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    All the US campus protesters have been released – except for her: ‘Most days I feel helpless’

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    Growing up in the West Bank, Leqaa Kordia was separated from family in Gaza by Israeli restrictions on movement between the territories. So aunts and uncles in Gaza would call from the beach there, allowing Kordia to share her cousins’ laughter and glimpse the waves.Now many of those relatives are dead, killed in the war that has destroyed much of the Gaza Strip. And more than 200 days after Kordia was swept up in the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters, she despairs over being unable to give her family a voice.“Most days I feel helpless,” said Kordia, 32, speaking from a Texas immigration detention center where she has been jailed since March. “I want to do something, but I can’t from here. I can’t do anything.”Kordia, a Palestinian who has lived in New Jersey since 2016, was one of the first people arrested in the government’s campaign against protesters, many of them prominent activists. All the others have gained release.Only Kordia – mischaracterized by the government, largely overlooked by the public and caught in a legal maze – languishes in detention. That is, in part, because her story differs from those of most others who thronged campuses.When she joined demonstrations against Israel outside Columbia University, she wasn’t a student or part of a group that might have provided support. As the arrests of activists like Mahmoud Khalil drew condemnation from elected officials and advocates, Kordia’s case largely remained out of the public eye.And Kordia has been reluctant to draw attention to herself.In her first interview since her arrest, Kordia said recently that she was motivated to protest because of deep personal ties to Gaza, where more than 170 relatives have been killed. The government has cast those ties as suspect, pointing to Kordia’s money transfers to relatives in the Middle East as evidence of possible ties to terrorists.Lawyers for the Department of Homeland Security didn’t reply to calls for comment. An agency spokesperson declined to answer questions about the case.In a blistering decision this week, a federal judge found the Trump administration unlawfully targeted protesters for speaking out. That ruling isn’t binding, though, in the highly conservative district where Kordia’s case is being heard.“The government has tried again and again to muster some kind of justification to hold this young woman in custody indefinitely,” said her immigration attorney, Sarah Sherman-Stokes. “It doesn’t seem to matter to them that they have no evidence.”Kordia grew up in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Her parents divorced when she was a child and her mother remarried, eventually becoming a US citizen. In 2016, Kordia came to the US on a visitor’s visa, staying with her mother in Paterson, New Jersey, which is home to one of the nation’s largest Arab communities.Soon after, Kordia enrolled in an English-language program and obtained a student visa. Her mother applied to let Kordia remain in the US as the relative of a citizen.The application was approved, but no visas were available. Government lawyers say Kordia has been in the US illegally since she left school in 2022, surrendering her student status and invalidating her visa. Kordia said she believed then that her mother’s application assured her own legal status and that she mistakenly followed a teacher’s advice.Kordia worked as a server at a Middle Eastern restaurant on Paterson’s Palestine Way while helping to care for her half-brother, who has autism.Those routines were upended in October 2023, after Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostage. Israel responded with a massive military campaign, killing more than 66,000 Palestinians.In calls with relatives in Gaza, “they were telling me that: ‘We’re hungry. … We are scared. We’re cold. We don’t have anywhere to go’,” Kordia said. “So my way of helping my family and my people was to go to the streets.”Kordia said she joined more than a dozen protests in New York, New Jersey and Washington DC. In April 2024, she was arrested with 100 other protesters outside Columbia University’s gates in upper Manhattan – charges quickly dismissed by prosecutors and sealed.Soon after winning office for a second time and returning to the White House, this January, Donald Trump issued executive orders equating the protests with antisemitism. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) intelligence analysts began assembling dossiers on noncitizens who criticized Israel or protested the war, based on doxing sites and information from police.In March, immigration agents showed up at Kordia’s home and workplace, as well as her uncle’s house in Florida. “The experience was very confusing,” she said. “It was like: why are you doing all this?”Kordia hired a lawyer before agreeing to a 13 March meeting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials in Newark. She was detained immediately and flown to Prairieland Detention Facility, south of Dallas.Once there, she was assigned a bare mattress on the floor and denied religious accommodations, including halal meals, her lawyers said.When her cousin, Hamzah Abushaban, visited Kordia about a week after her arrest, he was taken aback by the dark circles under her eyes and her state of confusion.“One of the first things she asked me was why was she there,” Abushaban said. “She cried a lot. She looked like death.”“I must’ve asked her a thousand times, like, you’re sure you didn’t commit a crime?” he said. “What she thought and I thought was probably going to be a few more days of being detained has turned into almost, what, seven months now.”Kordia said that she didn’t understand the reasons for her detention until a week or two later, when a television at the facility was tuned to news of protester arrests.“I see my name, literally in big letters, on CNN and I was like, what’s going on?” she said.Administration officials touted Kordia’s arrest as part of the deportation effort against those who “actively participated in anti-American, pro-terrorist activities”. A DHS press release noted her arrest the previous year at a “pro-Hamas” demonstration, mistakenly labeling her as a Columbia student.Court papers show New York police gave records of her dismissed arrest to DHS – an apparent violation of a city law barring cooperation with immigration enforcement. Federal officials told police the information was needed in a criminal money-laundering investigation, a police spokesperson later said.At a bond hearing weeks later, government attorneys argued for Kordia’s continued detention, pointing to subpoenaed records showing she had sent “large amounts of money to Palestine and Jordan”.Kordia said she and her mother had sent the money, totaling $16,900 over eight years, to relatives. A $1,000 payment in 2022 went to an aunt in Gaza whose home and hair salon had been destroyed in an Israeli strike. Two more payments last year went to a cousin struggling to feed his family.“To hear the government accusing them of being terrorists and accusing you of sending money to terrorists, this is heartbreaking,” Kordia said.An immigration judge, examining transaction records and statements from relatives, found “overwhelming evidence” that Kordia was telling the truth about the payments.That judge has twice ordered her released on bond. The government has challenged the ruling, triggering a lengthy appeals process – highly unusual in immigration cases that don’t involve serious crimes.Typically, when the government goes after someone for overstaying a visa, they are rarely arrested, let alone held in prolonged detention, said Adam Cox, a professor of immigration law at New York University.“The kind of scale and scope and publicness of the campaign against student protesters by the Trump administration is really nothing like we’ve seen in recent memory,” said Cox, who studies the rise of presidential power in immigration policy.Kordia has sought release in federal court, the same path taken by Khalil and others. Whether she succeeds may depend on an appeals court in New York, which heard arguments this week from government attorneys who contend that such relief should be largely off-limits to noncitizens.Khalil, who was freed in June, said he had followed Kordia’s case closely, asking lawyers to relay messages and reminding his supporters “that there is one person left behind”.As detention stretches on, Kordia said it’s been difficult to follow developments in the war, let alone maintain contact with relatives caught in the conflict.But it’s provided many hours to think about a time when the war is finally over and she can find peace.That would start by being reunited with her mother and other relatives, she said, and maybe one day having a family of her own. She dreams of opening a cafe and introducing people to Palestinian culture through food. She wants to pursue an American life.“That’s all I wanted, to live with my family in peace in a land that appreciates freedom,” she says. “That’s literally all that I want.” More

