Month: January 2024

‘We Are Not Very Far From an Explosion’

‘We Are Not Very Far From an Explosion’

One recent morning in Huwara, a Palestinian man maneuvered a front-end loader back and forth, clearing rocks and rubble that Israel Defense Forces soldiers had piled into a roadblock. Four young soldiers looked on, fingers tensed on triggers, as the machine’s claws heaved shattered masonry from clutching mud. A crowd of approving Palestinian onlookers gathered.

The barrier, put in place to prevent access to a main street that has been a battleground over the past year, has infuriated the 7,000 inhabitants of this town in the northern West Bank, who are now accustomed to eking out survival as Israeli forces close stores and control their every movement.

Defies logic’

Biden blathers about the “horror of the Shoah” whilst enabling genocide in Gaza…

“My dad taught us about the horror of the Shoah,” Biden explained last month at a Hanukkah celebration, repeating a well-worn tale. “It awakened in me and my brothers and sisters and our children a sense … that this can happen again.”
On other occasions, Biden said his father – a
“righteous Christian” – instilled in him the importance of Israel as a bulwark against threats to the Jewish people.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2024/1/30/defies-logic-the-makings-of-joe-bidens-blank-cheque-to-israel

How has the memory of the Holocaust shaped Germany and Israel?

How has the memory of the Holocaust shaped Germany and Israel?

An interview with Udi Raz from Jewish Voice for Peace in the Middle East on how the Holocaust impacted the societies and politics of both Germany and Israel

January 27 is Holocaust Remembrance Day, a date of enormous symbolic importance in Europe, marking one of the darkest chapters in human history. It’s a day of particular significance in Germany, of course. The so-called remembrance culture, Germany’s reckoning with the legacy of the Nazi periods, and the industrial scale genocides perpetrated by the Nazi regime, have been much lauded internationally.

But today, parts of this culture are increasingly coming into question by many, with charges of antisemitism being used by German institutions to silence voices speaking up for the rights of Palestinians in particular. The targets of these charges are, disproportionately, the Palestinians themselves, Arabs, more broadly, and Jews.

On the international stage, meanwhile, Germany’s long steadfast support for the State of Israel, which remains unshaken even as the civilian toll in Gaza continues to climb to ever more obscene numbers, has raised the ire of many. The support, of course, is again justified by the legacy of the Holocaust and the German state’s resulting sense of responsibility towards the security of the Jewish state.

(https://diem25.org/how-has-the-memory-of-the-holocaust-shaped-germany-and-israel/)

Jaw-Dropping’ Analysis Shows Fossil Fuel Companies to Burn Through 62% of Carbon Budget

‘Jaw-Dropping’ Analysis Shows Fossil Fuel Companies to Burn Through 62% of Carbon Budget

In another high-profile case of “greenwashing,” the oil and gas companies that signed a decarbonization pact at last year’s 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference have plans that would burn through around 62% of the carbon dioxide that can still be emitted without pushing global temperatures past 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.

(https://www.commondreams.org/news/fossil-fuel-companies-carbon-budget)

US Court Hears Case Alleging Biden Complicit in Israel’s Genocide in Gaza

Calling for an emergency injunction to stop the Biden administration from aiding Israel in its bombardment of Gaza, which has so far killed more than 26,000 people and pushed roughly 2 million more to the point of starvation, human rights organizations and Palestinians in the U.S. on Friday took federal leaders to court to stop U.S. “complicity in the Israeli government’s unfolding genocide.”

(https://www.commondreams.org/news/us-complicity-genocide)