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      BBC accuses White House of misrepresenting fatal Gaza attack report

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      The BBC has defended its reporting on the war in Gaza and accused the White House of misrepresenting its journalism after Donald Trump’s administration criticised its coverage of a fatal attack near a US-backed aid distribution site.Senior BBC journalists said the White House was political point-scoring after Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, accused the corporation of taking “the word of Hamas with total truth”. She also falsely claimed that the BBC had removed a story about the incident.Leavitt launched her attack on the BBC after being asked about reports that Israeli forces opened fire near an aid distribution centre in Rafah. Brandishing a print-out of images taken from the BBC’s website, she accused the corporation of having to “correct and take down” its story about the fatalities and injuries involved in the attack.The Hamas-run health ministry had said at least 31 people were killed in the gunfire. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) later said at least 21 Palestinians were killed by IDF troops.In a briefing on Tuesday, Leavitt said: “The administration is aware of those reports and we are currently looking into the veracity of them because, unfortunately, unlike some in the media, we don’t take the word of Hamas with total truth. We like to look into it when they speak, unlike the BBC.“And then, oh, wait, they had to correct and take down their entire story, saying: ‘We reviewed the footage and couldn’t find any evidence of anything.’”The BBC swiftly issued a robust statement. It said that casualty numbers were updated throughout the day from multiple sources, as is the case of any incident of the kind in a chaotic war zone. It also clarified that the accusation from Leavitt that the BBC had removed a story was false.“The claim the BBC took down a story after reviewing footage is completely wrong,” it said. “We did not remove any story and we stand by our journalism.View image in fullscreen“Our news stories and headlines about Sunday’s aid distribution centre incident were updated throughout the day with the latest fatality figures as they came in from various sources … This is totally normal practice on any fast-moving news story.”It said the White House had conflated that incident with a “completely separate” report by BBC Verify, the corporation’s factchecking team, which found a viral video posted on social media was not linked to the aid distribution centre it claimed to show. “This video did not run on BBC news channels and had not informed our reporting,” it said. “Conflating these two stories is simply misleading.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe BBC called on the White House to join forces with its calls for “immediate access” to Gaza. International journalists are prevented from entering by Israel.Jonathan Munro, the deputy director of the BBC News, said the claims were wrong, adding: “It’s important that accurate journalism is respected, and that governments call for free access to Gaza.”Jeremy Bowen, the corporation’s international editor, accused the White House of launching a political attack. “To be quite frank, the Trump administration does not have a good record when it comes to telling the truth itself,” he said. “She’s making a political point, basically.“Israel doesn’t let us in because it’s doing things there, clearly I think, that they don’t want us to see otherwise they would allow free reporting.“I’ve reported on wars for the best part of 40 years. I’ve reported on more than 20 wars. And I’m telling you, even when you get full access, it is really difficult to report them. When you can’t get in, it’s even harder.” More

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      US distances itself from Gaza food delivery group amid questions over its leadership, funding

