Orono, Maine (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Yesterday, I interviewed a refugee Ukrainian family in transition from their homeland looking for a permanent place to settle. They were being visited by evangelical church friends. Since I was teaching a course on current world conflicts, the conversation turned to Palestine/Israel where a number of references […]
Archives for October 2024
Israel is using surveillance Technology to subjugate and target Palestinians
Written by Safa Hebron’s Al-Shuhada Street checkpoint with at least 8 CCTV cameras and the Smart Shooter in view. Photo by AV, used with permission. 2024. ( Globalvoices.org) – Data collection and technology can have harmful applications, especially when used to monitor and subjugate marginalized people. This can be seen most clearly in how Israel […]
Cross-Border Refuges: Cyclical Displacement between Lebanon and Syria
By Jasmin Lilian Diab, Lebanese American University | – (The Conversation) – The escalation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah since September 2024, and Israel’s bombing of civilian areas across Lebanon, have unleashed a profound humanitarian disaster. The mass displacement of over 1 million people, including Lebanese citizens, migrant workers and Syrian and Palestinian refugees, […]
China’s Green Energy Wave enters the Middle East
London (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Facing rising trade barriers and diplomatic tensions with the US and the EU, Chinese renewable energy companies are turning to Middle Eastern states as an alternative market for goods including electric vehicles (EVs), lithium-ion batteries, and solar panels. The US, the EU and Canada have all imposed tariffs […]
Israel’s War on the World
( Code Pink ) – Each new week brings new calamities for people in the countries neighboring Israel, as its leaders try to bomb their way to the promised land of an ever-expanding Greater Israel. In Gaza, Israel appears to be launching its “Generals’ Plan” to drive the most devastated and traumatized 2.2 million people […]
Climate Change and the Missing War on Poverty
( Tomdispatch.com) – It was William Shakespeare who, in Troilus and Cressida, wrote, “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” And yet, in the polarized news cycle since Hurricane Helene ravaged the southeastern United States and the hurricanes have kept coming, we’ve heard a tale not of shared humanity, but of ruin, discord, […]
The Gazafication of Lebanon: Israel Blows up Nabatieh City Hall, kills Mayor and Aid Workers
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Israeli military has begun giving southern Lebanon the Gaza treatment. Some 25% of Lebanese are under “evacuation orders,” which is to say that Israel is expelling them from their homes in preparation for further military operations against the Hezbollah Party-Militia. The U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon, Imran Riza, said […]
Israel Should End Campaign to Destroy Lifesaving UN Palestinian Aid Agency
Louis Charbonneau ( Human Rights Watch ) – Israeli authorities should withdraw proposed legislation in parliament aimed at preventing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) from operating in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and halt their campaign to destroy the UN’s most important aid agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza and elsewhere. UN Secretary-General […]
My Sister was the 166th Doctor to be Murdered in Gaza
( Middle East Monitor ) – “Your lives will continue. With new events and new faces. They are the faces of your children, who will fill your homes with noise and laughter.” These were the last words written by my sister in a text message to one of her daughters. Dr Soma Baroud was murdered […]