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      Once again, Netanyahu has outplayed Trump | Mohamad Bazzi

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      As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump claimed he would quickly end the war in Gaza. Eight months after taking office, Trump finally decided to exert some US pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, announcing a 20-point peace plan at the White House on Monday.But the deal that the US president struck with Netanyahu – after Trump dithered for months, allowing Israel to continue its genocidal war with US weapons and unwavering political support – is less a ceasefire proposal than an ultimatum for Hamas to surrender.After nearly two years of prolonging the war and obstructing ceasefire negotiations, Netanyahu got almost everything he wanted, thanks to Trump. The US plan calls on Hamas to lay down its weapons and release the Israeli hostages remaining in Gaza, but it allows Israeli troops to occupy parts of Gaza for the foreseeable future. It’s close to the “total victory” over Hamas that Netanyahu has consistently promised the Israeli public, but failed to deliver on the battlefield.What if Hamas rejects this deal that was drafted without its input, or that of any other Palestinian faction? Trump made clear he would enable Netanyahu to sow even more death and destruction in Gaza. “Israel would have my full backing to finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas,” he said at the White House. On Tuesday, Trump added he would give Hamas officials “three or four days” to respond – and warned that the group would “pay in hell” if it turns down the agreement. In past negotiations, Hamas had rejected Israeli proposals that forced the group to disarm and pushed it out of any future role governing Gaza.Once again, Netanyahu has outplayed Trump, who considers himself a master deal-maker. But he’s been regularly outmaneuvered by strongmen like Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin.When Trump took office in January, he had the upper hand over the Israeli leader, having pushed Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza that went into effect a day before the president’s inauguration on 20 January. But Netanyahu, who worried that his rightwing government would collapse if he agreed to a permanent truce with Hamas, imposed a new siege on Gaza in early March. With Trump’s blessing, Israel deprived Palestinians of food, medicine and other necessities. Netanyahu then refused to continue negotiations with Hamas, and broke the ceasefire after two months.Thanks to his unwavering support of Netanyahu, Trump has made the US more deeply complicit in Israel’s war crimes. Since Netanyahu resumed the war in March, civilians made up about 15 of every 16 people that the Israeli military has killed in Gaza, according to the independent violence-tracking group Acled. Israel has also pursued a more severe starvation campaign and instigated a famine in northern Gaza. (In August, the Guardian reported that a classified database maintained by the Israeli military showed that 83% of Palestinians killed in Gaza, between the outbreak of war in October 2023 and May of this year, were civilians.)Along the way, Netanyahu has exploited Trump’s desire for flattery, allowing the Israeli premier to not to draw out the war on Gaza but also to conduct attacks on other countries in the Middle East, including Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. Starting with billions of dollars in US weapons provided by Joe Biden’s administration and continuing under Trump, Israel has been able to bomb virtually anywhere in the region, with impunity. In June, Israel launched a surprise attack against Iran, killing dozens of top military officials and nuclear scientists. Netanyahu then convinced Trump to briefly join Israel’s war, when he ordered US planes to bomb three major nuclear facilities in Iran.Two weeks later, in early July, the Israeli premier showed up for dinner at the White House. Trump was eager to build on the momentum of a ceasefire he brokered between Iran and Israel, and was planning to cajole Netanyahu into making a deal with Hamas in Gaza. But Netanyahu avoided being publicly pressured by Trump to end the Gaza war, as Trump had done weeks earlier with the Iran ceasefire. Instead, Netanyahu stroked Trump’s ego by revealing that he had nominated the US president for the Nobel peace prize.Netanyahu managed to both flatter Trump and tap into his sense of grievance over being denied the world’s top peacemaking award. Trump has insisted for years that he deserves the Nobel prize for orchestrating a series of diplomatic agreements between Israel and several Arab countries during his first term. These so-called Abraham Accords were brokered in 2020 by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser at the time, and they included the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. But Trump couldn’t entice Saudi Arabia, the most important Arab state, and its crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, to reach a normalization deal with Israel.Like Trump’s current peace plan for Gaza, the Abraham Accords were negotiated directly with Israel and autocratic Arab regimes – and they excluded Palestinians from any discussion of their future or aspirations. These are deals conceived by real estate tycoons like Trump, Kushner and Steve Witkoff, who has served as Middle East envoy and one of Trump’s top diplomats in his second term. Trump and Kushner have always viewed Gaza through the prism of a real estate project, where Palestinians are holdouts refusing to cave into pressure to make way for the renovation of prime beachfront property along the Mediterranean Sea.In one of the few positive developments for Gazans, Trump dropped his widely-derided idea, which he floated during a meeting with Netanyahu in February, for the US to take over Gaza and turn it into a “Riviera of the Middle East”, in effect endorsing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.But on Monday, as Trump announced his latest plan, which would establish a temporary governing board for Gaza that he himself would chair, he couldn’t resist ad-libbing a digression about the perceived value of the territory’s waterfront. “As a real estate person, I mean, they gave up the ocean,” Trump said, referring to the Israeli government’s decision in 2005 to withdraw troops occupying Gaza, along with about 8,000 Israeli settlers. He added: “They gave up the ocean. I said: ‘Who would do this deal?’”In reality, even after its withdrawal, Israel maintained control over Gaza’s airspace, borders and shoreline. In 2007, after Hamas took military control of Gaza following its victory in Palestinian legislative elections, Israel imposed a blockade on the territory that continues until today. Israel gave up the beach, but it still controlled the sea.In the days leading up to Monday’s announcement at the White House, Kushner and Witkoff spent hours meeting with Netanyahu, who was able to make last-minute changes to Trump’s plan, including the scope and timing of Israeli troop withdrawals from Gaza. As he has for the past two years, the Israeli prime minister managed to impose his will on a US administration that should have far more leverage over him than the other way around. And that means Netanyahu may well doom Trump’s latest peace deal.