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      After a rollout trumpeted by US officials, the US- and Israeli-backed effort that claimed it would return large-scale food deliveries to Gaza was born an orphan, with questions growing over its leadership, sources of funding and ties to Israeli officials and private US security contractors.The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation had said it would securely provide food supplies to the Gaza Strip, ending an Israeli blockade that UN officials say have led to the brink of a famine.Instead, early reports and leaked video of its operations that began this week have depicted a scene of chaos, with crowds storming a distribution site and Israeli military officials confirming they had fired “warning shots” to restore order. Gaza health officials said at least one civilian had been killed and 48 injured in the incident.In a statement, GHF downplayed the episode, claimed there had been no casualties, and said it had distributed 14,550 food boxes, or 840,262 meals, according to its own calculations.But GHF had no experience distributing food in a famine zone, and as of Wednesday, its leadership remained opaque, if not deliberately obscure. A number of executives and board members have refuted links to the group or stepped down, including Jake Wood, the ex-Marine who previously headed the group. When he resigned on Sunday, he said that it “is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon”. The group named John Acree, a former senior official at USAID, as its interim executive director.Both a Geneva-based company and a Delaware-based company tied to the organisation are reportedly being dissolved, a GHF spokesperson told an investigative Israeli media outlet, increasing speculation over its initiators and sources of funding. The New York Times has reported that the idea for the group came from “Israeli officials in the earliest weeks of the war” as a way to undermine Hamas.And the US state department has also distanced itself from GHF’s operations, with a spokesperson saying she could not speak to the group’s chaotic rollout or what plans could be made to extend aid to hundreds of thousands more people in Gaza who would not receive aid.“This is not a state department effort. We don’t have a plan,” Tammy Bruce, the state department spokesperson, said during a briefing on Tuesday when asked about plans to extend aid deliveries to those in the north of the Gaza Strip. “I’m not going to speculate or to say what they should or should not do.”She added that any questions about the group’s work should be addressed solely to the group.“The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has an email,” Bruce said. “You can – they should be reached out to, and that’s what I’d recommend regarding plans to expand, plans to make assessments of what’s worked and what hasn’t at this point and what changes they might make. And what the goal is – clearly the goal is to reach as many people as possible.”But when contacted by the Guardian, the group said it couldn’t provide a representative for an interview and did not immediately respond to inquiries about its current leadership, where it was registered or its links to US security contractors.The group did defend its food distribution, denying Palestinian crowds had been fired upon or that anyone had been injured at its distribution sites.A statement sent to the Guardian from GHF said that under its protocol “for a brief moment the GHF team intentionally relaxed its security protocols to safeguard against crowd reactions to finally receiving food”.The group in part blamed the “pressure” on the distribution site due to “acute hunger and Hamas-imposed blockades, which create dangerous conditions outside the gates”.The statement did not address Israel’s role in preventing deliveries of aid.“Unfortunately, there are many parties who wish to see GHF fail,” the group said.The UN and other humanitarian organisations have refused to work with GHF, arguing that doing so would compromise efforts to reach civilians in all conflict zones, and put at risk both their teams and local people.“Yesterday, we saw tens of thousands of desperate people under fire, storming a militarized distribution point established on the rubble of their homes,” said Jonathan Whittall, the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.Others have described the effort as an attempt to use deliveries of aid as a political weapon.Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat, said that the bloc opposed the “privatisation of the distribution of humanitarian aid. Humanitarian aid cannot be weaponized.” More

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      As key Israel allies threaten action over Gaza catastrophe, Washington is largely unmoved

