Human Rights
The conversation on settler colonialism must not be limited to academic discussion. It is a political reality, clearly demonstrated in the everyday behavior of Israel.
Israel is not merely an expansionist regime historically; it remains actively so today. Additionally, the core of Israeli political discourse, both past and present, revolves around territorial expansion.
Frequently, we succumb to the trap of blaming such language on a specific set of right-wing and extremist politicians or on a particular US administration. The truth is vastly different: the Israeli Zionist political discourse, though it may change in style, remains fundamentally unchanged throughout time.
Zionist leaders have always associated the establishment and expansion of their state with the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, later referred to in Zionist literature as the "transfer."
International law is fighting for relevance. The outcome of this fight is likely to change the entire global political dynamics, which were shaped by World War II and sustained through the selective interpretation of the law by dominant countries.
In principle, international law should have always been relevant, if not paramount, in governing the relationships between all countries, large and small, to resolve conflicts before they turn into outright wars. It should also have worked to prevent a return to an era of exploitation that allowed Western colonialism to practically enslave the global south for hundreds of years.
The story of Bilal, who works as a legal consultant for the Palestinian Preventive Security Forces, began shortly over three years ago when he was driving to work through the Huwara military checkpoint outside Nablus when he was stopped and shot at by the Israeli army. Bilal was severely injured and an Israeli army helicopter came and picked him up and transferred him to an unknown location.
Many leading Israeli politicians and prime ministers have been convicted of corruption-related crimes, massacres, assassination, war crimes, crime against humanity, and genocide and Ehud Barak is no exception. Barak is a former Israeli general and politician who served as the tenth prime minister from 1999 to 2001. This man is a dirty rat! Here are my reasons:
* Performed atrocities on Dalal al-Mughrabi's body
After killing Palestinian freedom fighters Dalal al-Mughrabi on March 11, 1978, the Israeli commander Ehud Barak (later became PM of Israel) dragged her, unclothed her in front of the cameras, fondled her breasts, stuck the bayonet of his rifle into her body and performed other atrocities on intimate parts of her body.
On this day 47 years ago, Dalal al-Mughrabi fell with eight other fighters during an operation she led on the highway between Haifa and Tel Aviv. The operation aimed at taking control of hostages and demanding the release of a number of Palestinian detainees held in Israeli prisons. Al-Mughrabi was dubbed “the Bride of Jaffa.”
Palestinians and Israelis agree that the Gaza resistance was the main reason behind Israel’s forced decision to accept a ceasefire and begin its gradual withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
The oddity is that Palestinians—dying, resisting, but remaining steadfast in Gaza—usually stand at the polar opposite of everything the Israeli government and military represent.
The same is true for the Israeli government. Yet, from the very start of the Israeli genocide, both sides entered into an undeclared agreement: the Israelis wanted to destroy the Palestinian resistance and take full control of Gaza, while the Palestinians wanted to thwart the Israeli objectives.
Here’s a strange question: Why is Elon Musk lying about Lutherans?
The richest man on earth recently forced good people across the country to interrupt their community work to respond to his lies and threats.
Lutheran social service agencies offer crucial assistance related to adoption, foster care, domestic violence, and more. They also support immigrants and refugees, helping new Americans learn English, find homes and jobs, and settle into their new communities.
Like many nonprofits, they often get federal support to offer this help.
But in early February, as Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” was forcing its way into government, right-wing activist Michael Flynn posted on social media that federal contracts with Lutheran social services organizations amounted to “money laundering.”
Musk responded that DOGE was “rapidly shutting down these illegal payments.”
The world is witnessing yet another chapter in the Trump administration’s reckless approach to foreign policy. This time, the target is Gaza, and the rhetoric is as outrageous as it is dangerous. President Trump’s recent statements about expelling Palestinians from their homeland and transforming Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” are not only absurd but also blatant endorsements of war crimes and ethnic cleansing. How did we get here?
Donald Trump & Elon Musk (he/himmler) have built their political power base on a retro white male “Christian” constituency that lives in total terror of strong women & people of color.
Here's the appropriate historic root “Southern Strategy” quote from Lee Atwater, George H.W. Bush’s very own Josef Goebbels, with [DEI] subbed in where it belongs:
"You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.”
"By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires.
"So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, [DEI] and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract.
"Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes [and DEI], and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks [and women] get hurt worse than whites [and men].…
“We want to cut this [DEI] ,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
The return of one million Palestinians from southern Gaza to the north on January 27 felt as if history was choreographing one of its most earth-shattering events in recent memory.
Hundreds of thousands of people marched along a single street, the coastal Rashid Street, at the furthest western stretch of Gaza. Though these displaced masses were cut off from each other in massive displacement camps in central Gaza and the Mawasi region further south, they sang the same songs, chanted the same chants, and used the same talking points.
Before I start I want to express sympathy for the people who have died in a plane crash in Washington, and I want to condemn Trump’s disgusting proposal to kidnap people and lock them up in Guantanamo.
I’m very happy to be in Cuba. I feel closer to Cuba than I do to people in the United States with red hats reading MAGA. Cuba is, in fact, closer to the continental United States than is Hawaii or Alaska or any of the U.S. colonies in the Pacific or about 916 of the United States’ 917 foreign military bases. The people of the U.S. and Cuba have managed, against the odds, to share a great deal of culture and good will, poetry, music, food, and drink. But we sure are divided by governments.
I just searched the internet in the United States for the words “free Cuba” and discovered that it means the overthrow of the Cuban government. I tried searching for “Cuba libre” and learned that it means a drink. But what if I want to search for “a Cuba free of hostile actions by the U.S. government”? The internet is of no help.