      Mohamad Bazzi is 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 peace plan is everything Israelis dreamed of. But it’s a fantasy | Roy Schwartz

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      It didn’t take long before the Gospel of Donald became a message that everyone in Israel could embrace. The 20-point plan to end the ongoing war in Gaza, presented on Monday by the US president, is everything the Israelis had dreamed of – even fantasised about. The hostages will finally return, some to their families, others to their graves. Hamas will be gone, at least as a ruling organisation, and the soldiers will come home. The “peace plan” will, supposedly, mean a return to normality.A brief read-through of the one-page plan might suggest that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his people were involved in phrasing it. At times, it reads more like a list of Israeli demands than diplomatic compromises. Perhaps that’s why Netanyahu gave it his blessing rather quickly, which seemed to all but seal the deal. Even then, worth mentioning, his speech offered a slightly different version of the plan from the one in the written document – saying he didn’t agree to a Palestinian state or a full military withdrawal.Once you unwrap the package, remove the ribbons and the superlatives (“potentially one of the great days ever in civilisation”, as Trump put it), more than a few holes open up. The most obvious is the other side in the deal – Hamas, which has yet to approve it. This small detail seems to have been deemed almost irrelevant. Given Netanyahu’s record, one might wonder whether a Hamas refusal would actually be a convenient outcome for him. It would allow him to appear as someone who had genuinely attempted to end the war – while still retaining the full backing of the US to continue it. And since ending the bloodshed might also mean the collapse of his coalition, perhaps there are deeper political calculations at play.Another major question lies in the alternative response that Hamas might give: yes, but. In other words – support for a deal to end the war in principle, but with certain details requiring further negotiation. This would raise the question of how flexible Israel can be, given that Netanyahu’s government currently depends on far-right parties and that many of their members may view even the slightest compromise as grounds to dissolve the coalition (even the current plan has rattled them). At that point, it would become a test of how much pressure the US can realistically exert on Netanyahu – twisting his arm, if necessary. And if that fails, then what?Take section 17 of the plan, for instance. It states that even if Hamas rejects or delays the agreement, Israel will hand over “terror-free” areas to an international force. How exactly is that supposed to happen? How will such a force actually operate in a war zone? There are no answers to those questions.View image in fullscreenEven if we assume the original proposal goes through with assistance from Arab and Muslim countries, it won’t be the end of the doubts – only the beginning. Many of the uncertainties concern the so-called day after. The plan promises full humanitarian aid to Gaza, including the rehabilitation of infrastructure (water, electricity, sewage), hospitals, bakeries, and the entry of necessary equipment to remove rubble and reopen roads. However, the allocation of funds is missing. The document provides no detail on how much this will cost or, crucially, on who will provide this funding.The same applies to the proposed International Stabilisation Force (ISF). Which countries will send troops? How many? Who will have overarching authority over these forces? How will they coordinate with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)? Who will be in charge of ensuring Gaza doesn’t become a playground for various countries, each with their own interests and agendas? And, last but not least: who will give assurances to the people of Gaza that all of this is not just a new form of foreign occupation? These may seem like minor details, but they are essential – if not critical – to make the plan more than theoretical.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionYet the public conversation in Israel seems largely unbothered by such questions. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Many Israelis have been indifferent to the catastrophe in Gaza since the war began – including the mass death and starvation of unarmed Palestinians. It makes sense that they would not concern themselves with how Gaza moves forward. More often than not, it seems that, for Israelis, what happens in Gaza stays in Gaza – with no consequences for the other side whatsoever.In a way, the proposed end to the war fits comfortably within that same mindset. There’s a widespread sense that if the plan goes ahead, Israel can simply return to the days before it all happened. Everything that took place in Gaza will be forgotten, except, of course, the 7 October 2023 massacre won’t be. There will no longer be a reason to protest against Israel globally, and certainly not to impose sanctions on Israeli officials, or call for exclusion from international sporting events or the Eurovision song contest.The fact that, for the foreseeable future, the Gaza Strip will remain a devastated area with barely any infrastructure may seem insignificant within Israel. Nor does it appear to matter that it will take the people of Gaza a long time to rebuild their homes and return to work – or to bury their loved ones and grieve. Not to mention that further horrors are likely to be uncovered if Gaza becomes safer and opens up to the foreign press. These issues are scarcely discussed. Like a history book returned to the library, it’s simply closed and filed away.

      Roy Schwartz is a senior editor and op-ed contributor at Haaretz

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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      DoJ sues pro-Palestinian activists under law often used to protect abortion clinics

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      The Trump administration has filed a first-of-its-kind civil rights lawsuit against pro-Palestinian groups and activists, accusing the advocates of violating a law that has traditionally been used to protect reproductive health clinics from anti-abortion harassment and violence.The lawsuit, filed on Monday by the justice department’s civil rights division, alleges that two advocacy groups and six people broke the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (Face) Act when they protested against an event at a West Orange, New Jersey, synagogue in November 2024. The event at the Ohr Torah synagogue promoted the sale of property in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are widely considered illegal under international law. Similar events have sparked protests in the years since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, but this event escalated into violence.One man, a pro-Israel counterprotester, pepper-sprayed a pro-Palestinian demonstrator, while another counterprotester bashed the same demonstrator in the head with a flashlight, according to a local news outlet. Local New Jersey prosecutors ultimately filed charges against the two counterprotestors on multiple counts, including aggravated assault. (The pair have denied the accusations against them.)The lawsuit filed by the Trump administration portrays the pro-Palestinian advocates as the aggressors. It alleges that some of the advocates physically assaulted at least one pro-Israel protester, effectively used vuvuzelas “as weapons” – arguing that the horns are “reasonably known to lead to permanent noise-induced hearing loss” – and ultimately disrupted both a memorial service and a lecture on the Torah.“These violent protesters meant their actions for evil, but we will use this case to bring forth good: the protection of all Americans’ religious liberty,” Harmeet K Dhillon, an assistant attorney general in the justice department’s civil rights division, said in a press conference on Monday.The Trump administration is asking a court to fine the pro-Palestinian demonstrators more than $30,000 for their first violation of the Face Act, and roughly $50,000 for each subsequent violation.One of the groups named in the lawsuit, American Muslims for Palestine-New Jersey, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The national branch of another group, the Party for Socialism and Liberation-New Jersey, also did not immediately respond. The other defendants could not be immediately reached for comment.The Face Act penalizes people who go beyond peaceful protest to threaten, obstruct or injure someone who is trying to access a reproductive health clinic or “place of religious worship”, but the federal government has never used the act to protect houses of worship, Dhillon confirmed during the press conference. Instead, it has historically been used to guard abortion clinics, since former president Bill Clinton signed the 1994 bill into law amid unprecedented violence against abortion providers and clinics. The Face Act is so unpopular among anti-abortion advocates that Republicans have repeatedly called for its repeal.For Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California’s Davis School of Law, the new case is especially striking because the Trump administration announced earlier this year that it would dramatically curtail its use of the Face Act to protect abortion clinics. Donald Trump has also pardoned several anti-abortion protesters who had been convicted under the Face Act.“It probably feels like a slap in the face to people who support reproductive rights,” said Ziegler, who studies the legal history of reproduction. “The administration has said it’s open season when it comes to the Face Act and reproductive health clinics – but is being pretty aggressive in enforcing it when it comes to places of worship.”Ziegler also sees this use of the Face Act as a means of bigfooting local prosecutors in blue states – and, potentially, cracking down on protests writ large.“If you’re the Trump administration and you want to shut down pro-Palestinian protests altogether, reaching for the Face Act makes sense,” Ziegler said. “The reason the Face Act was put into place is because people were worried that clinic blockades were dangerous and were leading to violence – and, more importantly, because other criminal laws weren’t getting the job done. So the Trump administration is looking to a federal law with steeper penalties probably for a similar reason.” More

