August 23rd, 20240Promises of "absolute victory" in Gaza are nothing but "gibberish", according to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Gallant's comments were not meant to be public, but somehow were leaked and published by Israeli media on August 12.
The explanation of why Netanyahu is pursuing a losing war in Gaza has been largely confined to the...
August 23rd, 20240Disagreements over Israel's future military presence in Gaza and over Palestinian prisoner releases are obstructing a ceasefire and hostage deal, according to 10 sources familiar with the round of U.S.-mediated talks that concluded last week.
Sources, who include two Hamas officials and three Western diplomats, told Reuters the...
August 23rd, 20240Disappointed Pro-Palestinian activists said Kamala Harris' speech to close the Democratic convention in Chicago failed to demonstrate any break from the status quo, after a week in which the most divisive issue facing the party was mostly ignored.
Under pressure to respond to critics of U.S. support for Israel's war in Gaza, the vice...
August 17th, 20241U.S. Rep Debbie Dingell (D-Ann Arbor) and a group of western Washtenaw County politicians hosted a town hall for community members to voice concerns and ask questions.
Dingell started the town hall at the Chelsea District Library by acknowledging potential constituent concerns.
“If anybody were to write a book (about the last...
August 17th, 20240On October 25, Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin told Arutz Sheva-Israel National News that “Muslims are not afraid of us anymore.”
It might sound odd that Feiglin saw the element of fear as critical to Israel’s well-being if not its very survival.
In actuality, the fear element is directly linked to Israel’s behavior and...
August 17th, 20240On Thursday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during their last meeting in July to quickly end Israel's war in Gaza, but the former president also criticized ceasefire demands.
"He knows what he's doing, I did encourage him to get this over with," the former...
August 17th, 20241Tiers of graves are stacked deep underground in a bloated Gaza cemetery, where Sa’di Baraka spends his days hacking at the earth, making room for more dead.
“Sometimes we make graves on top of graves,” he said.
Baraka and his solemn corps of volunteer gravediggers in the Deir al-Balah cemetery start at sunrise, digging new...
August 10th, 20240The idea that the war on Gaza is essentially waged and sustained by and for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has, for long, dominated political analyses on the subject.
The notion is often kept alive by public opinion inside Israel.
Most polls produced since the start of the Israeli genocide on Gaza suggest that an...
August 10th, 20240DEARBORN – On the eve of the Michigan primary elections, dozens of pro-Palestinian supporters protested Monday in front of the Henry Ford Centennial Library in Dearborn to condemn Israel's ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip. The protesters also denounced the assassination of Hezbollah leader Fouad Shukr in southern Lebanon and Hamas...
August 2nd, 20240Great orators in history would not have been recognized as such if their words carried no value. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is neither a great orator, nor did his speech before a joint Congressional session on July 24 have actual worth. It was an expression of his desperation, if not defeat, on all fronts.
This is not...
August 2nd, 20241On Thursday, Hezbollah’s leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah warned that the conflict with Israel has entered a “new phase,” as he addressed mourners at the funeral of a commander from the group who was killed by an Israeli airstrike this week in Beirut.
Meanwhile in Tehran, Iran’s supreme leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei prayed over the...
July 26th, 20241Palestinian health authorities say Israel's ground and air campaign in Gaza has killed more than 39,000 people, mostly civilians, and driven most of the enclave's 2.3 million people from their homes.
The war began on Oct. 7 when Hamas militants stormed across the border into Israeli communities. Israel says the militants killed more...
July 26th, 20240WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris said she urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach a ceasefire deal soon with Hamas so that dozens of hostages held by the militants in Gaza since Oct. 7 can return home.
Harris said she had a “frank and constructive” conversation with Netanyahu in which...
July 19th, 20241Much has been written about the political earthquakes in Britain and France, the first resulting in the crushing defeat of the Conservative Party and the latter in the overpowering of the far right, by a largely leftist coalition.
But these were not the only important outcomes of the July 4 and July 7 general elections in two of...
