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      I spent decades at Columbia. I’m withdrawing my fall course due to its deal with Trump | Rashid Khalidi

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      Dear Acting President Shipman,I am writing you an open letter since you have seen fit to communicate the recent decisions of the board of trustees and the administration in a similar fashion.These decisions, taken in close collaboration with the Trump administration, have made it impossible for me to teach modern Middle East history, the field of my scholarship and teaching for more than 50 years, 23 of them at Columbia. Although I have retired, I was scheduled to teach a large lecture course on this topic in the fall as a “special lecturer”, but I cannot do so under the conditions Columbia has accepted by capitulating to the Trump administration in June.Specifically, it is impossible to teach this course (and much else) in light of Columbia’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition deliberately, mendaciously and disingenuously conflates Jewishness with Israel, so that any criticism of Israel, or indeed description of Israeli policies, becomes a criticism of Jews. Citing its potential chilling effect, a co-author of the IHRA definition, Professor Kenneth Stern, has repudiated its current uses. Yet Columbia has announced that it will serve as a guide in disciplinary proceedings.Under this definition of antisemitism, which absurdly conflates criticism of a nation-state, Israel, and a political ideology, Zionism, with the ancient evil of Jew-hatred, it is impossible with any honesty to teach about topics such as the history of the creation of Israel, and the ongoing Palestinian Nakba, culminating in the genocide being perpetrated by Israel in Gaza with the connivance and support of the US and much of western Europe.The Armenian genocide, the nature of the absolute monarchies and military dictatorships that blight most of the Arab world, the undemocratic theocracy in Iran, the incipient dictatorial regime in Türkiye, the fanaticism of Wahhabism: all of these are subject to detailed analysis in my course lectures and readings. However, a simple description of the discriminatory nature of Israel’s 2018 Nation State Law – which states that only the Jewish people have the right of self-determination in Israel, half of whose subjects are Palestinian – or of the apartheid nature of its control over millions of Palestinians who have been under military occupation for 58 years would be impossible in a Middle East history course under the IHRA definition of antisemitism.It is not only faculty members’ academic freedom and freedom of speech that is infringed upon by Columbia’s capitulation to Trump’s diktat. Teaching assistants would be seriously constrained in leading discussion sections, as would students in their questions and discussions, by the constant fear that informers would snitch on them to the fearsome apparatus that Columbia has erected to punish speech critical of Israel, and to crack down on alleged discrimination – which at this moment in history almost invariably amounts simply to opposition to this genocide. Scores of students and many faculty members have been subjected to these kangaroo courts, students such as Mahmoud Khalil have been snatched from their university housing, and Columbia has now promised to render this repressive system even more draconian and opaque.You have stated that no “red lines” have been crossed by these decisions. However, Columbia has appointed a vice-provost initially tasked with surveilling Middle Eastern studies, and it has ordained that faculty and staff must submit to “trainings” on antisemitism from the likes of the Anti-Defamation League, for whom virtually any critique of Zionism or Israel is antisemitic, and Project Shema, whose trainings link many anti-Zionist critiques to antisemitism. It has accepted an “independent” monitor of “compliance” of faculty and student behavior from a firm that in June 2025 hosted an event in honor of Israel. According to Columbia’s agreement with the Trump administration, this “Monitor will have timely access to interview all Agreement-related individuals, and visit all Agreement-related facilities, trainings, transcripts of Agreement-related meetings and disciplinary hearings, and reviews”. Classrooms are pointedly NOT excluded from possible visits from these external non academics.The idea that the teaching, syllabuses and scholarship of some of the most prominent academics in their fields should be vetted by such a vice-provost, such “trainers” or an outside monitor from such a firm is abhorrent. It constitutes the antithesis of the academic freedom that you have disingenuously claimed will not be infringed by this shameful capitulation to the anti-intellectual forces animating the Trump administration.I regret deeply that Columbia’s decisions have obliged me to deprive the nearly 300 students who have registered for this popular course – as many hundreds of others have done for more than two decades – of the chance to learn about the history of the modern Middle East this fall. Although I cannot do anything to compensate them fully for depriving them of the opportunity to take this course, I am planning to offer a public lecture series in New York focused on parts of this course that will be streamed and available for later viewing. Proceeds, if any, will go to Gaza’s universities, every one of which has been destroyed by Israel with US munitions, a war crime about which neither Columbia nor any other US university has seen fit to say a single word.Columbia’s capitulation has turned a university that was once a site of free inquiry and learning into a shadow of its former self, an anti-university, a gated security zone with electronic entry controls, a place of fear and loathing, where faculty and students are told from on high what they can teach and say, under penalty of severe sanctions. Disgracefully, all of this is being done to cover up one of the greatest crimes of this century, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, a crime in which Columbia’s leadership is now fully complicit. – Rashid Khalidi

      Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said professor emeritus of modern Arab studies at Columbia University and author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine More

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      ‘The war needs to end’: is the US right turning on Israel?

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      As the Israel-Gaza war nears its two-year mark, and as images of starving people and utter devastation flood social media, cracks seem to be emerging in the American right’s typically iron-clad support for Israel.The US continues to support Israel diplomatically and militarily, and last Thursday pulled out of peace negotiations that it accused Hamas of sabotaging. And in the US Congress, only two Republicans voted for a recent amendment that would have pulled funding for missile defense systems for Israel. One of them, Marjorie Taylor Greene, on Monday became the first Republican to call Israel’s war a “genocide”.Yet the war’s duration and human cost, as well as recent Israeli strikes on Christian targets, have spurred modest signs of discontent on the US right. Some conservative commentators have walked back their support for Israel’s war; the US’s famously Zionist ambassador to Israel rebuked the actions of Jewish settlers in the West Bank; and an unresolved rift over foreign intervention continues to plague the Maga world.To some extent this mirrors trends in US sentiment overall. A recent CNN poll found a steep decline in US support for Israel since the war started. That drop was most dramatic among respondents who identified as Democrats or independents, but the poll also found that since 2023 the percentage of surveyed Republicans who believe that Israel’s actions are justified fell from 68% to 52%.It’s highly likely that depictions of starvation in the territory – where 147 people have reportedly starved to death, including 88 children, and nearly one in three people are going multiple days without eating, according to the United Nations – have played a role. On Monday, Donald Trump partly contradicted the claim of the Israeli leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, that there is no starvation in Gaza, telling reporters: “That’s real starvation … I see it, and you can’t fake that. So, we’re going to be even more involved.” Trump made the statement while visiting Britain, where the Daily Express, considered the country’s most rightwing mainstream tabloid, recently ran a headline decrying hunger in Gaza: “FOR PITY’S SAKE STOP THIS NOW.”A recent spate of Israeli attacks on Christian targets in Gaza and the West Bank have also angered some American conservatives. Last Thursday, after an Israeli tank fired on the sole Catholic church in Gaza – killing three people and wounding nine, including a priest – a reportedly upset Trump called Netanyahu to complain.A few days after the church shelling, the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, visited Taybeh, a Palestinian Christian town in the West Bank that has been repeatedly attacked by Israeli settlers, who earlier this month set a fire near a fifth-century church. In a statement, Huckabee described the attack as “an absolute travesty” and “an act of terror” and called for the perpetrators to be prosecuted. (He did not directly implicate the Israeli government or settlers.)View image in fullscreenAlthough there have long been isolationist and populist elements on the right skeptical of the close US alliance with Israel, their point of view has been eclipsed in recent history by the pro-Israel camp, which enjoys strong support among American evangelical Christians.Huckabee is an evangelical Christian who has described himself as an “unapologetic, unreformed Zionist”. Like many evangelicals, he believes that Israel has a divine claim to the West Bank, and has memorably declared that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian”.That Huckabee issued such a strong statement on Taybeh “was surprising”, Todd Deatherage said. Deatherage is the co-founder of Telos, a non-profit that works to give US policymakers and religious groups a more nuanced understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Huckabee’s gesture, he said, seems to indicate “some complexity in a movement that didn’t have complexity around this before”.Sohrab Ahmari, a conservative journalist and commentator, described Huckabee’s statement as remarkable, “given how much of a kind of boomer evangelical Huckabee is”.Huckabee also recently called for Israel to “aggressively investigate” the murder of Sayfollah “Saif” Musallet, a Palestinian American man who was recently beaten to death by settlers in the West Bank, according to his family.The events abroad also seem to have made ripples in the US conservative media sphere.The Israeli government said the church strike was a battlefield mistake, but in a recent episode of his talkshow, Michael Knowles, a rightwing American pundit, expressed skepticism. “I’ve been broadly supportive of the state of Israel,” Knowles, who is Catholic, said in the