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      Even Tucker Carlson is worried about Trump’s free speech crackdown | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Welcome to the resistance, Tucker Carlson?Forgive me; I’m sorry; mea culpa! Having spent considerable time analyzing the events of the past week, I’ve realized I should probably issue a public apology for some of my statements over the years. Here we go: I’m sorry for expressing radical and dangerous opinions such as “women deserve equal rights and shouldn’t be treated like walking wombs”. I’m sorry for suggesting Palestinians shouldn’t be systematically exterminated while Donald Trump posts about building a resort in Gaza. Going forward I will do better and ensure that I double-check all my opinions with the government. There isn’t an official Department of Thought Control yet, but no doubt we’ll get there soon.I wish I was joking about all this but, as you will have noticed, we are in a critical moment for free speech in the US. The killing of Charlie Kirk was a tragedy for his family, but the Trump administration has been ruthlessly using Kirk’s death to further a crackdown on dissent and erode first amendment protections.The day after Kirk was fatally shot, for example, the deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, urged people to report any “foreigners” to the state department who post on social media “praising, rationalizing, or making light of the event”. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, later said that the state department has “most certainly been denying visas” to people celebrating Kirk’s death. It’s obviously not in good taste to celebrate anyone’s murder, but the fact that calling out Kirk’s divisive and bigoted views could possibly be considered “rationalizing” his death and get you deported is chilling.It’s not just foreigners who are being told they should be wary about what they say. On Monday Vice-President JD Vance, who was guest-hosting an episode of the Charlie Kirk Show, encouraged people to report anyone celebrating the influencer’s death to that person’s employer. Presumably so said employer can fire them.There have, of course, already been numerous Kirk-related firings and suspensions. An employee at the Federal Emergency Management Agency was reportedly placed on administrative leave over an Instagram post describing Kirk as “the literal racist homophobe misogynist.” MSNBC fired political analyst Matthew Dowd after he suggested Kirk’s “awful words” fueled “awful actions”. Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show was suspended “indefinitely” after he noted “many in Maga Land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk”. Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah has also said she was fired over social media posts after Kirk’s killing.The weaponization of Kirk’s death is so alarming that even one of Trump’s former allies is rattled. Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who was once one of the loudest voices in the Magasphere, recently issued a stark warning about the way that the Trump administration appears to be leveraging Kirk’s murder to trample civil liberties.“You hope that a year from now, the turmoil we’re seeing in the aftermath of [Kirk’s] murder won’t be leveraged to bring hate speech laws to this country,” Carlson said on Wednesday during an episode of his podcast. This was in reference to attorney general Pam Bondi’s comments (which she has now walked back) that the Trump Department of Justice would “target” people disseminating “hate speech” following Kirk’s killing.“And trust me, if it is, if that does happen, there is never a more justified moment for civil disobedience than that, ever,” Carlson added. “Because if they can tell you what to say, they’re telling you what to think … There is nothing they can’t do to you because they don’t consider you human.”Like Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right congresswoman who has recently started speaking a limited amount of sense on certain topics, Carlson is no ally to progressives. Indeed Carlson’s hate-mongering, and his former public cheerleading for Trump, are a large part of why we are in such a mess. But the fact that even a far-right voice like Carlson is worried about the authoritarian direction in which the US is heading should chill you to the bones. Carlson appears to have realized that no one is safe in the dictatorship that Trump appears intent on building. Not even him.Nuns on the run in AustriaSister Regina, 86, Sister Rita, 81, and Sister Bernadette, 88, are doing it for themselves. And by “it” I mean defying their diocese by running away from their nursing home and returning to their former convent. The convent has no electricity or running water so the nuns have started an Instagram account and are crowdfunding for supplies.French first lady will present court with ‘evidence’ she is a womanRightwing influencer, crackpot and conspiracy theorist Candace Owens has repeatedly insisted that Brigitte Macron is actually a man. Owens even said she would “stake [her] entire professional reputation” on it. Now the Macrons, who are suing Owens for defamation, are submitting “scientific evidence” to a US court to prove Brigitte was not born male. RIP Owens’s “professional reputation”.Girls and women in Colombia are being held as sex slavesThe country’s Catatumbo region, near the border with Venezuela, has seen increased violence in recent years. The Guardian reports on more than 150 girls and women aged from 11 to 50 who have escaped what they describe as “sexual slavery” by armed groups in the region. Escapees have warned there are many more women and girls in captivity.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Trump administration compares birth control to abortionTrump officials recently ordered that millions of dollars’ worth of contraceptives intended for low-income countries be destroyed. “President Trump is committed to protecting the lives of unborn children all around the world,” a spokesperson from USAID told the New York Times. “The administration will no longer supply abortifacient birth control under the guise of foreign aid.” By falsely claiming that pills, intrauterine devices and hormonal implants induce abortions, the Trump administration may be paving the way to ban birth control, experts warn.Israeli minister salivates over ‘real estate bonanza’ in Gaza“A business plan is on President Trump’s table,” Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said at a property development conference in Tel Aviv this week. “The demolition, the first stage in the city’s renewal, we have already done. Now we just need to build.” Mainstream media outlets keep referring to what is happening in Gaza as a “war”. But as the likes of Smotrich make clear, this is a genocidal land grab.Pete Buttigieg criticizes Kamala Harris for passing him over because he’s gayIn her new memoir, Harris said Buttigieg was her “first choice” for running mate; “he would have been an ideal partner – if I were a straight white man”. Forget Buttigieg’s sexuality, the fact that Harris thinks a former McKinsey consultant, the epitome of an out-of-touch elite, who polled at 0% with Black voters would have been a good running mate is mind-boggling.The week in pawtriarchyA new study has found chimpanzees may consume the equivalent of about one beer a day because of all the fermented fruit they eat. Some researchers believe this supports the “drunken monkey” hypothesis: the idea that humans got a taste for booze because our primate ancestors were constantly on the jungle juice. It seems the ape-oclayptical state of the world is enough to drive anyone to drink.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More

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      ‘We pray a visa comes before death’: Gaza’s injured children left in limbo