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      As Israel orders Palestinians to evacuate Khan Younis in advance of what it calls an “unprecedented attack” on Gaza, much of Washington remains largely unmoved, even as Canada and European countries threaten “concrete actions” if Israel does not scale back its offensive.Despite reports of growing pressure from the Trump administration to increase aid into Gaza, where widespread famine looms, the White House continues to publicly back Israel. National security council spokesperson James Hewitt told the Guardian in an email: “Hamas has rejected repeated ceasefire proposals, and therefore bears sole responsibility for this conflict,” maintaining the policy stance inherited from the previous Biden administration despite mounting evidence of humanitarian catastrophe.The Israeli military on Monday instructed residents of southern Gaza’s Khan Younis to “evacuate immediately” as it prepares to “destroy the capabilities of terrorist organizations” – signalling plans for intensified bombardment in a war that has already claimed more than 53,000 Palestinian lives, according to Gaza’s health ministry.Despite Israeli promises to “flatten” Gaza, opposition from Congress – and mainstream Democrats more broadly – has been largely muted. While the besieged territory faces what the World Health Organization (Who) calls “one of the world’s worst hunger crises”, more than three dozen members of Congress from both parties recently appeared in an American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) video in celebration of Israel’s 77th birthday. In New York, leading mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo held up an Israeli flag in the city’s annual Israel Day Parade on Sunday.This political genuflection comes as a March Gallup poll shows American support for Israel has dropped to 46% – its lowest point in 25 years – while sympathy for Palestinians has risen to a record 33%. Democrats reported sympathizing with Palestinians over Israelis by a three-to-one ratio.On a recent episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Senator Bernie Sanders blamed Washington’s reluctance to change course on the financial muscle of lobbying groups. “If you speak up on that issue, you’ll have super Pacs like Aipac going after you,” Sanders said, noting Aipac’s record $14.5m campaign to unseat Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman after he accused Israel of genocide.A small contingent of progressive lawmakers continue to voice opposition despite being largely iced out from public discourse in Washington. Representative Delia Ramirez of Illinois condemned the “lethal, unaccountable, extremist duo” of Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Donald Trump. “Americans have said they do not want to be complicit in their barbaric campaigns. It is time for us in Congress to exercise our power and take action. Not one more cent, not one more bomb, not one more excuse,” she told the Guardian.Representative Ilhan Omar similarly decried the latest chapter of the lopsided war on Gaza, calling it “another unconscionable moral stain”.“Despite the fanfare of Donald Trump’s trip [to the Middle East last weak], they’re not closer to a ceasefire,” Omar said. “It is deeply shameful that innocent civilians are continuing to pay the price.”Vermont senator Peter Welch recently led 29 Senate colleagues in introducing a resolution calling on the Trump administration to end the blockade of humanitarian aid. “It’s been over two months since the Israeli government has been using its power to withhold food, medicine, lifesaving cancer treatments, dialysis systems, formula, and more from starving and suffering families across Gaza,” he said.Resolutions, however, are symbolic gestures meant to publicize opinions and do not have the force of law.While the lawmakers voice their concerns, their impact on policy remains limited, representing the growing disconnect between Washington policymakers and public sentiment. That the grassroots movement for Palestinian rights in the US has grown more subdued – in large part due to an aggressive crackdown by the Trump administration against the universities that were host to last year’s protests – may take some of the pressure off for them to act.One insider familiar with discussions between the US and Israel told the Washington Post that the Americans have been hitting Israel with a tougher stance over the last few weeks. Haaretz has also reported growing pressure by the US on Israel to agree to a framework for a temporary ceasefire.“Trump’s people are letting Israel know: ‘We will abandon you if you do not end this war,’” the insider said. Trump and JD Vance both skipped over Israel on recent trips abroad, widely interpreted as a snub of Netanyahu.Netanyahu has announced the resumption of “minimal” humanitarian aid into Gaza, and the UN said on Monday that nine aid trucks were authorised to enter Gaza, a “drop in the ocean” given the scale of desperation.Whether US voices calling for change in US policy and a wind-down of the catastrophic war are just shouting in the void, may become clearer in the coming days. More