July 13th, 20240Many political analysts believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is buying time in Gaza and Lebanon with the hope that Donald Trump returns to the White House, following the next November elections.
Whether this is the case or not, Trump, this time around, is unlikely to influence the outcomes of the war, or to alter...
July 13th, 20240Palestinians returned to breathtaking scenes of destruction in the Gaza City district of Shijaiyah after Israeli troops withdrew, ending a two-week offensive there. Civil defense workers said Thursday that so far, they had found the bodies of 60 people in the rubble.
Families who fled the assault ventured back into Shijaiyah to...
July 5th, 20240On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told President Biden he has decided to send a delegation to resume stalled negotiations on a hostage release deal with Hamas, their administrations said.
A source in the Israeli negotiating team, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was a real chance of achieving...
June 28th, 20240The word Muqawama in Palestinian lexicon does not need elaboration beyond the immediate meaning it generates among ordinary Palestinians. Only recently, and specifically after the Oslo peace accords and the sudden infusion of Western-funded NGOs, did such terms as “peaceful resistance” and “non-violent resistance” begin to emerge...
June 28th, 20240On Thursday, the Israeli army stormed a neighborhood in Gaza City, ordering Palestinians to move south as the tanks rolled in and bombing the southern city of Rafah in what it says are the final stages of an operation against Hamas fighters there.
Residents of the Shejaia neighborhood in Gaza City said they were taken by surprise by...
June 27th, 20240Famine approaches slowly for Gazans, who spend hours in queues for a few ladles of cooked food and the chance to fill plastic containers with drinkable water after nearly nine months of Israel's military campaign in the enclave.
Sometimes there is nothing to queue for in the shattered streets and crowded schools that have been turned...
June 21st, 20240Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is often criticized for failing to produce a vision for the "next day", meaning the day following the end of the Gaza war.
Some of these criticisms emanate from Israel’s traditional Western allies, who are wary of Netanyahu’s personal and political agendas, which are fixated on delaying his...
June 21st, 20240On Wednesday the Israeli army’s chief spokesman appeared to question the stated goal of destroying the Hamas group in Gaza in a rare public rift between the country’s political and military leadership.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted Israel will pursue the fight against Hamas, the group running the besieged...
June 14th, 20240Joe Biden will lose the state of Michigan in the November election. Whether that leads to him losing the presidency is an open question. Even though the alternative is worse, actually much worse, many voters like myself cannot stomach voting for a president who has approved of and supported the intentional killing of tens of thousands of...
June 14th, 20240On June 6, Spain joined South Africa’s case at the United Nations top Court, accusing Israel of genocide.
This move followed a decision by Madrid and two other Western European capitals – Dublin and Oslo – to recognize the state of Palestine, thus breaking ranks with a long-established U.S.-led Western policy.
As per American...
June 14th, 20240Hezbollah fired the most rockets it has launched at Israel in a single day since cross-border hostilities broke out eight months ago, as part of its retaliation on Wednesday for an Israeli strike which killed a senior Hezbollah field commander.
The Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel have been trading fire since the eruption of the Gaza...
June 14th, 20240Israeli tanks advanced deeper into the western area of Rafah, amid one of the worst nights of bombardment from air, ground and sea, forcing many families to flee their homes and tents under darkness, residents said on Thursday.
Residents said the Israeli forces thrust towards the Al-Mawasi area of Rafah near the beach, which is...
June 14th, 20240GENEVA — Both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes in the early stages of the Gaza war, a U.N. inquiry found on Wednesday, saying that Israel's actions also constituted crimes against humanity because of the immense civilian losses.
The findings were from two parallel reports, one focusing on the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and another...
June 7th, 20240If one were to argue that a top Spanish government official would someday declare that “from the river to the sea, Palestine would be free”, the suggestion itself would have seemed ludicrous.
But this is precisely how Yolanda Diaz, Spain's deputy prime minister, concluded a statement on May 23, a few days before Spain officially...