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      Mariam Sabbah had been fast asleep, huddled under a blanket with her siblings, when an Israeli missile tore through her home in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, in the early hours of 1 March.View image in fullscreenThe missile narrowly missed the sleeping children but as the terrified nine-year-old ran to her parents, a second one hit. “I saw her coming towards me but suddenly there was another explosion and she vanished into the smoke,” says her mother, Fatma Salman.As the parents searched desperately for their children, they found Mariam lying unconscious in a pool of blood; her left arm was ripped off, shards of shrapnel had pierced through her small body, and she was bleeding heavily from her abdomen.As well as losing her arm, the blast left Mariam with severe abdominal and pelvic injuries from shrapnel tearing through her bladder, uterus, and bowel.“Mariam needs specialised paediatric reconstructive surgery,” says Dr Mohammed Tahir, a British surgeon who treated Mariam while volunteering at al-Aqsa hospital in Gaza. “Her arm amputation is also very high and requires limb lengthening and specialist prosthesis. Without this, it will be very difficult for her to live a normal life.”View image in fullscreenMariam is one of tens of thousands of people in Gaza who have been injured by Israeli military attacks over the past 23 months, which have also killed more than 64,000, mainly women and children.Repeated military strikes and attacks on Gaza’s hospitals and Israel’s blockade of basic goods and supplies into the territory have left the health sector devastated and doctors without the means to treat the sick, injured, and famished.Since October 2023, 7,672 patients, including 5,332 children, have been medically evacuated from Gaza for urgent treatment abroad, but trying to get a medical evacuation organised and approved is a slow, arduous and heavily vetted process.So far more than 700 patients – many of them children – have died waiting for permission to be granted to leave Gaza by Cogat, the Israeli government department responsible for approving medical evacuations, according to the WHO.View image in fullscreenMariam and her family secured the offer of surgical care from a specialist team in Ohio, and the little girl waited two months to be given permission from Cogat to leave Gaza, by which time her condition had deteriorated. She was finally evacuated to Egypt but was then stuck for months waiting for her US travel documents to be processed.Then, just a few days before her appointment at the embassy in Cairo to approve her visa, the US suddenly stopped issuing visas for Palestinians – including children – to be treated in US hospitals.View image in fullscreenThe decision followed an online pressure campaign by Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer close to Donald Trump, who had posted pictures and videos of evacuated patients from Gaza arriving on US soil on social media channels, asking: “Why are any Islamic invaders coming into the US under the Trump admin?”Despite the rhetoric surrounding the visa ban – with Loomer hailing the move as a victory, saying it would stop “this invasion of our country”, the US has only accepted a total of 48 medical evacuations from Gaza, according to the figures provided to the Guardian by WHO. In comparison, 3,995 and 1,450 critically injured people have been evacuated to Egypt and the UAE respectively from Gaza. The UK has so far accepted 13.Medical NGOs say that around 20 severely wounded children have been affected by the ban, and are now stuck in transit countries with nowhere to go and with the treatment needed to save them dangerously out of reach.Since receiving the news that she had been blocked from receiving treatment, Salman has been unable to console her daughter. “She won’t leave her bed or stop crying,” she says. “Mariam had placed all her hopes of getting better on her medical treatment in the US.”A few wards down, and also now stuck in Egypt after the US visa ban, is 18-year-old Nasser al-Najjar, who can no longer bear to look at himself in the mirror.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenAfter becoming displaced, Najjar and his family were sheltering at a school in Jabaliya, northern Gaza, when it was targeted in an Israeli airstrike in January. The 18-year-old suffered devastating injuries to his face and jaw that left him completely disfigured; he lost his left eye, his nose was severed and his jaw shattered – leaving him unable to breathe, eat or speak properly.“I once took pride in my appearance but now I don’t even recognise myself,” says Najjar, his voice raspy and breathless.The teenager requires extensive reconstructive and cosmetic surgery that is not available in Egypt and doctors have warned that without the operations, his condition will deteriorate.He has been offered treatment at the El Paso children’s hospital in Texas, where specialist doctors are waiting to operate on him, but it is now uncertain if Najjar will ever be permitted to go.View image in fullscreenThe weight of uncertainty takes a heavy mental toll. Ahmed Duweik already suffers from phantom limb pain; sharp, stabbing sensations that come and go unpredictably and leave him screaming in agony. But since learning that his medical trip to the US might not go ahead, the 10-year-old has become withdrawn and emotionally unresponsive.View image in fullscreenAhmed was also asleep at home when the missiles struck the Nuseirat refugee camp in the middle of the night. During the bombing, he suffered horrific injuries with shrapnel penetrating his entire body; he was left with an amputated arm, soft tissue loss in his right thigh, and severe nerve and vascular damage.Ahmed requires complex reconstructive surgery and prosthetic fitting that are not available in Egypt. Since the attack, he has developed severe psychological trauma and is unable to sleep, waking up every night crying and screaming, clinging to his mother in fear.Doctors warn that if Ahmed’s treatment is delayed any further, his condition will continue to worsen.Dr Mosab Nasser, chief executive of FAJR Global, the medical aid organisation that managed to evacuate the children from Gaza and was due to arrange their surgical care in the US, said the visa ban had imposed an “indirect death penalty on the most innocent victims of this war”.View image in fullscreen“We’re talking about a handful of children suffering from severe, life threatening injuries,” he says. “These medical evacuations are a lifeline for these kids and we urge the US government to reject such divisive rhetoric and reaffirm its role as a temporary safe haven for those who so desperately need it.”In a statement to the Guardian, a US state department spokesperson confirmed it had paused the visas and would take the time necessary to conduct a full and thorough review, adding: “There are many countries around the world with great hospitals that should be stepping up to provide assistance, including France, Australia, UK, and Canada to name a few.”For now, a bleak Egyptian hospital has become the children’s home, where they have been stuck in limbo since the visa ban, with no designated doctors and limited specialist expertise to treat their extensive war injuries. The families are confined to small, sweltering and cramped rooms. None of them have any idea what comes next.“We feel so powerless,” says Khatib, as she sits beside her son. “All we can do is pray that his visa approval comes before death does.” More

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      How to burst the Israeli bubble | Noam Sheizaf