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      Trump once condemned Qatar. How things have changed | Mohamad Bazzi

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      On his tour of the Middle East last week, Donald Trump was treated like royalty by the leaders of the wealthiest countries in the Arab world. The US president was feted in gilded ballrooms, his motorcade was flanked by dozens of men riding white Arabian horses and he was awarded an elaborate gold medal necklace. The leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates went out of their way to show Trump that they respect him more than his predecessor, Joe Biden.While Trump frequently praised Saudi and UAE leaders during his first term, he was highly critical of Qatar, a small emirate that is rich in natural gas but usually overshadowed by its two larger and more powerful neighbors. In June 2017, Trump said Qatar “has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level” and he supported a blockade against the country, led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Qatar’s neighbors accused it of financing terrorism by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, and being too cozy with Iran. The blockade, which disrupted the lives of thousands of people across the Persian Gulf, stretched until early 2021.Today, Qatar has emerged as the unlikely success story of Trump’s first state visit of his second term. It was no accident that the Qatari royal family recently offered to donate a $400m luxury jet – a “palace in the sky” Boeing 747 – that the president could use as Air Force One for the rest of his term. The plane’s ownership would then be transferred to Trump’s presidential library, meaning he would be able to continue using the jet after he leaves office. Despite the administration’s convoluted effort to frame this as a donation from Qatar to the US government, it would in effect be a gift for Trump’s personal benefit.It’s yet another way that Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself and his family business, which has ongoing deals for Trump-branded real estate projects and golf resorts worth billions of dollars in the three wealthy Gulf petrostates that Trump visited last week. So far, neither Congress nor US courts have tried to sanction Trump over the US constitution’s foreign emoluments clause, which forbids the president from accepting gifts or payments from a foreign government without congressional approval.Qatar seems to have won Trump’s respect with its lavish gift and a charm offensive built around its role as a global mediator that is able to bring enemies together. During the first Trump administration, Qatar brokered a peace agreement between the US and Taliban leaders, which was supposed to lead to a phased withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. During the Biden administration, Qatar hosted indirect talks for a prisoner swap between Iran and the US, which included unblocking $6bn in frozen Iranian oil funds – an agreement that Washington later rescinded.But Qatar’s most high-stakes mediation role has been to serve as the main conduit for negotiations between Israel and Hamas, after the October 2023 Hamas attack and Israel’s devastating war on Gaza. The Qataris helped broker a one-week ceasefire in November 2023, and a two-month truce that started this past January and collapsed in March.Yet since the emirate emerged as a primary mediator in Gaza, politicians in both the US and Israel ratcheted up their attacks on Qatar. They accused its leaders of supporting terrorism by hosting members of Hamas’s political leadership in Doha, the Qatari capital, where several settled after they were forced out of Damascus for turning against the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who was facing a popular uprising. Throughout the stalled Gaza negotiations, several members of Congress demanded that the Biden administration pressure Qatar to close the Hamas offices and expel its leaders. The Qataris resisted those demands and consistently pointed out that Barack Obama’s administration had asked Qatar in 2012 to establish an indirect channel that would allow the US to communicate with Hamas.After news broke of Qatar’s plan to donate the luxury jet to Trump, some figures in the president’s Maga movement revived complaints about the emirate’s support for Hamas and other Islamist groups. “We cannot accept a $400 million ‘gift’ from jihadists in suits,” Laura Loomer, a far-right activist who last month convinced Trump to fire six White House national security staffers, wrote on X. She added: “I say that as someone who would take a bullet for Trump. I’m so disappointed.”But most of the Republicans in Congress who had urged Biden to punish Qatar for its support of Hamas have so far stayed quiet about Trump’s decision to accept the $400m plane and cozy up to Qatar’s rulers. That’s partly an indication of how Trump has successfully banished or ignored many hawkish Republicans and neoconservatives during his second term, preferring to negotiate with Iran and other US adversaries. Qatar’s role as a mediator that can resolve regional conflicts is particularly attractive to Trump, who sees himself as the ultimate dealmaker.In this term, Trump has surrounded himself with longtime friends as top advisers, including Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real estate developer who is serving as the president’s Middle East envoy and all-around troubleshooter. Witkoff has been publicly praising Qatar’s leaders for their mediation efforts with Hamas since he took office in January – and the envoy’s praise is clearly resonating with Trump, who has dramatically changed his approach toward Qatar. “They’re good, decent people,” Witkoff said of the Qataris during an interview in March with Tucker Carlson, the rightwing media host and Maga figure. “What they want is a mediation that’s effective, that gets to a peace goal. And why? Because they’re a small nation and they want to be acknowledged as a peacemaker.”Witkoff’s comments echoed the strategy of Qatar’s ruler, the 44-year-old Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, who took power in 2013 when his father abdicated the throne. The emir has tried to position Qatar as a force in global geopolitics not just for prestige, but also as a way to ensure his ruling family’s survival amid sometimes aggressive neighbors. (Those neighbors, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have tried to impose their own foreign policy directives on Qatar, as they did during the blockade that Trump supported in his first term.) Qatar still walks a tightrope of proving itself crucial to the US and western powers by being one of the world’s largest and most reliable suppliers of liquified natural gas, and also maintaining ties with non-state groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban.Qatar has tried to hedge its bets by positioning itself to play an outsize role as a dealmaker, one that a country of its size would not normally take on. That policy began under the current emir’s father, who launched the state-owned Al Jazeera satellite network in 1996 as part of Qatar’s soft-power campaign to increase its influence in the Middle East. And while Qatar directly funded Islamist groups soon after the 2011 Arab uprisings in Syria, Libya and Egypt, the emirate’s leaders became more cautious in recent years and shifted toward cementing their role as global negotiators.For decades, Qatari leaders have also worked to solidify a military alliance with the US. After the attacks of 11 September 2001, they allowed Washington to use Al-Udeid Air Base outside Doha to launch air strikes against Afghanistan. Qatar later invested $8bn to upgrade the base, which has become the largest US military installation in the Middle East, housing up to 10,000 troops. On Thursday, as Trump wrapped up his visit to Qatar, he delivered a meandering, campaign-style speech to US troops stationed at the base. He bragged about economic agreements he had signed with Qatari leaders the previous day, which the White House valued at more than $243bn.Trump also expounded on the value of Qatar’s loyalty: “I don’t think our friendship has ever been stronger than it is right now.” Earlier on Thursday, he praised Qatar’s emir and told a meeting of business leaders: “We are going to protect you.”For Trump, who sees all diplomacy as transactional, that is the ultimate favor he can bestow: US protection for a foreign leader who is trying to resolve regional conflicts – and also happened to offer the president an extravagant gift.

