The White House is expected to formally request a supplemental spending bill in the coming days
Archiv: Ignoranz / ignorance
No opposition in Israel ‘when it comes to wars’
“There is not really an opposition in Israel when it comes to wars. When it comes to wars, to occupation, to apartheid, there is no opposition,” Gideon Levy, a columnist at Israeli newspaper Haaretz, told Al Jazeera.
“They all think the same. There is an opposition to Netanyahu in person, a very devoted one, a very decisive one. But not against the wars,” he added.
Rashida Tlaib calls out Brian Mast for describing Lebanese civilians killed by Israel as terrorists
US Representative Rashida Tlaib rejected Republican representative Brian Mast’s claim that Lebanese civilians killed by Israel are “terrorists”.
The exchange occurred on Wednesday night during a US House of Representatives session following Tlaib‘s resolution to withdraw US troops from Lebanon, which Mast called “reckless and unserious”.
“Eleven children killed, injured every 24 hours in Lebanon. Are those children Hezbollah? Are those children terrorists?” Tlaib shot at Mast who continued to dismiss Tlaib and her call to protect civilians in Lebanon.
Track AIPAC, an American online project that tracks US political donations by organisations that are part of the Israel lobby, including Aipac, reported that Mast received $881,227 from pro-Israel PACs as of April 2026.
It’s Not Trump. It’s America.
Is Trump a freak of history or its fulfillment, an aberration or a culmination? The answer, surely, is both. But in the course of his presidency, Trump has revealed a much older malady: America’s unshakable faith in its ability to shape the world to its liking, indifferent to what others might want and supremely confident that its plan is the right one. Beyond Trump, it’s this disfiguring mentality we Americans must face.
‘A wave of truth’: COP30 targets disinformation threat to climate action
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva set the tone at the opening session, declaring that the battle for truth has become just as critical as the fight to cut emissions. COP30 must mark “a new defeat for climate denialists,” he said.
On Wednesday, 12 nations – including Brazil, Canada, France, Germany and Spain – signed onto the first-ever Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change, pledging to fight back against the flood of false content and protect those on the frontlines of truth: environmental journalists, scientists and researchers.
The declaration, unveiled under the Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change, calls for concrete steps to dismantle networks of climate lies and shield evidence-based voices from harassment and attacks.
From Gaza to Sudan: “Their Pain Is Ours”
In Gaza, we are used to waking up to the sounds of explosions, counting the days between meals, and cycling constantly between fear and hope. We thought our pain was unlike any other in the world until we saw Sudan burning under the same silence. There, as here, people die from hunger and under rubble, cameras and lenses absent, as if pain in the Global South is not meant to be heard in the North.
In Sudan and Gaza, children are snatched from their mothers’ arms before they even know what safety feels like. Last Tuesday alone, some 460 people were reportedly killed by paramilitary forces in the city of El-Fasher. Estimates put the rate of displacement in Gaza at 90%; in Sudan, more than 14 million people have been displaced. Homes are destroyed, access to clean water is severely limited, food remains deeply scarce, and the wounded lie scattered on the ground without medical care, just as we witnessed in our small city on the Mediterranean coast.
Yet what hurts more than bombing or hunger is silence.
היום שבו במערב ייזכרו שהם תמיד היו נגד הטיהור האתני בעזה
יום רביעי, 25 באוקטובר 2023. 18 יום אחרי שהשמיים נפלו, נתניהו כבר הכריז שצפוי „תמרון קרקעי“, משרד הבריאות בעזה מסר שנשבר שיא, בהפצצות מהאוויר נהרגו ביממה אחת 704 תושבים, ו-90 מדינות נרשמו לדבר בדיון במועצת הביטחון של האו“ם שכונס כדי לקרוא להפסקת אש. עומר אל-עקאד כתב בחשבון ה-X שלו משפט שנצפה מאז יותר מ-10 מיליון פעמים: „יום אחד, כשזה כבר יהיה בטוח, כשלא יהיה כל מחיר לקרוא לדבר בשמו, כשיהיה מאוחר מדי להתעמת עם האחראים, כולם יהיו מאז ומתמיד נגד זה“.
>> „מכירת ספרים היא האור, היא לא פשע בשום דרך וצורה“
אותו פיתול ניסוחי בהיר הלך עם אל-עקאד כל הדרך אל כותרת ספרו השלישי, שבא אחרי שני רומנים מצליחים: אוסף המסות „יום אחד כולם יהיו מאז ומתמיד נגד זה“ יצא לפני כחודשיים, ובו הוא נותן סימנים בקלקולי החשיבה של הליברליזם המערבי, בפערים שבין הערכים להחלטות, במיוחד מול הטיהור האתני שמבצעת ישראל ברצועת עזה.