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      View image in fullscreenThroughout the two years of the Gaza war, Israeli bombing has been so intense that, in certain weather conditions, its echoes can be heard here in Tel Aviv, 70km away. The mass starvation is quieter. Even images of dead children rarely pierce Israel’s media bubble. The war appears in protests over the hostages, political debates, stickers with the faces of fallen soldiers on walls and bus stops. Palestinian suffering – by contrast – remains distant, abstract, unmoving.After two years, Israeli society is adapting: the army has developed a practice of not calling reservists who are likely to dodge the draft; instead, it turns to former soldiers in need of cash or employment, offering them to fill the ranks of its combat units. At times, special arrangements are made so that reservists can keep working in their old jobs, practically doubling their income. Civilian contractors are hired to systematically raze whole neighborhoods in the Strip; they are paid by the house. The IDF is becoming a new military, adjusted for permanent operations in Gaza, the West Bank and the northern borders. The rest of the public goes on with their lives. War is the new normal.In early August, Israel’s security cabinet ordered the military to occupy Gaza City, where some of Hamas’s leadership is supposedly hiding. The assault began with the toppling of high-rise buildings last week. Yet the term “occupation” is misleading: Israel has no intention of ruling over the more than 1 million Palestinians sheltering in the city. Emboldened by US support, the military has ordered residents to move to a so-called “humanitarian city” in the south, while Gaza City will be leveled to the ground. This would mark another step toward realizing the far-right fantasy of removing Palestinians from the territory altogether. Until then, they will remain crammed into a corner of the Strip, given only the bare minimum to keep them alive – and at times, not even that.This week, several countries – among them France, the UK and Australia – intend to recognize the state of Palestine during the UN general assembly. Many people have long deemed the two-state solution dead, and nothing could seem further away from it than the dystopian reality on the ground. But the recognition is a sign of international engagement and a much-needed message for Israelis, who have moved into a creepy fantasy land: a recently leaked American-Israeli presentation, reportedly debated in the White House, imagines a new Gaza as a kind of futuristic theme park placed under US trusteeship and refashioned by international corporations into a glossy “Riviera of the Middle East” of smart cities, tourism and tech hubs.Yet the real danger in Israel today is that nobody imagines a future at all: the society is locked in a permanent present. The war is unpopular, but enough are willing to serve it and only few are actively protesting against it. The liberal opposition movement and the protests over the hostages have morphed into each other, along with the pre-war domestic fights over the government’s plans to weaken the judiciary. Together, they have created a sense of never-ending crisis that Netanyahu and his coalition have managed to turn into an asset.View image in fullscreenA recent poll found most people are not interested in getting more news from Gaza. The major networks broadcast cooking shows, reality TV and sports. Big Brother just had one of its most watched seasons, interrupted only for a brief moment when three anti-war protesters managed to storm the studio stage. “Everything is fine,” said the host. “Keep those votes coming in!”At times, it seems as if confusion and frustration lie beneath the acceptance of the atrocities carried out in our name: a society that lost its way, is unsure how to end the war, fearful of the reckoning that awaits, and resorts to violent tantrums instead.At other moments, a backward-looking narrative takes hold, one that is more coherent but also more perilous: what used to be political discourse on the conflict is giving way to a mythical language of victimization. It is a story in which 7 October 2023 is the continuation of the Holocaust, Hamas are the new Nazis, and the current war is our biblical retribution.Signs for this old-new vocabulary are everywhere. It is common among Jews, for example, to add the initials for “blessed his memory” next to the name of the dead – but in this war, almost every soldier or civilian victim is memorialized with the phrase “Hashem yikom damo” (God will avenge his blood). Verses and quotes such as “I have pursued mine enemies and destroyed them” (2 Samuel 22:38) appear in military headquarters and battle orders; a calendar distributed by the military rabbinate early in the war placed the Gaza campaign on a mythical timeline that included David’s victory over Goliath and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967.This turn toward mythical thinking – the idea that Jews and Palestinians are locked in an eternal, zero-sum battle for the same land ֹ– dominates not just Israeli society, but much of the political thinking abroad. It obscures the more mundane reality that has enabled today’s carnage: a political system where one people rules and the other is ruled. It also narrows our political imagination, reducing the range of what is possible and fostering passivity precisely when action is most urgently needed.Tomorrow Is Yesterday is the fitting title for a new book by two former negotiators and experts on the conflict. Hussein Agha and Robert Malley observe that the current war is not just a regression to a pre-peace process era decades ago. Nor is the systematic destruction of Gaza just a repetition of the Nakba, the Palestinian mass expulsion during Israel’s war of independence. There is something fundamental in both societies that looks into the past for political meaning, a core of their identity that surfaces now.Malley, a key member of Bill Clinton’s Middle East negotiating team, is the son of an anti-Zionist Egyptian Jew who sympathized with the Palestinian cause and knew the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. As a young diplomat, Malley had been present at the Camp David summit in 2000, which was supposed to bring about a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, but ended up catalyzing the start of the second intifada 25 years ago this month. Later he served as Obama’s Middle East coordinator and as an envoy to the Iran nuclear talks. Agha, an intellectual of Iranian, Iraqi and Lebanese heritage who teaches at Oxford, was a longtime adviser to Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, often operating as their envoy in formal and informal negotiations channels.Their unique backgrounds – Hussein, who was viewed as Palestinian by choice rather than by heritage, and Malley’s anti-imperialist upbringing – often made the two a dissenting voice in diplomatic circles, insiders and outsiders at the same time. After the Camp David failure they challenged the dominant view, expressed by President Clinton and the senior members of his peace team, which placed all the blame for the failure on Arafat and the Palestinian side for not accepting “Israel’s generous offer”.View image in fullscreenA year after the summit, in a much debated piece in the New York Review of Books, Malley and Agha pointed to the ways in which a deep-rooted American bias toward Israel led to poor preparation for the summit, unrealistic expectations and fundamental misunderstandings on all sides. To blame Palestinians alone, they warned, was not only unjust, but a recipe for disaster.More than two decades later, the two have returned with a more radical diagnosis, shaped also by their experiences in subsequent talks. In Tomorrow Is Yesterday they argue the peace process was doomed from the start – not by tactical missteps or bad faith, though these existed in abundance, but because it fundamentally misunderstood the conflict itself.The negotiations, Malley and Agha now write, attempted to suppress history itself, since what drives Israelis and Palestinians are not just tangible interests but existential longings rooted in history. For Jews, these flow from centuries of displacement and persecution, culminating in the Holocaust, and from what they call “the long, frustrated quest for a normal, recognized, and accepted homeland”. For many religious Israelis, this translates into a sacred claim over the entire land: Kol Israel (roughly, “all of Israel are responsible for one another”). These, rather than the liberal peace camp, are the deep, authentic voices driving the society.For Palestinians, the core demands are equally elemental: to redress a history of dispossession and massacres, expulsion and dispersal, discrimination and denied dignity. Accepting Israel as a Jewish state is not, in this view, a pragmatic compromise but an intolerable “affront” – a move that would legitimize the very catastrophe that created their exile and retroactively criminalize their decades of struggle. Israelis seek something close to eternal security, which easily becomes eternal dominance; Palestinians want a return to a pre-Israel life that no longer exists.View image in fullscreenThe two-state