      Mohamad Bazzi is the director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and a journalism professor at New York University More

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      Trump’s dangerous projects follow a predictable pattern

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      Soon after Elon Musk slapped the air with a double Nazi salute, his brother Kimbal went on X to say: “This is what success feels like.” And three months ago, he seemed to have a point.The Trump administration, which appeared to have been co-led for a time by big brother Musk, is now in a period of retrenchment. Initiatives focused on Gaza, tariffs, spending, deporting millions of migrantand “government efficiency” have all deflated somewhat.We are admittedly only a small fraction of the way through this second Trump term, but a pattern appears to be emerging: the president proclaims a big policy goal, Maga appointees scramble to interpret his objectives, and then the whole thing is abandoned in paroxysm. Which isn’t to say that real harm isn’t being caused – just less than might otherwise be.First, the Gaza riviera. Trump’s response to the genocide in Palestine was to envision a grand ethnic cleansing embellished by Carrara marble and rickrack. Questions the president didn’t seem to have asked in advance: where would the Palestinians go? Why would Egypt or Jordan risk regime-ending instability? Who would pay for it all? Faced with the difficulty of implementing a complex plan,which only 3% of Israeli Jews regard as immoral, Trump retreated.But not before facilitating harm. His explicit endorsement of the majority view in Israel that Palestinian residents of Gaza should relocate has only permitted the leadership in that country to accelerate their Biden-era policy. Now, Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, openly speaks of using starvation as a tool in Gaza, something the Israelis were shy about admitting only seven months ago. And since Benjamin Netanyahu’s government broke the ceasefire with Hamas in March, Israeli troops have murdered more than 2,100 Palestinians – the majority of them children. Again, an extension of the Biden policy, but without the chintzy gilt.The tariff debacle, meanwhile, showcased the administration’s inability to shoot straight. A Forbes analysis counts nine flip-flops on tariff policy. Bad policy is bad – whiplash makes it worse.One of the arguments explaining the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency – the tender most countries use for trade and global finance – is that the US is a big and stable country that pays its bills and honors its commitments. That trust in America’s ability to manage an economy confers lots of benefits to Americans, such as lower borrowing and transaction expenses. Demand for the US dollar allows the US to finance deficits, seemingly indefinitely.But there are signs that the erratic tariff policy has caused other countries – who buy US debt – to question old assumptions about stability and growth. It turns out that, like addressing Palestine, trade policy is hard.But it didn’t have to be like this – a measured tariff policy could have helped enhance American industry. Coupled with prohibitions on stock buybacks – a Reagan-era concession to corruption that allows CEOs to inflate their stock prices and “performance” bonuses – a sensible tariff policy could have helped facilitate the investment of corporate profits domestically, reinvigorating the labor movement to produce better jobs. But policy requires a clear statement of goals and an understanding of how to get there – neither of which the Trump administration was able to articulate. Economic growth has almost certainly been dented by the bizarre trade war and myriad reversals – so we’ll probably see more deficit spending at higher borrowing rates.And then there’s Yemen, where the Houthi government has harassed Israeli-affiliated boats in response to the genocide. The catastrophic effort to bomb the Yemenis into submission, again, an extension of Joe Biden’s Israel policy, was preceded with bluster. In March, Trump issued a message on his website that read, “To all Houthi terrorists, YOUR TIME IS UP, AND YOUR ATTACKS MUST STOP, STARTING TODAY. IF THEY DON’T, HELL WILL RAIN DOWN UPON YOU LIKE NOTHING YOU HAVE EVER SEEN BEFORE!”But nearly two months into America’s bombing campaign, which has killed hundreds in Yemen at vast expense, the effort to open trade routes in the Red Sea has resulted in a negotiated detente which falls far short of achieving Trump’s goals. The deal commits the Yemenis to leaving American ships alone, but says nothing about Israeli-affiliated vessels. The Wall Street Journal reports that the deal took the Israelis by surprise.Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) dramatically overestimated its potential and overstated its accomplishments: at a meeting last month, Musk said he expected Doge cuts would save $150bn, or 85% less than the promised $1tn. Now Musk is returning to Tesla – whose weak quarterly results have caused the stock price to crash back to earth.All of it a bad joke, played on the American people.Trump’s inability to follow through on his big initiatives is probably attributable to lots of things, but the quality of the man, and the people around him, stick out. Pete Hesgeth, the secretary of defense, appears unfocused and unbalanced in interviews. Kristi Noem, head of the US Department of Homeland Security, seems obsessed with pageantry and appearances, while the attorney general, Pam Bondi, exhibits sycophantic tendencies. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, and JD Vance spent a lot of time explaining how dangerous Trump was – Vance compared Trump to Hitler – before joining his administration. All seem to have been hired for their ability to flatter and prostrate themselves, which is not the same as competence or executive experience.So now, a bigger picture is emerging. The operating moral principle directing the Trump presidency seems to be that people are generally worse than they proclaim to be. And the president has gone out of his way to hire people with limited talent and ability, whose main qualification is Maga, people who can’t follow through on big pronouncements and goals. It is indeed government by the worst.

