'The occupation has cultivated a longstanding disregard among Israeli soldiers for Palestinian lives, and similar impulses in the words and actions of commanders can be seen to lie behind the horrors of what we are witnessing today' in Gaza. nytimes.com/2024/05/20/opi…

Benny Gantz: Failure to create an “alternative governing authority is equivalent to choosing between the two worst alternatives: Hamas rule or Israeli control of Gaza.” But Netanyahu won’t allow one for fear of creating a prototype Palestinian state.
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'Any presumption that older people would be the chief victims of the next pandemic — as they were in Covid — is wrong, and any policy so premised could leave healthy young adults and children exposed to a lethal virus.' nytimes.com/2024/05/16/opi…

Hard to see how normalization negotiations between Israel and Saudi Arabia are “almost finished” while Netanyahu refuses to provide a “credible pathway” toward creating a Palestinian state. Will the Saudi crown prince sell out the Palestinians again?
nytimes.com/live/2024/05/1…

Rafah: 'Although Israel has labeled its current operation 'limited,' about 800,000 people have fled after evacuation orders, while satellite imagery shows widening destruction.'
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Two key members of Netanyahu's war cabinet 'have implicitly accused” him “in recent days of putting his political survival ahead of national security,' let alone the lives of Palestinian civilians. Which he is doing by pursuing endless war in Gaza. trib.al/GqUx26Q

An emerging dictatorship: 'Freedoms in Tunisia are being threatened under the rule of President Kais Saied and the authorities are using the judiciary and police to punish their opponents, 10 local rights groups said at a joint conference.' reuters.com/world/africa/t…

Putin and his entourage are bathing in corruption, but the technocrat he named to run the defense ministry is supposed to stamp out its notorious corruption. 'Corruption for me, not for you' is a tough sell. nytimes.com/2024/05/19/wor…

An historian 'devoted herself to teaching about the Tiananmen massacre.' Hong Kong immigration officials 'denied her visa and the Chinese University of Hong Kong fired her from her teaching position,' showing 'the narrowing space for academic freedom.' wsj.com/world/china/sh…

If Russia takes Ukraine as Trump would allow, it gains Ukrainian soldiers (undoubtedly the first to be used as cannon fodder in the next war), Ukrainian resources (to fight the next war), and Ukrainian territory (from which to launch the next war). x.com/martenkokk/sta…

While many -- foremost Iranians -- will rejoice at the potential demise of Iran's hardline president and potential future leader, Ebrahim Raisi, we should not assume, as some are, that it was an assassination. His helicopter crashed in abysmal weather. nytimes.com/live/2024/05/1…

A Venezuelan human rights group, Provea, has 'fortified its office windows to withstand bullets and grenade blasts,' but it continues to document and report on Nicholas Maduro's severe repression. His government declared it an 'enemy of the people.' washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/…

“We received 20 fatalities and several wounded after an Israeli airstrike targeted a house belonging to the Hassan family in al-Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza,” the al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital said. theguardian.com/world/live/202…

As the Saudi crown prince seeks a security deal with the United States, the big question is whether he will sell out the Palestinians by dropping his insistence on a credible path to a Palestinian state. reuters.com/world/middle-e…

The extraordinary power of the U.S. presidency is to a large extent limited not by formal laws but by informal norms that officials tend to accept. Trump, however, loves to flout such norms. That makes a potential second term for him dangerous. economist.com/briefing/2024/…

The Rwandan government can't offer a convincing explanation for blocking entry of a Human Rights Watch researcher. We know the real reason: Paul Kagame doesn't like reporting on his severe repression. He prefers the British government's whitewashing. hrw.org/news/2024/05/1…

Another big lie: 'Israel continues to characterize its offensive in and around Rafah as a 'limited operation' against Hamas. But recent satellite imagery showed widening destruction and suggested that a significant incursion was already underway.' nytimes.com/2024/05/18/wor…

Many consider Marwan Barghouti a possible leader of a future Palestinian state. He has long been in Israeli detention, and his treatment has become so severe that it may amount to torture. It is as if Israel is signaling that no one is safe in detention. theguardian.com/world/article/…

Israel regularly blames Hamas for using hospitals for military purposes, but now 'Israeli soldiers appear to be using the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital in the Gaza Strip as a base for military operations.' At a moment when Palestinians need it. haaretz.com/israel-news/20…

Why does anyone bother following @ElonMusk on Twitter/X when his algorithm forces his posts to the top of your timeline regardless. The real question is how to suppress his forced feed of his posts.