Originally published in Hankyoreh. ( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The greatest horror of the war between Israel and Gaza is that it shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Israeli intelligence received a 40-page document a year before the October 7 attack that provided precise details of the plan of the militant Hamas […]
Archives for December 2023
From Kishinev to Gaza
Montréal (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Pogrom. This Russian term denotes a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring Jews and destroying their property. One of the deadliest pogroms (50 Jews were killed and nearly 600 wounded) took place in Kishinev a hundred and twenty years ago, in April 1903. But the trauma […]
Gaza War: A better Understanding of the Violence on both Sides might give us a Chance at a Solution
By Torbjörn Tännsjö, Stockholm University | – Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 marked the beginning of a fresh round of conflict between Israel and Palestine. But it also raises the question of how we should assess Hamas’s terrible crime and whether and how it can be put into context compared with other war […]
Power, Protest and all That’s News: Reporting on the Israel-Gaza Conflict
By Nan Levinson | – What a world! For eight weeks now, events in Israel and Gaza have been the story of the hour, day, week. And what exactly are we to make of that? Let’s start with the obvious: American media coverage of the horrors there has been nonstop since the Hamas slaughter of October […]
Elise Stefanik, proponent of Great Replacement Theory, is no Foe of Racial Bigotry against Jews or Anyone Else
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) does not care about antisemitism. In the notorious congressional hearing in which she participated last week, she weaponized anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hatred in order to embarrass three university presidents with dishonest “have you stopped beating your spouse?” questions — pretending to do so in order […]
To Finally Settle the Israel-Palestine Conflict, give it to the UN Security Council
Washington, D.C. (Special to Informed Comment) – In the midst of the post-October 7 war in Gaza, President Biden summarized basic administration markers and policy positions for dealing with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The president’s views, as presented in the November 19 Washington Post — some also before and since the nineteenth — include: The Palestinian […]
Forced Migration as a Strategy of War: Israel’s Mass Displacement of Gaza Palestinians
By Nicholas R. Micinski, University of Maine; Adam G. Lichtenheld, Stanford University: and Kelsey Norman, Rice University | – As a result of the monthslong Israeli air and ground campaign in northern Gaza Strip, more than 1.8 million of the strip’s population have been displaced from their homes. And with the operation heading into Gaza’s […]
Not “Surrounded by Enemies:” Regional Powers Egypt and Turkey retain Ties with Israel during Gaza Conflict despite Critical Rhetoric
Istanbul (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – A recent conversation in Israel was reported by The Forward: “‘We are surrounded by our enemies,’ muttered a Jewish history teacher to his student Moshe Klein.” Maybe decades ago this statement had some truth to it, but it is outdated and irrelevant in today’s geopolitical climate. Israel is […]
World Health Organization: Gaza faces Epidemics; 449 Israeli Attacks on Health Services in Palestine
( Middle East Monitor ) – World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Sunday confirmed more than 449 attacks on health services in Gaza and the West Bank since Oct. 7, saying “now the work of the health workers is impossible.” Speaking at a special session organised by the WHO executive board on […]