segment. “And you’re losing me.” The Israeli government “is really screwing up, is really not playing its cards right”, he argued. “The war needs to come to an end. How long is the war gonna go on?”He added: “America is the only friend that Israel has on planet Earth. I do not get what the Israeli government is doing here, but I suspect there will be political consequences – as there should be.” Some critics in the comments section of Knowles’s video accused him of only noticing deaths in Gaza once the victims were conspicuously Christian.The Free Press, the online publication founded by Bari Weiss to challenge what she describes as an establishment liberal media, recently published an article arguing that although past claims about hunger in Gaza were “lies”, the territory was now rapidly entering a “real hunger crisis”. The Free Press has generally taken a fervently pro-Israel stance.Similarly, Joe Rogan, the everyman podcaster who threw his support to Trump in the last election, has refused to host Netanyahu on his podcast, the premier’s son, Yair Netanyahu, claimed on Friday. And Ross Douthat, the conservative New York Times columnist, published an op-ed on Saturday arguing that Israel’s military operation has crossed into being “unjust”.Although the US right is perceived today as staunchly pro-Israel, recent history is more complicated, Deatherage noted; George HW Bush’s Republican administration undertook a political fight with Israel about Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The right’s pro-Israel stance really hardened after 9/11, he said, when Christian conservatives and defense hawks embraced the view that the US and Israel were allies against Islamic terror.View image in fullscreenThe modern iteration of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) was founded in 2006 to facilitate US evangelical support for Israel. The organization’s membership is significantly larger than Aipac, the pro-Israel organization founded by Jewish Americans. Trump’s alliance with the religious right during his first term intensified the political power of Christian Zionism.“That part of the evangelical movement really gained unprecedented access to being heard,” Deatherage said.Some Christian Zionists, particularly evangelicals, believe there are biblical justifications for the US supporting Israel. A small subset believe that a showdown between Israel and enemy states could presage the End of Days, Daniel Hummel, a historian of Christian Zionism, said. The recent strike on Iran sparked apocalyptic speculation in some Christian circles, he noted.Yet polling data suggests a generational divide. Younger evangelicals, like younger Americans broadly, are more skeptical of Zionism, and the gap seems to be growing.A 2021 survey by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke found that only 33.6% of American evangelicals between the ages of 18 and 29 supported Israel, down from 69% surveyed in a similar poll in 2018. Research by the University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll has found similar shifts among younger evangelicals.“Younger evangelicals in particular are kind of renegotiating what it means to be a Christian in the public square,” Deatherage said. “And they’re not thrilled by the bargain that the older generation maybe made with politics.”The topic of Christian Zionism came up during a heated episode of Tucker Carlson’s talkshow, this June, featuring Senator Ted Cruz. Carlson is one of the major faces of an America First camp in the Maga movement that views the American alliance with Israel with increasing suspicion. During the conversation, Cruz cited a Bible verse as one of the reasons that he supports Israel. Carlson responded by testily mocking the notion that foreign policy objectives should be determined by biblical exegesis.On the fringes, criticisms of Israel have sometimes been intertwined with outright antisemitism. The far-right pundit Candace Owens, for example, has often disparaged Israel in conspiratorial terms.Yet skepticism of Israel has also gained some credible intellectual traction on the more mainstream Maga right, particularly among a group of mostly younger conservative activists, political staffers and policy wonks sometimes known in Washington DC as the “restrainers”. These are generally pro-Trump conservatives who, while not necessarily outright isolationists, believe that the US should protect its own national interests even if this means scaling back – or “restraining” – allies such as Israel.The term is subjective and contentious, but the Pentagon’s policy chief, Elbridge Colby; the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, Mike DiMino; and JD Vance himself are sometimes considered examples.Pro-Israel Republicans and hawks still mostly hold the whip hand, but Deatherage believes a political window for rethinking the US’s relationship for Israel may be opening on the right. “There’s a lot of pressure on [Trump] to support whatever the Israeli government is doing. But there’s now some really dissenting voices on the other side of that.” More

