Antiwar.com Blog

As Israel intensified a war that’s already killed more than 7,300 Palestinians and displaced a majority of Gaza’s residents, hundreds of Jewish American protesters and allies were arrested after taking over New York’s Grand Central Station Friday evening for a sit-in demanding an immediate ceasefire.

Chanting slogans including “no more weapons, no more war, ceasefire’s what we’re fighting for” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” human rights defenders took over the station’s Grand Concourse, while others hung banners reading “Never Again for Anyone” and “Palestinians Should Be Free” from the stairway to the East Balcony.

Continue reading “‘Never Again for Anyone’: Jewish Protesters Demanding Gaza Ceasefire Arrested in Grand Central Station”

There are a disturbing number of parallels between the events surrounding September 11th and the October 7th attacks against Israel earlier this month.

For example, as with the dozens of warnings the US received before 9/11, Israel also received numerous warnings about an impending attack by Hamas. As with unverified propaganda stories that emerged after 9/11 – such as the widely spread fairy tale about thousands of Muslims dancing and celebrating the attacks – fake stories emerged after October 7th, such as the one about babies beheaded by Hamas. As with the US government’s crackdown on civil liberties following 9/11 – such as mass surveillance programs and the censorship of anti-war voices – the aftermath of October 7th has also seen similar acts by the Israeli government, such as the targeting of government critics and the prevention of anti-war protests. And as with 9/11 and Bush administration plans drawn up in years prior to invade Iraq, hawks within the Israeli government have also seized on to the attacks as an opportunity to enact long-dreamed plans of forcibly removing millions of Palestinians.

Continue reading “The Lessons From 9/11 Are Being Actively Ignored by Israel”

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres recently said, “the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.”  The Israeli Ambassador responded that Guterres’ comments were “shocking”, “unfathomable” and  “disconnected from reality”.  He called for the Secretary General’s resignation. Below are some facts about Gaza to evaluate whether Guterres was accurate or not.

Gaza is a tiny strip of land on the Mediterranean coast with the 5,000 year old Gaza City in the north. The entire strip is only 5 miles wide by 25 miles in length with 2.3 million Palestinians locked in this territory by Israel.  It is the size of a small US city.

Continue reading “A Few FACTS About Gaza”

The largest Muslim American civil rights group on Wednesday led condemnation of U.S. President Joe Biden for saying he had “no confidence” in Palestinian health officials’ Gaza casualty reports – figures deemed reliable by United Nations agencies, human rights groups, international and Israeli mainstream media, and even the U.S. State Department.

Speaking at a Wednesday afternoon White House press conference, Biden – who earlier this month declared his “rock-solid and unwavering” commitment to Israel following a Hamas-led attack that killed more than 1,400 Israelis – said that “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed.”

Continue reading “Biden Accused of ‘Genocide Denial’ After Casting Doubt on Civilian Death Toll in Gaza”

Ross Douthat wants you to be very afraid of China:

The establishment of Chinese military pre-eminence in East Asia would be a unique geopolitical shock, with dire effects on the viability of America’s alliance systems, on the likelihood of regional wars and arms races and on our ability to maintain the global trading system that undergirds our prosperity at home.

All of this exaggerates what is at stake for the U.S., and it inflates the threat from China to U.S. interests. That makes it a very conventional hawkish argument, and like other conventional hawkish arguments it gets the most important things wrong. If Americans want to avert a “debacle in East Asia,” our government should reject hawkish recommendations on China policy.

Continue reading “How To Avert a Debacle in East Asia”

When I told my grandmother that I was going to visit Europe for the first time, she exploded, “Oy vey!” Raising her voice, she exclaimed: “There’s nothing there! NOTHING! Just poverty and filth.” Collecting herself, she added: “You like foreign food? There’s better in New York.”

For her generation of Jews, there was little nostalgia for the old country…and for good reason. She had been an involuntary participant in pogroms, violent riots massacring Jews. Fast forward to the present, the perpetrators are being rehabilitated. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, disregarding his religious heritage, honors the murderous Stepan Bandera as one of his “indisputable heroes.”

Continue reading “Zionism – An Ideology for the Self-Loathing”