Category: 6. Opinion

The fighting between Israel and Iran, sparked by an illegal and entirely unprovoked attack by Israel, has abated for the moment. After the United States did what Israeli Prime Minister hoped it would do and bombed Iran’s underground nuclear facilities, including the one at Fordow with bunker buster weapons, U.S. President Donald Trump told Israel to stop its attacks and reinforced that order when Israel sent dozens of bombers toward Iran shortly after the ceasefire was enacted,…

It may appear, at first glance, irrelevant—even absurd—that a mayoral contest in New York City, or the electoral fate of a councilwoman in Brooklyn, should hinge upon one’s position vis-à-vis Palestine. What, after all, does municipal governance—zoning, sanitation, housing affordability—have to do with the devastation of Gaza, the starvation of a people, the slow-motion spectacle of death under bombardment? And yet, this apparent disconnect—between the intimacy of local…

The attack on Iran is Israel’s war. It is damaging to any conception of American interest. It hurts the U.S. economically, hurts U.S. alliances, and trashes the U.S. image —  burying any claim that we care about the rule of law and human rights. And it is likely to hurt American families in ways that we can only guess.

As both Tucker Carlson and Tim Kaine say, this is Israel’s war. But now it is America’s war as well. And why? Because Israel and its American friends pushed…

In Tucker Carlson’s June 18 interview with Texas senator Ted Cruz, days before the United States’ attack on three nuclear sites in Iran and Iran’s retaliatory missile attacks on U.S. bases in Qatar and Iraq, the two men debated the more granular points of Trump’s foreign policy and its underlying values. Their finest points of contradiction were not only the idea of regime change in Iran, with Carlson opposed and Cruz in favor, but also the broader U.S.-Israel relationship….

Much of the current crop of commentary on Israel’s war of aggression on Iran has adopted the familiar tone of breathless admiration: praise for its targeting precision, the elegance of its intelligence-gathering, the almost clinical efficiency with which it eliminates not only combatants but scientists, technicians, and — under the now-naturalized euphemism — “sites and infrastructure.” 

Israel’s opening salvo in the war was, by most conventional metrics, effective….

The global rejection of the genocide in Gaza had begun to carve its way into political decision-making circles in the “West,” where Israel has always received its impunity. Five countries — the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Norway — imposed sanctions on Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the Israeli ministers most explicit in their genocidal intent. Spain had announced the suspension of arms sales to Israel, and France was preparing for an international conference…

Among American Jews, Jewish identity has often been framed as a problem in need of resolution, most often through the framework of Zionism and the project of the Israeli nation-state. This perspective insists that Jewish identity must be grounded in statehood, militarism, and loyalty to a specific territory. But what if the impulse to resolve diaspora through nationalism is nothing more than a trap ensnaring us into violence and inhumanity?

Rather than look to the nation-state to…

Violence has a paralyzing power. What is the power of the word in the face of the planes that sow destruction and death, and the flying ballistic missiles? When I see people around me paralyzed or going crazy with fear in the face of the destruction that the Iranian missiles have sown, I cannot help but think of the resilience of the residents of Gaza, who go through seven circles of hell every day with no relief in sight.

But the missiles and planes are the continuation of…

In late May, in the al-Jerjawi school massacre, the Zionist occupation bombed the shelter rows and tents in the school courtyards. People were burned alive, broadcast for the world to see. The five-year-old girl, Ward Sheikh Khalil, ran among the burning corpses of her family and emerged from the flames. 

What did this child do to be left running on an empty stomach? During nights of famine, surrounded by corpses and the stench of blood, how will she recount the greatest…

“I don’t care what she said.”

That’s what U.S. President Donald Trump said when a reporter confronted him with the one point that every reporter should be bringing up to him: “Tulsi Gabbard testified in March that the Intelligence Community said that Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon.”

The President of the United States, with no evidence, stated that he simply believes a very key, yet false, point to be true despite his own intelligence services telling him…