The Western liberal’s moral collapse in Gaza
On October 24, 2023, two and a half weeks after Hamas’ attack on Israel, Gaza’s Health Ministry reported a grim new record: Israel’s bombardment of the Strip had killed 704 Palestinians in the previous 24 hours alone. The next day, Egyptian-Canadian writer Omar El Akkad posted a now famous sentence on X: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.”
That razor-sharp turn of phrase, which has since been viewed more than 10 million times, stayed with El Akkad all the way to February 2025, when it became the title of his third book.
(…)
Faced with the existential threat that Israel’s war on Gaza poses to their self-image, one might expect Western liberals to reckon with El Akkad’s core argument. And yet, outside of the ideological pro-Israel factions who cling to dogma over truth, the self-styled progressive is more likely to acknowledge past injustice only once nothing can be done to change it — when the most they can muster is a weary shrug: “It is what it is,” or, “We had no choice.”
“One remarkable difference between the modern Western conservative and their liberal counterpart,” he writes, “is that the former will gleefully sign their name on the side of the bomb while the latter will just sheepishly initial it.”
Sybiha: Russians completely ignoring the offer of full and durable ceasefire starting May 12
(May 12, 2025)
“We discussed strong steps that can be taken, including sanctions against Russia‘s banking, central bank, and energy sectors, combined with new defense assistance packages for Ukraine. Putin must understand the consequences of rejecting peace efforts and continuing the war. We coordinated our next steps, contacts, and efforts for this week and further. I am grateful to the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, and the European Union for their unwavering support and tireless efforts to achieve a fair peace,” Sybiha stressed.
In its fight against fascism, Israeli academia remains blind to a basic truth
After leading the protest movement against the government’s planned judicial overhaul at the beginning of 2023, Israeli academia quickly fell into line after October 7. From militant speeches and op-eds defending a “just war” to the mass enlistment of Israeli students in the reserve service, the academy broadly supported the war in its first months.
What my academic colleagues fail to grasp, but what my activist friends understand clearly, is that the Israeli government’s ongoing assault on democratic norms and institutions cannot be separated from its genocidal oppression of the Palestinian people. They make up the two lobes of the same right-wing brain.
UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese calls David Lammy a ‚genocide denier‘
)November 14, 2024)
The United Nations special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories has accused British Foreign Secretary David Lammy of being a „genocide denier“ and said the UK has done „nothing“ to prevent atrocities in Gaza.
In an interview with Middle East Eye in London on Wednesday, Francesca Albanese took aim at Lammy in response to comments he made in late October denying that Israel is committing genocide.
„I hadn‘t realised that Mr Lammy was a lawyer,“ she said, referring to Lammy‘s legal background.
„As a politician, you might say that for political convenience,“ she suggested, adding that would still make someone „a genocide denier“.
‘Unacceptable’ – British PM, Foreign Secretary Claim Israel Not Committing Genocide
Lammy recently alleged that the term genocide referred to “when millions of people lost their lives in crises like Rwanda, the Second World War in the Holocaust” and that using it to describe Gaza “now undermines (its) seriousness”.
(…)
“Will the Prime Minister share (Lammy’s) definition of genocide with this House?” the lawmaker asked Starmer.
The prime minister answered by saying that “it would be wise to start a question like that by reference to what happened in October of last year”.
“I’m well aware of the definition of genocide, and that is why I’ve never described this as and referred to it as genocide,” he added.
This Time We Have to Hold the Democratic Party Elite Responsible for This Catastrophe
With Trump winning his second term, it is worth noting that there was no absolutely accountability by the Democratic Party when he won in 2016. Losing an election to so dangerous and corrupt a figure as Donald Trump should cause a political party to do some major inward reflection on their own failures of policy and political strategy. Instead, all the Democrats who bore responsibility for the 2016 failure—starting with Hillary Clinton—found a way to blame anyone else but them.
A Party of Prigs and Pontificators Suffers a Humiliating Defeat
There was also the larger error of anointing Harris without political competition — an insult to the democratic process that handed the nomination to a candidate who, as some of us warned at the time, was exceptionally weak. That, in turn, came about because Democrats failed to take Biden’s obvious mental decline seriously until June’s debate debacle (and then allowed him to cling to the nomination for a few weeks more), making it difficult to hold even a truncated mini-primary.
The West Is A Dystopian Wasteland Of Moral Degeneracy
The moral degeneracy of this civilization looks like living lives of relative comfort built on the backs of workers in the global south whose labor and resources are extracted from their nations at profoundly exploitative rates, while raining military explosives on impoverished populations who dare to disobey the dictates of our government, day after day, year after year, decade after decade, and acting like this is all fine and normal.
Being born into western civilization is like waking up in the middle of a massive lynch mob.
