The Palestine Chronicle is not a militant organization. It is a modest, independent publication, sustained by small donations and animated by a singular mission: to bear witness. It tells the untold stories of Palestine, documenting dispossession, resistance, and the endurance of a people condemned to silence. In a media landscape dominated by powerful conglomerates repeating the language of governments, the Chronicle insists on a journalism of proximity — grounded in daily lives, in the rubble of Gaza, in voices otherwise erased. Its true offense, in the eyes of its detractors, is not invention but truth.

Can a play influence public perception of our shared atomic history enough to shift the conversation away from a presumed nuclear “renaissance” and into a more critical, life-protective examination of what this technology is and could do to us all?  

Playwright and podcaster Libbe HaLevy believes it can. She spent 13 years researching and writing that play—Atomic Bill and the Payment Due—which will have its premiere staged reading next week, on September 9th, as a featured presentation at the 50th anniversary celebration of the establishment of the Peace Resource Center at Wilmington College in Ohio.

For 14 years, HaLevy has hosted the podcast Nuclear Hotseat, aired on 20 Pacifica affiliate radio stations throughout the United States and, as its website (NuclearHotseat.com) says, has been tuned into and downloaded by audiences in over 124 countries around the world. 

This week will go down in history as a time when the governing body of the Democratic Party had a chance to oppose the U.S. government’s arming of Israel. But with the first Democratic National Committee meeting in seven months getting underway on Monday, the DNC’s leadership is determined to derail a resolution calling for “an arms embargo and suspension of military aid to Israel.”

 Maneuvering to sidetrack that resolution, DNC Chair Ken Martin and all five vice chairs are sponsoring a counter-resolution that does little more than repeat the kind of hollow rhetoric that President Biden and Vice President Harris offered about Israel and Gaza last year.

Many Americans believe that the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the United States’ illegal bombing of Iran, and the United States’ disastrous proxy war with Russia in Ukraine are too far away to do anything about. These Americans, however, overlook the fact that most of the weapons and other military technologies used by Israel to massacre Palestinians, to commit war crimes against Iran, and to waste Ukrainian lives in a completely avoidable war are manufactured in their backyards. Americans do not need to travel to Gaza, Iran, or Ukraine to save innocent lives in those countries, they could interfere with the manufacture of weapons and other military technologies right here in the United States. On February 7, 2025, for example, the State Department approved a $6.75 billion sale of thousands of bombs and bomb guidance systems to Israel and reported that the sale will come “from principal contractors The Boeing Company, located in St.