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      Netanyahu flies home without a Gaza peace deal but still keeps Trump onside

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      Benjamin Netanyahu arrived back in Israel on Friday without a ceasefire in the Gaza war despite heady predictions from US and Israeli officials that this week could provide a breakthrough in negotiations. But he did not come home completely empty-handed.The Israeli PM’s visit was his third since Donald Trump’s inauguration, with several high-profile meetings at the White House, a nomination for Trump to receive the Nobel peace prize, and suggestions from Trump and the special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, that peace could be achieved in a week.But as Netanyahu’s trip ended, no clear results had been achieved. Witkoff postponed a trip to Doha on Tuesday as it became clear that the negotiations had not reached a point where they could produce a ceasefire agreement.While Netanyahu repeated a refrain that a ceasefire could be announced within days, a deal to bring peace to more than 2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip remained elusive.“I hope we can complete it in a few days,” Netanyahu said during an appearance on Newsmax, a conservative, pro-Trump news network on Wednesday. “We’ll probably have a 60-day ceasefire. Get the first batch [of hostages] out and then use the 60 days to try to negotiate an end to this.”By Thursday, when he attended a memorial service for two Israeli embassy staff killed in Washington, Netanyahu said Israel would not compromise on its demands for Hamas to disband. “I am promoting a move that will result in a significant liberation, but only on the conditions Israel demands: Hamas disarm, Gaza demilitarise,” he said. “If it is not achieved through diplomacy, it will be achieved by force.”Several officials suggested during the week that only a single sticking point remained between negotiators in Doha: the extent of a withdrawal by the Israel Defense Forces that would follow the release of some of the hostages being held by Hamas. The White House had pushed back against an initial map that would have left Israel with significant zones of control in Gaza, which Witkoff had compared to a “Smotrich plan”, referring to the hardline Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich. Israel reportedly redrew that map to make it more palatable to the US administration.But Hamas has said there were other disagreements, including negotiations over whether the Gaza Humanitarian Fund, an Israeli and US-backed logistics group, would be allowed to continue to deliver food to the territory (the UN said on Friday that 798 people had been killed trying to reach GHF sites since its introduction in May) and whether Israel would agree to a permanent truce, which it has said it would not. US mediators sought to bridge the gap by telling Qatari intermediaries they would guarantee the ceasefire’s continuation after 60 days as negotiations continued.The upshot is that while Netanyahu leaves the US without a ceasefire, he has managed his relationship with Trump through high-profile assurances that he is seeking a peace in Gaza, while maintaining a status quo that members of his rightwing coalition, including the ministers Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, have said is preferable to a peace deal.For Netanyahu, the trip produced images that reinforced Israeli claims there was “no daylight” between him and Trump, and came as the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, announced a decision to impose sanctions on Francesca Albanese, a UN expert on the occupied Palestinian territories, for urging the international criminal court to investigate Israeli officials and US companies over the Gaza war.Trump’s frustrations with Netanyahu appeared to be boiling over a month ago as the US president sought to negotiate a truce between Iran and Israel, which had been trading airstrikes and missile barrages as Israel sought to dismantle the Iranian nuclear programme.“I’m not happy with Israel,” he said on the White House lawn. “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”That recalled remarks by Robert Gates, a former US secretary of defence, about successive White House administrations’ difficulties in managing an ally in the region that also had considerable political influence in the US.“Every president I worked for, at some point in his presidency, would get so pissed off at the Israelis that he couldn’t speak,” Gates said.But a full breach with the US would have been disastrous for Netanyahu, who is managing his own difficult coalition and has been targeted in a graft investigation at home that was again delayed as a result of his international travel. And, after joint strikes against Iran, the Israeli PM was keen to show that the two men were in lockstep, while giving the Trump administration an opportunity to show it was working toward a Gaza peace.Elliott Abrams, the senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, said the Trump administration had sought, as it did during the first short-lived ceasefire, to bring “pressure to bear on Israel directly” through discussions with Netanyahu and his chief lieutenant, Ron Dermer, and “trying to bring pressure on Hamas mostly through the Qataris, when there are these talks in Doha”.He added: “Whether that pressure is effective is unclear.” More

