Geography Archives: Middle East

The world looks on in horror as Israel continues its genocidal assault on the Palestinian people.

Two weeks ago, Ayman Odeh, MP and head of the Parliamentary Group of Hadash (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality), was violently removed from the podium of Knesset for denouncing the genocide in Gaza.

One of the most remarkable—not to say shameful—features of the last 20 months of carnage in Gaza has been the near-unanimity of support for Israel’s assault from Western governments and political parties of otherwise sharply opposed persuasions, regardless of how criminally Israel has conducted its “war.”

The victims had gathered in hopes of finding food for themselves and their families, following a nearly three-month total Israeli blockade of the territory. At least 31 people were killed; one Palestinian was also killed by Israeli fire the same day at another distribution site in central Gaza.

The letter—addressed to the Association of University Heads in Israel, the Board of Academic Public Colleges, the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and Academics for Israeli Democracy—is a reaction to the launching of “Operation Gideon’s Chariots”.

Israel is using the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to condense Palestinians into increasingly narrow enclaves, forcing displacement through need. We are witnessing the rise of a new humanitarianism where aid sites double as kill zones.

Irony is dead. It lies buried in Gaza, under the rubble the West helped create.

A number of notable parallels run through the histories of Israel and the United States.

Glencore, one of the world’s largest mining conglomerates at the confluence of worker exploitation, environmental destruction, and genocide, brought Palestine solidarity activists, trade unionists and mining affected communities together in a unified protest.

We’ve seen multiple reports from doctors documenting Israeli forces actually entering hospitals they’ve attacked and destroying all the individual pieces of medical equipment in those facilities, one by one.

CounterSpin interview with Mara Kronenfeld on Israel’s aid blockade.

Prime minister says Israel has photographs of thousands of unclothed prisoners, an ‘indication’ of sufficient food, as experts warn of looming famine.

The Israeli and U.S. aid distribution maneuver sparked chaos among desperate, starving Palestinians and Israeli forces responded by killing at least five.

The London marches, several of which have broken the half a million mark, are the flagship of the whole movement, and are not stopping yet explains David Jamieson.

The Government Media Office of Hamas, which technically rules Gaza, said today 77 per cent of the Strip’s territory was now under direct Israeli occupation, and called on the UN to act to stop “continued genocide, ethnic cleansing, colonialism, aggression” and what it termed the “final solution” Israel is trying to impose on Gaza by force.

As threats of an Israeli strike on Iran grow louder, the United States is making quiet but unmistakable moves of its own.

Whether it’s total conquest or managed containment, Israel doesn’t have a single grand strategy for Gaza, but it uses the possibility of both to prolong the war.

In Tehran, bewildered diplomats told me they suspect the Trump administration is exploiting nuclear negotiations as a instrument for generating instability to weaken Iran’s economy and foment social strife.

On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the first time officially stated that an Israeli war aim is the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, openly stating what had been the unspoken goal of Israel since October 7, 2023.

Amidst the uproar of news pouring in about the genocide in Gaza, the news of the martyrdom of Shaima and her family in the Nuseirat area of the Gaza Strip passes as if nothing happened, as if she were just a number added to a list of numbers.