      Ahmed Moor is a writer and fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace More

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      An American has become pope. Will he be the moral leader we desperately need? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      America is back, baby. Not only has the Gulf of Mexico been successfully Americanized, the Vatican is now officially US territory. OK, fine, not officially, but, on Thursday, the Chicago-born Robert Francis Prevost was announced as pope. The 69-year-old, who has taken the papal name Leo XIV, is the first clergyman from the United States to lead the Roman Catholic church.While Prevost was a frontrunner for the papacy, his victory seems to have taken many experts by surprise. There has long been resistance to an American pope for a number of reasons, including the fact that it might make it appear as if the Vatican is aligned with the world’s strongest economic and military power.“If the Catholic church were also run by an American, the global dominance of the US would be simply pervasive and overwhelming,” Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a watchdog group that tracks clergy child abuse cases in the Catholic church worldwide, told ABC News recently.I’ll tell you who doesn’t seem particularly overwhelmed by the first American pope: Donald Trump. The president has spent the last few days posting AI-generated pictures of himself as the pope and generally mocking the Catholic church. Still, Trump was on his best behaviour when the official announcement came through, and posted a fairly restrained message on Truth Social, congratulating the pope and saying it was a “Great Honor for our Country”.Just give it a few days, though, and I’m sure Trump will be on Fox News taking credit for the new pope and announcing that the Vatican is going to get rid of all their dusty old Bibles and replace them with the Trump God Bless the USA Bible. Only $99.99 for the platinum edition and a bargain $74.99 for the pink and gold edition!Vice-President JD Vance, one of the last people to see Pope Francis alive, also posted a diplomatic message of congratulations, saying he was “sure millions of American Catholics and other Christians will pray for [Pope Leo’s] successful work leading the Church”.I am not an American Catholic. Nor am I Protestant, Episcopalian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist or anything else. I am an atheist, although not a terribly devout one. But I am certainly praying as hard as I can that Pope Leo will be the moral leader that the world so desperately needs at this moment.For most of my life I have not been particularly interested in who the pope is. And I have had very little faith that the Vatican, which covered up systemic sexual abuse, could ever be a real force for good. But – and I know I am not alone when I say this – the past 19 months has fundamentally changed how I see the world. I used to believe in things like international human rights law. I used to believe that while the arc of the moral universe may be extremely long, it bends toward justice. I used to believe that universities would stand up for free speech. And I used to believe that no matter how craven western world leaders might be, they wouldn’t go so far as to enable the livestreamed genocide unfolding in Gaza. That western leaders wouldn’t stand by and cheer as Israel, whose total blockade on Gaza has entered its third month, starves children to death.During a time when international law has been dealt a deadly blow, when might is right and decades of progress seem to be unravelling, the late Pope Francis made an impression on non-Catholics like me for his moral clarity towards many marginalized groups and his advocacy for peace everywhere from “martyred Ukraine” to Gaza. Of course, his legacy is not perfect: many abuse victims have questioned whether he went far enough in acknowledging children sexually abused by clergy. But Pope Francis undoubtedly fought for the most vulnerable in society.Pope Francis also understood what many newspaper editors and politicians don’t seem to be able to comprehend: that there is no “both-sidesing” atrocities. That there are times where you must take sides because, as Desmond Tutu said, “if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”In 2023, for example, Pope Francis went on a historic trip to South Sudan and told churches in the region that they “cannot remain neutral” but must speak up against injustice and abuse of power.Pope Francis also visited the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2023, where he criticized the “poison of greed” driving conflict in the region. “Hands off the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Hands off Africa. Stop choking Africa: it is not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered,” Francis said.When it came to Gaza, Pope Francis spoke clearly and powerfully. He would call the only Roman Catholic church in Gaza almost nightly after this iteration of the conflict broke out. When so much of the world seems to have turned away from Gaza’s suffering, Pope Francis let anguished civilians know he cared. One of his last wishes was that his popemobile be turned into a mobile health clinic for children in the Gaza Strip.And Pope Francis was not shy about criticizing the US – consistently speaking up for immigrants and refugees. “We must not be taken aback by their numbers, but rather view them as persons, seeing their faces and listening to their stories,” he told the US Congress in September 2015.We do not yet know how Pope Leo will undertake his duties but he is widely considered a centrist who was aligned with Francis on a number of social issues. Notably, in February Leo tweeted an article that disagreed with Vance’s views on immigration, headlined “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others”. In April, he also retweeted commentary criticizing Trump deporting a US resident to El Salvador.Whether Pope Leo will remain outspoken, whether he will continue Francis’s demands for a ceasefire in Gaza, remains to be seen. But the world desperately needs strong moral leadership at the moment. May Leo be the light we need in the current darkness. And, for his own sake, may he stay away from Vance.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More