Analyse: Wo wir beim Wasserstoff-Import stehen
(31. August 2024)
In den vergangenen Tagen ist viel über Wasserstoff geredet worden – sowohl auf Bundesebene als auch auf regionaler Ebene. Die Planung der für den Einsatz notwendigen Infrastruktur ist ein kleines Stück weiter vorangeschritten: Die Fernnetzbetreiber haben der Bundesnetzagentur ihre Ausbaupläne für ein sogenanntes Wasserstoffkernnetz von 9.666 Kilometern Länge vorgelegt.
Die Investitionskosten beziffert die Behörde mit knapp 20 Milliarden Euro. Geld, das sowohl über Netzentgelte als auch über eine staatliche Zwischenförderung aufgebracht
Why are American Jewish institutions ignoring the hostage families?
(July 7, 2024)
There are exceptions of course. The Reform Movement issued a statement supporting President Joe Biden’s announcement of a potential ceasefire and hostage release plan, and calling on Netanyahu to accept it. T’ruah, the organization I lead, has been clear in our calls for a bilateral ceasefire that brings home the hostages and ends the war. Ditto our partners in the Progressive Israel Network, including J Street, Americans for Peace Now, New York Jewish Agenda and New Israel Fund.
But many of the largest Jewish organizations, including legacy groups such as Jewish Federations of North America, American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League have decoupled calls to “Bring them Home” from any talk of ending the war, and have refrained from placing any blame on the Israeli government.
Biden campaign refuses invitation to address US Muslim voter advocacy groups
In addition to Biden‘s campaign, the coalition said that the campaign for former US President Donald Trump also refused the invitation.
Majority in U.S. Now Disapprove of Israeli Action in Gaza
(27.03.2024)
Although Americans rate Biden‘s handling of the conflict poorly, his overall job approval rating is no lower now than before the conflict began. The issue does not register highly when Americans are asked to name the most important problem facing the U.S. Nor does it rank highly when Americans rate each of several international issues as critical threats to U.S. vital interests.
Thanks to Gaza, European philosophy has been exposed as ethically bankrupt
magine if Iran, Syria, Lebanon, or Turkey – fully backed, armed and diplomatically protected by Russia and China – had the will and the wherewithal to bomb Tel Aviv for three months, day and night, murder tens of thousands of Israelis, maim countless more and make millions homeless, and turn the city into a heap of uninhabitable rubble, like Gaza today.
Just imagine it for a few seconds: Iran and its allies deliberately targeting populated parts of Tel Aviv, hospitals, synagogues, schools, universities, libraries – or indeed any populated place – to ensure maximum civilian casualties. They would tell the world they were just looking for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet.
Ask yourself what the US, UK, EU, Canada, Australia and Germany in particular would do within 24 hours of the onslaught of this fictional scenario.
The Gaza-ification of the West Bank
(November 1, 2023)
And also just to be very clear, everything that I’ve been describing, all of these various mechanisms that the state has been using, are backed by Israeli courts, and backed by the Israeli legal system. This is not some random phenomena that is happening uniquely to a single unlucky community far from the eyes of the state. On the contrary, this is part of an ongoing Israeli state project of trying to push, to cleanse, as many Palestinians out of Area C, using all available state mechanisms in order to accomplish this goal. (…)
There are checkpoints. There are threats. And all this goes on for years. And yet somehow you managed to stay on the land and make a living and try to raise a family under these conditions. And that in and of itself is horrific and criminal and appalling, and also happens in broad daylight. Everything I’ve been talking about now and describing has been documented for years already by Palestinian, Israeli, and international human-rights organizations. But Israel never relented and never stopped because, as I said, it’s part of the state’s goal to accomplish that. What has escalated in recent weeks is that you have repeated reports of masked men showing up in the middle of the night. Armed, masked men.
Maybe they are settlers, maybe they’re soldiers, maybe they’re a mix. And they openly threaten the people in the community and tell them that they have twenty-four hours to leave, and if you say otherwise we would wipe you out.
Secretary-General‘s remarks to the Security Council – on the Middle East [as delivered]
I have condemned unequivocally the horrifying and unprecedented 7 October acts of terror by Hamas in Israel.
Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians – or the launching of rockets against civilian targets.
All hostages must be treated humanely and released immediately and without conditions. I respectfully note the presence among us of members of their families.
Excellencies,
It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.
The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.
They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.
But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.
Israel livid after UN chief says Hamas attacks ‘did not occur in vacuum’
Israeli officials railed at UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres Tuesday after he appeared to suggest the impetus for the Hamas terror group’s devastating October 7 attack on Israel was the Jewish state’s continued control of Palestinian territories.
To Foreign Policy Veteran, the Real Danger Is at Home
Mr. Haass recently published a book called “The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens,” outlining ways Americans can help heal their own society, like “Be Informed,” “Remain Civil,” “Put Country First” — all admittedly bromides and yet somehow often elusive these days. (…)
Putting his foreign policy hat aside for now, he said he wants to expand the message from his book and help refocus the country on the core values embodied in the Declaration of Independence as the 250th anniversary of the document approaches three years from now.