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The political earthquake that could shatter Netanyahu’s coalition

The political earthquake that could shatter Netanyahu’s coalition

Yair Rosenberg writes: The most controversial Israeli comedy sketch of the current war is just 88 seconds long. Aired in February on Eretz Nehederet, Israel’s equivalent of Saturday Night Live, it opens with two ashen-faced officers knocking on the door of a nondescript apartment, ready to deliver devastating news to the inhabitants. The officers are greeted by an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man who is similarly stricken when he sees them. “I’ve been terrified of this knock,” he says. “Ever since the…

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Gaza: 23 million tonnes of debris ‘will take years to clear’; acute malnutrition doubles in a month

Gaza: 23 million tonnes of debris ‘will take years to clear’; acute malnutrition doubles in a month

UN News reports: In a fresh alert about the disastrous humanitarian emergency still unfolding in the enclave, the UN agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, said on Friday that it will “take years” before the Strip is made safe again. The lives of more than two million Gazans have been devastated by daily Israeli bombardment, since Hamas-led terror attacks in Israel on 7 October, the UN agency noted in a post on X, formerly Twitter. As the largest relief agency in Gaza,…

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Iran and U.S. held secret talks on proxy attacks and ceasefire

Iran and U.S. held secret talks on proxy attacks and ceasefire

The New York Times reports: Iran and the United States held secret, indirect talks in Oman in January, addressing the escalating threat posed to Red Sea shipping by the Houthis in Yemen, as well as the attacks on American bases by Iran-backed militias in Iraq, according to Iranian and U.S. officials familiar with the discussions. The secret talks were held on Jan. 10 in Muscat, the capital of Oman, with Omani officials shuffling messages back and forth between delegations of…

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Asking Israel’s powerful voices about Gaza. And, is this a watershed moment for Jewish solidarity with Palestinians?

Asking Israel’s powerful voices about Gaza. And, is this a watershed moment for Jewish solidarity with Palestinians?

YouTube’s application of “age-restricted” in the context of Gaza often appears to have much less to do with protecting minors than it serves to deflect criticism of the Netanyahu government and the IDF. Australia’s ABC Global Affairs Editor John Lyons asks tough questions to some of Israel’s most powerful political and military voices about the country’s strategy and intentions. This interview-led documentary features former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, who says Benjamin Netanyahu can’t be trusted, and cabinet minister Avi…

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Inside Northern Gaza: kids desperate for food and medicine

Inside Northern Gaza: kids desperate for food and medicine

  As the people of Gaza grow ever more desperate for food, pressure keeps growing on Israel. Top US Democrat Chuck Schumer has criticised Benjamin Netanyahu as an “obstacle to peace” and called for elections. A ship carrying food aid from charity World Central Kitchen is now approaching Gaza. The shipment from Cyprus is the first in a newly established maritime aid corridor. But the UN says the most effective way to get aid into the besieged Strip is still…

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AIPAC talking points revealed

AIPAC talking points revealed

The American Prospect reports: It’s been clear for several election cycles that AIPAC might sway the electoral map more so for Republicans, but this document all but signals that directly to its members. The pamphlet does try to refute charges that the lobby opposes all progressives. It takes a dig at its critics by claiming to have raised more money for endorsed Congressional Progressive Caucus members, at $1.8 million, than left-aligned groups Justice Democrats, J Street, and EMILYs List combined….

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A forever war, more repression, Putin for life? Russia’s bleak post-election outlook

A forever war, more repression, Putin for life? Russia’s bleak post-election outlook

The Guardian reports: For a few weeks in 2022, Vladimir Putin’s world was unravelling fast. Russian troops had failed to take Kyiv and the west was coalescing around Volodymyr Zelenskiy, freezing Russian assets abroad and imposing unprecedented sanctions. Putin himself appeared unhinged, railing against Lenin or appealing to Ukrainians to overthrow their “gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis”. As Russians go to the polls on Friday in an election with only one possible result, the Kremlin will claim a mandate…

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Chuck Schumer calls for elections in Israel, warning it ‘cannot survive if it becomes a pariah’

Chuck Schumer calls for elections in Israel, warning it ‘cannot survive if it becomes a pariah’

NBC News reports: In the most significant criticism by a U.S. leader against the Israeli government since its war with Hamas began, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday called for new elections in Israel to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish official in the U.S. ever, said in remarks on the Senate floor that “the Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after Oct. 7.” “The world has changed — radically — since then,…

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A Palestinian poet chronicles the war raging around him

A Palestinian poet chronicles the war raging around him

Palestinian poet and literary critic Talat Qudaih recounts from his diary entries from the beginning of the present war in Gaza until March 2024: Why do we need to recount what has transpired since Oct. 7, 2023? Must we chronicle the calamities that have befallen us, akin to torrential rain — an onslaught of missiles, bombs, shells and bullets that have extinguished lives, torn bodies asunder and marred the essence of childhood and innocence? Amid the debris of human limbs…

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