Antiwar.com Blog

Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.

Omer Bartov is a historian who specializes in German military history and genocide studies. I have three of his books: “The Eastern Front, 1941-45, German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare”; “Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich”; and “Germany’s War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories.” He has studied the Holocaust closely; as a young man, he served in the Israeli Defense Forces and now teaches at Brown University. He is uniquely placed to judge what’s happening in Gaza and he’s quite clear about his conclusion. It’s a genocide.

Continue reading “Genocide Historian Omer Bartov on Israel and Gaza”

Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.

It’s Friday the 13th, and though I’m not superstitious about the date, I’m not liking this headline in today’s New York Times:

Top News

The topic will be on the agenda Friday with the first official visit to Washington by Britain’s new prime minister, Keir Starmer.

That’s a headline that proves once again that America is led by the best and brightest. (Sarcasm alert.)

Vladimir Putin has already said that long-range weapons striking targets in Russia means war between Russia and NATO. I don’t think he’s bluffing. And, lest we forget, Russia has nearly 6000 nuclear warheads in its inventory.

Continue reading “Escalation in the Russia-Ukraine War”

We are happy to announce the birth of Ariella Anzalone this morning.  She is the first child of Antiwar.com opinion editor Kyle Anzalone and his wife Fressia Anzalone.   Kyle is also news editor at The Libertarian Institute.

Ariella is healthy and beautiful.

Israeli officials are lobbying U.S. lawmakers to pressure South Africa into dropping its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, according to a report published Monday.

Axiossaid it obtained a classified Israeli Foreign Ministry cable sent Monday to the country’s embassy in Washington, D.C. and all its U.S. consulates threatening consequences if South Africa proceeds with its case in The Hague – which is backed by dozens of nations and regional blocs, as well as countless legal and genocide experts.

Continue reading “Israel Lobbies US Congress to Pressure South Africa to Drop ICJ Genocide Case”

Van Jackson read the Harris campaign’s new “policy” page and he was not impressed:

It pains me to observe this because I want better, we need better, and I’m very invested in her beating Trump. But we are well and truly in the territory of HBO’s Veep and nobody wants to say it for fear of harshing the vibes that appear to be central to the current strategy.

The foreign policy section was notable for saying very little about anything. Most of the text on foreign policy issues seems to have been lifted verbatim from Harris’ acceptance speech, complete with the same hollow words on Gaza that we have seen before. Like the foreign policy remarks in the speech, this “policy” page comes across as a box-checking exercise to satisfy the party’s hawks. It talks about having “the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world” and reaffirms Harris’ willingness to bomb Iranian allies, but there is precious little about non-military policy tools and there is no mention of climate, migration or pandemics in the foreign policy section. If you didn’t know that the Harris is the Democratic nominee, there wouldn’t be much in the foreign policy section to let you know. Put another way, there is nothing in here that would make Dick Cheney uncomfortable.

Continue reading “Harris’ Missing Foreign Policy Vision”

An Israeli soldier fatally shot an American citizen and peace activist, Aysenur Eygi, in the head on Friday while she was participating in a peaceful protest against an illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank. Haaretz reports on what witnesses to the shooting saw:

Three eyewitnesses present at the protest in the West Bank town of Beita, where a 26-year-old American-Turkish human rights activist was shot dead on Friday, told Haaretz that Israeli troops shot her for no reason and there had been no clashes at the time.

Like the murder of American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by an Israeli sniper in May 2022, this is a clear case of a member of the Israeli military gunning down an unarmed American citizen. The IDF’s account of this killing – that their soldiers were responding to a rock-throwing “instigator” – is no more credible than the story that they spun two years ago when one of their men shot a journalist in the head. There must be a credible independent investigation into Aysenur Eygi’s murder, and the shooter must be made to answer for the crime.

Continue reading “The Murder of Aysenur Eygi”