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      How Trump’s walkaway diplomacy enabled Israel’s worst impulses

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      The Israeli plan to occupy and depopulate Gaza may not be identical to Donald Trump’s vision of a new riviera, but his inspiration and the US’s walkaway diplomacy have ushered Benjamin Netanyahu to the precipice of a dire new chapter in the Israel-Gaza war.The common perception in both Washington and Israel is that Trump has largely moved on, leaving an emboldened Netanyahu to his own devices, while his offhand proposals for turning Gaza into a “Riviera of the Middle East” have provided cover for rightwing Israeli politicians to enthusiastically support the forced resettlement of the Palestinian population.“Part of the tragedy is that the only one who can actually save us, Trump, is not even seriously interested in that,” said Amos Harel, a prominent military and defense correspondent for the Haaretz newspaper. “Our only hope to get out of this crazy situation is that Trump would force Netanyahu to reach a hostage deal. But [Trump] seems disinterested. He was enthusiastic when the Riviera [idea] was proposed, but now he has moved on to Greenland, Canada and Mexico instead.”Trump’s interventions – specifically envoy Steve Witkoff’s threats to Netanyahu during a tense Shabbat meeting – were instrumental in achieving a temporary ceasefire to the conflict in January. His influence on Netanyahu appeared to be greater than that of previous US presidents, including his rival Joe Biden.But since then the ceasefire has broken down, a two-month Israeli blockade on aid has sparked an even worse humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and, with few opportunities for a quick peace, the White House now appears uninterested and overstretched as Israel signals an offensive and occupation that critics have said will amount to a state policy of ethnic cleansing.It is a trend that has repeated with this White House: broad designs for a grand deal followed by frustration when diplomacy fails to yield instant results. Recently, the White House announced that it was also ready to walk away from negotiations over the Russia-Ukraine conflict if a quick deal was not achieved. That has incentivized Russia to wait out the Trump administration, observers have said, and bank on a policy of US non-engagement in the longer term. Netanyahu similarly appears to have been unleashed by the White House’s growing disinterest.The Israeli ultimatum comes as Trump is scheduled to tour the Middle East next week, with Israeli officials briefing that they will begin the operation only after he returns from a three-day visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Trump’s talks there are expected to focus on investment and a likely quixotic quest to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, but not on achieving a resolution to the war. On Tuesday, Maariv, an Israeli newspaper, reported that a Trump visit to Israel was not out of the question, but White House officials have not yet signaled that Trump is ready to go meet Netanyahu.Witkoff, the Trump envoy, still appears personally invested in a resolution to the conflict, but he is overstretched by attempting to mediate between Russia and Ukraine, and also negotiate an Iran nuclear deal simultaneously. The US has continued negotiations with Israel over an aid delivery scheme that would create a new mechanism for aid distribution to avoid Hamas, they have said. But the UN and all aid organizations working in Gaza have condemned the plan as an Israeli takeover. “It contravenes fundamental humanitarian principles and appears designed to reinforce control over life-sustaining items as a pressure tactic – as part of a military strategy,” the heads of all UN agencies and NGOs that operate in Gaza said in a joint statement on Sunday.The Trump administration’s budget and personnel cuts have also signaled a retreat from diplomacy. The state department was reportedly ready to cut the role of the security coordinator role for the West Bank and Gaza, a three-star general who was tasked with managing security crises between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, particularly with regards to growing tensions between settlers and local Palestinian communities.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMore importantly, Trump has given cover to Israeli officials who had sought more aggressive action in Gaza, including forced depopulations. Rightwingers in government have been particularly aggressive, with finance minister Bezalel Smotrich saying that within months Gaza would be “totally destroyed” and the Gazan population would be “concentrated” in a small strip of land. “The rest of the strip will be empty,” he said.But other ministers have also become more radical using Trump’s rhetoric for cover, said Harel.“Once Trump said that, you could see how not only the radicals, but also Likud ministers and so on, have an excuse,” said Harel. “‘It’s not us. It’s the world, the free world’s leader is saying that, so we have to play along.’” More

