The exhaustive 84-page brief submitted by South Africa to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) charging Israel with genocide is hard to refute. Israel’s campaign of indiscriminate killing, wholesale destruction of infrastructure, including housing, hospitals and water treatment plants, along with its use of starvation as a weapon, accompanied by genocidal rhetoric from its political and military leaders who speak of destroying Gaza and ethnically cleansing the 2.3 million Palestinians, makes a strong case against Israel for genocide.  Israel’s smearing of South Africa as “the legal arm” of Hamas exemplifies the bankruptcy of its defense, a smear replicated by those who claim that demonstrations held…

Israel has rendered Gaza a “moonscape in war,” uninhabitable for years to come, reduced to rubble by “the most intense air campaigns in the modern record.” Not only is Israel murdering tens of thousands of Gaza’s civilians–22,313 Palestinians to date (Via Ha’aretz Israel News, Wednesday, 03.01.2024); an average of 200 to 300 souls a day–but it has gone and done a Taliban on the Gaza strip’s heritage sites, some dating back to antiquity. Even the Wall Street Journal, in support of Israel’s “operation,” is now hip to the wanton death and destruction. Writes its Middle East correspondent: “By mid-December, Israel had dropped 29,000 bombs,…

The United States surgeon general is warning there is not enough evidence to show that social media is safe for children and teens – and is calling on tech companies, parents, and caregivers to take “immediate action to protect kids now.” With young people’s social media use “near universal” but its true impact on mental health not fully understood, Dr. Vivek Murthy is asking tech companies to share data and increase transparency with researchers and the public and prioritize users’ health and safety when designing their products. “I recognize technology companies have taken steps to try to make their platforms…

Indiscriminate Bombing Investigations into Israel’s use of 2000-pound bombs in its Gaza campaign have determined that you have to go back to Vietnam to compare the brutality and mindlessness of what Israel is doing. These bombs, many supplied by the US, are being dropped in densely populated areas. Both the CNN have provided videos of the craters those bombs create on the ground. It is little wonder that the civilian death toll in Gaza is over 20,000 now. As CNN reports, the bombs being dropped by Israel “are four times heavier than the largest bombs the United States dropped on ISIS in…

I am on vacation this week but thought it would be useful to republish a painful story I did two decades ago for the New Yorker about a group of US army soldiers who went out of control amid a war in Iraq that, so they were told, was being waged against the terrorism that struck America on 9/11. What the GIs did then are what any army does in war when hating and fearing the enemy is encouraged and runs through the ranks, from the lowest level grunts to the senior generals. It takes a special leader, as you will read…