solution, concludes the duo who devoted much of their life to reaching it, “is not the natural resting place for either Israelis or Palestinians [as] it runs counter to the essence of their national identities and aspirations”. The attempt to reach it was doomed because “both groups cannot accept a definitive closure”, since “neither is prepared to relinquish otherworldly dreams for the sake of an earthly understanding”.What emerged was an artificial process, sustained through bias and denial. By privileging Israel and suppressing Palestinian claims, ignoring more radical or religious stakeholders, and prioritizing security over justice, US-led diplomacy built not peace but a pressure cooker. It blew up on 7 October.Malley and Agha’s account is clear-eyed and unsparing, rejecting the very conventions that upheld the imbalance at the heart of the process. It reads like the work of people who have burned their bridges – and it fits the gravity of the moment.Hamas’s murderous attack, they say, was not an aberration but “Palestinian through and through” – an explosion of grievances over decades of displacement and humiliation that the peace process never addressed. Israel’s brutal response, in turn, was equally revealing: less the product of Netanyahu’s extremism than of a longstanding pattern, in which Palestinian resistance is met with overwhelming force designed to restore deterrence, dominance and territorial control.Now both sides are resorting to familiar roles: Israelis to triumphalist violence, Palestinians to resistance and survival.Once the cloud of grief over 7 October began lifting, something vile and wicked entered the Israeli public discourse: a certain enjoyment of the humiliation of Palestinians and their sympathizers that in the past was only found on the political margins.The minister for interior security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has made it a habit of posting images of bent, blindfolded and handcuffed prisoners, and supporting cutting down their food rations or banning Red Cross and family visits (according to Israel’s own records, only one-fourth of the people arrested in Gaza are fighters, but all detainees are portrayed as terrorists in the media). Hanoch Daum, a popular commentator and writer, recently drew massive social media engagement with an AI-generated image mocking Palestinian hunger as a hoax. The climate activist Greta Thunberg, who leads flotillas to Gaza, is another favorite target for ridicule. Expelled after her first attempt to reach the Strip, authorities made a point of seating her on the worst seat on the plane, passengers hurled insults at her, and the pilot announced his support for the IDF on the speakers.Every criticism of Israel, any sympathy for the Palestinians, any pressure to end the war, is seen today as a form of antisemitism – even endorsement of Hamas. Over 60% of Israelis, according to recent polls, believe “nobody in Gaza is innocent.” Along with Israel’s sense of impunity, this popular notion explains how this war has turned into a genocide.The core of Palestinian identity, most Israelis believe, is the physical destruction of their state, as manifested in the 7 October attack. “It was each and every Palestinian, for nearly eight decades, who wished, believed and acted to bring this exact moment,” wrote Einat Wilf, a former member of the Knesset for the Independence and Labor parties, in a new book she co-authored about the right of return. ”Hamas was the one who fulfilled their dream.” Her conclusion: There is no solution at hand; Israel must be willing to fight Palestinians “for generations”.Oddly enough, these words echo Malley and Agha’s observations, and their view of the conflict as a clash of narratives. “[It] is not essentially about territory,” they recently wrote in the New Yorker. “It is not about roads and dunes and hills. It is about people, their lives, emotions, anger, grief, attachments, and history.”View image in fullscreenYet the reality is not of two sides arguing over myths but one sovereign power ruling over millions of people without rights. It is not just a conflict, but a problem inherent to a regime. The most important local dynamic is a de facto one-state condition in which half the population – namely, the Palestinians – is excluded from the political system.Israel controls every border, every checkpoint, every natural resource, every aspect of the economy. It decides where Palestinians can work, travel, or build; it denies them legal protection, allows their property to be vandalized or taken and leaves them exposed to violence.Racism and ethnic hatred, even the endorsement of old myths – these are not intrinsic to Jews or Palestinians, but are byproducts of this system of segregation and dominance. This is what Ta-Nehisi Coates observed when he visited the West Bank on the eve of 7 October. “What my eyes now saw … was a world where separate and unequal was alive and well, where rule by the ballot for some and the bullet for others was policy,” he wrote in his recent book, The Message. “I was seeking a world beyond plunder – but my proof of concept was just more plunder.” Yet, he writes elsewhere, “even plunderers are human beings whose violent ambitions must contend with the guilt that gnaws at them when they meet the eyes of their victims. And so a story must be told.” In Israel, Coates recognized the colonizer’s sense of “fragile triumphalism”.It is Palestinians’ lack of rights, their existence in a political no-man’s land, that makes them expendable to a system that largely conditions protection on political rights. It allows the US and Israel to toy with ideas of mass deportation and real estate ventures. This is a conflict about hills and territory: Palestinians have been pushed outside the system that governs people and nations, so now they can be pushed (again) out of their land. The besieged Gaza – a territory belonging to nobody, governed for decades by an unrecognized militant group – was the physical embodiment of the Palestinian condition.The danger now is surrendering to fatalism: the idea that ancient hatreds or religious attachments make the current trajectory inevitable.Whether held by outside observers such as Malley and Agha or rightwing Israelis, this view misreads how religion and identity work in politics. These doctrines may claim to be eternal, but they shift according to the needs of the moment. Orthodox Jews once rejected Zionism as sacrilege; they became the most rightwing Israelis as their dependence on the state grew. Israeli rabbis banned prayer on the Temple Mount; since its fate became an object in peace talks, they began endorsing it. The Likud’s original symbol included the kingdom of Jordan within the Jewish state, now even the most rightwing Jew imagines the entire land of Israel without it. Interests and circumstances, not ancient beliefs, construct political imagination.More importantly, the idea of clashing identities easily becomes another justification for murder, as is happening in Israel today. Instead, we must recognize that violent instability is baked into any system where one side has power and rights and the other has none.Since the Oslo process in the 1990s, much of the world has accepted the Israeli framing: Palestinian rights would be recognized only after a peace process was completed. In other words, rights were treated as conditional on Israeli interests – a prize to be granted at the end rather than a foundation to guide negotiations. This is the root of past failures. But if rights become the starting point, then the two peoples could finally choose their political future: one state, two, or some in-between like a federation. No choice would need to be final; states can divide or unite, agreements can evolve. The very idea of a definite end point is an illusion.Recently, there are signs that the west is opening its eyes to the horror in Gaza, mainly due to sustained civil society activism. It is not surprising that the United States is mounting unprecedented opposition to the countries deciding to recognize Palestine, including by withholding visas from Palestinian officials seeking to travel to the UN. For Washington too, Palestinians exist only on Israel’s terms. So far, the countries leading the recognition effort are not deterred; pushing against American hegemony over diplomacy is another positive byproduct of recognition.As limited as the recognition of Palestine – a state with no territory or sovereignty – is, it is a step in the right direction, because it re-establishes the existence and the rights of Palestinians as individuals and as a collective. It finally moves up the end goal, which should have been a precondition to the talks all along. More urgently, it strengthens the Palestinian case in international institutions and further justifies the demand for sanctions that could end the war.Steps against Israeli ministers who advocate ethnic cleansing and genocide, as some countries are considering, are another positive development. More should follow, and more rapidly; as the destruction of Gaza is happening now. We need more political engagement and risk-taking, and a willingness to break old taboos.History’s myths may feel eternal, but like the violence they sustain, they are choices – and choices can be remade.