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      ‘What is left of our democracy?’: freed Palestinian human rights advocate warns of US authoritarian rule

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      Mohsen Mahdawi, the Palestinian green-card holder and Columbia University student freed on Wednesday after more than two weeks in immigration detention, has issued a stark warning about the US’s descent into authoritarianism.“Once the repression of dissent, in the name of security, becomes a key objective of a government, authoritarian rule and even martial law are not far off. When they look at my case, all Americans should ask themselves: what is left of our democracy, and who will be targeted next?” said Mahddawi in an op-ed for the New York Times.Mahdawi, a Palestinian human rights advocate based in Vermont, was detained and ordered deported by the Trump administration on 14 April despite not being prosecuted of any crime – and without due process. The philosophy student was arrested by masked Ice agents in Colchester, Vermont, during what should have been his citizenship naturalization interview.He is among a growing number of international students who have been ordered deported for their Palestinian rights advocacy by the Trump administration, which is using an obscure law to accuse these individuals of posing a threat to US foreign policy interests. Unlike the others, Mahdawi avoided being sent to a Louisiana detention facility after the Ice agents narrowly missed the flight, allowing his attorneys to challenge the deportation order in Vermont.“Despite spending 16 nights in a jail cell, I never lost hope in the inevitability of justice and the principles of democracy. I wanted to become a citizen of this country because I believe in the principles that it enshrines,” writes Mahdawi.“The American government accuses me of undermining US foreign policy, a patently absurd pretext for deportation for political speech that the Trump administration dislikes. The government is scraping the bottom of the barrel in its attempts to smear me. My only ‘crime’ is refusing to accept the slaughter of Palestinians, opposing war and promoting peace. I have simply insisted that international law must be respected. I believe the way to a just and long-lasting peace for Palestinians and Israelis is through diplomacy and restorative justice.”Mahdawi was born and raised in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, where as a child he bore witness to the death of his brother after he was denied access to medical care, and the detention and imprisonment of multiple close relatives including his grandfather and father by Israeli forces.Moving to the US in 2014 was his first experience of freedom, he said.“Ultimately, I sought American citizenship not only because I did not want to lose the freedom I enjoyed as a permanent resident but even more so because I believe in the principles and values of democracy, which this country stipulates in its founding documents,” he wrote in the Times.“These very freedoms are under attack today, both for me and for others like me. The Trump administration is hewing to Israel’s playbook: Under the thinly veiled guise of security, rights are being denied and due process eliminated.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“By seeking to deport me, the Trump administration is sending a clear message: There is no room for dissent, free speech be damned. It seems willing to shield an extremist Israeli government from criticism at the expense of constitutional rights, all while suppressing the possibility of a peaceful future for both Palestinians and Israelis, a future free of trauma and fear.”Israel’s war on Gaza since the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack has killed at least 52,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Palestinian health authorities. Thousands more people are missing and feared dead, while tens of thousands have suffered injuries and preventable diseases including acute malnutrition.In the ruling ordering Mahdawi’s release on bail on Wednesday, Judge Geoffrey W Crawford wrote: “Legal residents not charged with crimes or misconduct are being arrested and threatened with deportation for stating their views on the political issues of the day.” He likened the Trump administration’s crackdown on students and free speech to the red scare and the McCarthy era.Upon his release, Mahdawi told supporters and the media: “I am saying it clear and loud. To President Trump and his cabinet: I am not afraid of you.” More