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      Netanyahu vows to combat what he calls ‘vilification against Israel’ online

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      Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that he’s vowed to combat an orchestrated social media campaign of “vilification and demonization” that he says is responsible for a drop in support for Israel among US voters, especially Democrats.“I think there’s been a concerted effort to spread vilification and demonization against Israel on social media,” the Israeli prime minister told journalists on Capitol Hill after being asked to respond to opinion polls showing a move away from the historic trend of strong backing for Israel.“It’s directed, it’s funded. It is malignant. We intend to fight it, because nothing defeats lies like the truth, and we shall spread the truth for everyone to see once people are exposed to the facts, we win hands down. That’s what we intend to do in the coming months and years.”Netanyahu’s comments came during a visit to Congress, where he met the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson.They also followed the recent victory of Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic primary race for the mayor of New York, which commentators believe was partly fueled by the candidate’s vocal support for Palestinian rights and criticism of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.A range of surveys have shows a marked decline in support for Israel among Democratic-leaning voters amid rising disquiet about the impact of the war in the now devastated coastal territory. The ongoing war has killed about 60,000 people – most of them Palestinians – and has seen much of the population threatened with starvation.A Gallup poll in March showed less than half of the US public sympathized with Israel’s position, the lowest figure recorded since the organization started taking surveys on the issue. Among Democrat voters, 38% sympathize with the Palestinians over the Israelis, a reversal of a 2013 Gallup survey, which saw Democrats sympathizing with Israelis by a margin of 36%.Other polls have shown similar trends, raising concerns for the future of the traditional strong bipartisan US support for Israel.The Israeli leader said his government had accepted a proposal from Qatari mediators for a fresh ceasefire with Hamas, saying it matched what had been proposed by Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWitkoff, speaking at a cabinet meeting earlier on Tuesday, had spelled out the terms of a proposed deal to broker a 60-day ceasefire he hoped would be in place by the end of the week, saying it would involve the release of Israeli hostages.“Ten live hostages will be released, nine deceased will be released,” Witkoff said. “We’re meeting at the president’s direction with all the hostage families to let them know, and we think that this will lead to a lasting peace.”Netanyahu said: “We accepted a proposal that came from the mediators. It’s a good proposal. It matches Steve Witkoff’s original idea and we think that we’ve gotten closer to it, and I hope we can cross the line.”He also said he expected to meet the US president again during his current visit, his third to Washington since Trump was inaugurated in January. The two met at the White House on Monday evening, when Netanyahu presented Trump with a letter nominating him for a Nobel peace prize.Netanyahu said the the military coordination with Washington during Israel’s recent 12-day war with Iran, which resulted in repeated strikes on Tehran’s nuclear facilities, was unprecedented.“In the entire 77 years of Israeli history, there has never been the degree of coordination of cooperation and trust between America and Israel as we have today,” he said. “And I credit President Trump with this extraordinary achievement.” More

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      Tuesday briefing: Is a ceasefire in Gaza on the table as Netanyahu and Trump meet in Washington?