      Noam Sheizaf is a journalist and documentary film-maker based in Tel Aviv. His latest film, H2: The Occupation Lab, dealt with the history of military control and settlement in the Palestinian city of Hebron More

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      Rubio heads to Israel amid tensions over strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar

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      The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has arrived in Israel seeking to mend a rift with Washington’s other allies in the region over Israel’s attempted assassination of Hamas leaders in Qatar and the accelerated expansion of settlements on the occupied West Bank.In talks with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Rubio will try to balance criticism of the Israeli airstrike on a Doha building, which killed aides to a Hamas leader and a Qatari security officer, with a message of overall support for Israel before the expected formal recognition of Palestine by a number of other US allies, including the UK, France, Canada, Australia and Belgium.Rubio, before his departure on Sunday, told reporters: “Obviously, we’re not happy about it. The president was not happy about it. Now we need to move forward and figure out what comes next.” He stressed the incident was “not going to change the nature of our relationship with the Israelis”.The Netanyahu government is seeking to play down any rift with the Trump administration over the Doha strike, while remaining defiant over the attack.“We have a very close dialogue with the administration. We’re coordinated with them and, relatively speaking, the American reaction was reasonable,” the Israeli ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, said on Israeli army radio. “At the UN security council they expressed reservations, but the reservations were minor. We took into account that this would have a price.“The Qataris are trying to ride on this. From their perspective, they are leveraging this incident. From our perspective, we delivered the clear message that we will pursue the terrorists everywhere.”Asked if he was concerned about threats by Israeli officials to carry out further strikes in Qatar, Rubio said: “We’re going to meet with them. We’re going to talk about what the future holds. I’m going to get a much better understanding of what their plans are moving forward.After Israel, Rubio is due to join Trump’s planned visit to Britain this week, which will reportedly soon receive its first group of injured and sick children from Gaza for treatment.While in Jerusalem on Sunday, Rubio will visit the Western Wall with Benjamin Netanyahu, according to the Israeli prime minister’s office.The unprecedented attack by Israel against Hamas leaders in an upmarket neighbourhood of Doha on Tuesday marked Israel’s first such strike against US ally Qatar, putting renewed strain on diplomatic efforts to bring about a truce in war-ravaged Gaza and drawing international criticism.Trump has openly chided Netanyahu over the attack, which targeted Hamas leaders gathering to discuss a new ceasefire proposal put forward by the US.Netanyahu has defended the operation, saying on Saturday that killing senior Hamas officials would remove the “main obstacle” to ending the war.The talk of a ceasefire, still out of reach after months of failed negotiations, came as Israel has been intensifying its campaign in the Gaza Strip.In recent days, it has ramped up efforts to seize control of Gaza City, the territory’s largest urban area, telling residents to evacuate and blowing up numerous high-rise buildings it said were being used by Hamas.While thousands of people have evacuated the city, according to the Israeli military and Hamas, many more remain.Gaza’s civil defence agency said 32 people were killed by Israeli fire on Saturday.Netanyahu and his government have defied international criticism throughout the nearly two-year war, but it continued to mount this week.On Friday, the UN general assembly voted to back a revival of the two-state solution, in open defiance of Israeli opposition.Israeli allies Britain and France, alongside several other western countries, are preparing to recognise Palestinian statehood at a UN gathering this month out of exasperation at Israel’s conduct of the Gaza war and in the occupied West Bank.London and Paris, joined by Berlin, also called for an immediate halt to Israel’s offensive in Gaza City. Nevertheless, Israel retains the backing of its most powerful ally and biggest arms supplier, the US.Before Rubio’s visit, the state department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said the US’s top diplomat would show “our commitment to fight anti-Israel actions including unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state that rewards Hamas terrorism”.“He will also emphasise our shared goals: ensuring Hamas never rules over Gaza again and bringing all the hostages home.”In Israel, opponents of the Netanyahu government have sought to put pressure on ministers to end the war in return for the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza.On Saturday, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, the main campaign group, accused the Israeli prime minister of being the “one obstacle” to freeing the hostages and accused him of repeatedly sabotaging ceasefire efforts.Of the 251 people taken hostage by Hamas militants in October 2023, 47 remain in Gaza, including 25 whom the Israeli military says are dead.The war was sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an Agence France-Presse tally of official figures.Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed at least 64,803 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, which the UN considers reliable.With Agence France-Presse and Reuters More

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      Six great reads: rebels in Nazi Germany, how creativity works and Europe’s biggest pornography conference

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      1. The astonishing story of the aristocrat who hid her Jewish lover in a sofa bed – and other German rebels who defied the NazisView image in fullscreenFrom a diplomat who embraced the exiled Albert Einstein to a schoolteacher who helped “non-Aryan” students flee, these remarkable individuals refused to bend the knee to Hitler – only to be dramatically betrayed. What, asked Jonathan Freedland, in this extract from his new book, The Traitors Circle, made them risk it all?Read more2. The unconscious process that leads to creativity: how ‘incubation’ worksView image in fullscreen“One of the most marvellous properties of the brain,” wrote Dutch psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis in this fascinating piece from Well Actually, is its ability to continue working unconsciously when the conscious mind has moved on to something else.Read more3. Disgruntled NYT journalist to ‘anti-woke’ power grab: how far can Bari Weiss go?View image in fullscreenAfter leaving the New York Times, Weiss turned her Substack into an unshakable pro-Israel voice. Now as Paramount eyes acquisition of her company, David Klion profiled a writer who is poised to become Trump’s ally among media elites.Read more4. Israel is forcing us to leave Gaza City. We know they may never let us returnView image in fullscreenIn this deeply personal piece, Gaza reporter Malak A Tantesh wrote about her family’s decision to leave northern Gaza, the area they call home, for the tents of the south where they had also endured last year’s winter. The family has stayed in 10 locations since they were first forced out of their prewar home in Beit Lahia.Read more5. Boom times and total burnout: three days at Europe’s biggest pornography conferenceView image in fullscreenIn this powerful feature, Amelia Gentleman, alongside photographer Judith Jockel, reported from the biggest pornography conference in Europe, where she spoke to entrepreneurs who were excited about AI and soaring profits, and creators who were battling burnout and chronic illness due to the industry’s gig-economy structure.Read more6. ‘I wasn’t terrified of dying, but I didn’t want to leave my kids’: Davina McCall on addiction, reality TV and the brain tumour that nearly killed herView image in fullscreenWhen the TV presenter was offered a free health screening, she thought it was pointless: she was “the healthiest woman you’ve ever met”. But then came the shocking diagnosis. Now fully recovered, she told Simon Hattenstone, she’s re‑evaluating everything.Read more More