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      Good morning. The war in Gaza – which began with the horror of the Hamas slaughter and kidnapping of innocent Israelis on 7 October 2023, and has brought unimaginable death and destruction to the civilian population of Gaza almost every day since – has entered its 21st month.So far every attempt to end the conflict has failed. But the the fraying patience of the US president, Donald Trump, who has promised to deliver peace to Gaza, has seen Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu dispatch a team of negotiators to Qatar for indirect talks with Hamas, with the Israeli leader expected to come under pressure on this week’s trip to Washington DC to agree to a ceasefire.Yet despite Trump’s desire to end the war, and Israel and Hamas making positive noises about the prospect of a ceasefire, the two sides are still far apart on a number of crucial negotiating points.Last night, just hours before Netanyahu told Trump at a White House dinner that he had nominated him for the Nobel peace prize, Israel laid out a plan that would force all Palestinians in Gaza into a camp on the ruins of Rafah, in a scheme that legal experts described as “a blueprint for crimes against humanity”.For today’s newsletter, I talked to the Guardian’s Middle East correspondent Emma Graham-Harrison about the prospects for peace, and what is at stake for everyone involved. First, the headlines.Five big stories

      Immigration | Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are expected to announce plans for French police to do more to block small boats crossing the Channel at a summit in London this week, but a wider deal on returning asylum seekers is still up in the air.

      Iran | The Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said in an interview released on Monday that Israel, which last month fought a 12-day war with Iran, had attempted to assassinate him by bombarding an area in which he was holding a meeting.

      Poverty | Children in England are living in “almost Dickensian levels of poverty” where deprivation has become normalised, the children’s commissioner has said, as she insisted the two-child benefit limit must be scrapped.

      Environment | Millions of tonnes of treated sewage sludge is spread on farmland across the UK every year despite containing forever chemicals, microplastics and toxic waste. An investigation by the Guardian and Watershed has identified England’s sludge-spreading hotspots and shown where the practice could be damaging rivers.

      US news | The Texas senator Ted Cruz ensured the Republican spending bill slashed funding for weather forecasting, only to then go on vacation to Greece while his state was hit by deadly flooding – a disaster that critics say was worsened by cuts to meteorology.
      In depth: What a new ceasefire might look like – and the risks if it failsView image in fullscreenA few hours before Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump met yesterday, the latest rounds of indirect ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas in Doha ended without a breakthrough. Despite this, Trump insisted at a dinner with Netanyahu last night that negotiations were “going along very well”.If a new ceasefire is agreed and does come into effect, it will be the third during a war that has claimed the lives of at least 57,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians.The first ceasefire – in November 2023 – lasted just 10 days. The second, in February and March this year, collapsed after Israel reneged on its promise to move to a second phase that could have seen a definitive end to the conflict.In the months since, a new Israeli offensive has claimed the lives of thousands more Palestinians. Extreme hunger is everywhere after an 11-week siege and ongoing tight blockade, with only minimal food and aid allowed in.What are the terms of this new proposed ceasefire?The details of this new deal include the staggered release of 10 living hostages still held in Gaza by Hamas, and the return of the bodies of 18 more, in exchange for a number of Palestinians held in Israeli jails. There would also be more aid entering the area and a phased withdrawal of Israeli forces from some parts of the Gaza Strip.Like the previous ceasefires, it will last for 60 days, with Trump and regional allies guaranteeing Hamas that Israel will engage in “meaningful” talks to bring about a permanent end to the war.The deal would leave 22 hostages, 10 of them believed to be alive, still held in Gaza.How strong is Netanyahu’s position with Trump?Emma Graham-Harrison said that, on paper, Donald Trump has most of the leverage, which he is using to push a reluctant Netanyahu to the negotiating table.Two weeks ago, the world watched as Trump publicly eviscerated Israel for breaking a tentative ceasefire with Iran. He had already forced the Israeli prime minister to turn around fighter jets on their way to Iran – a display of raw power over Israel’s leader that Emma said is “unprecedented”.Since Trump’s F-word outburst, the two allies have once again appeared in lockstep, with the US going on to launch a bombing run in support of Israel against Iran’s nuclear programme, handing Netanyahu a huge political boost.Trump has also backed Netanyahu on a number of other key political issues, calling for corruption charges facing the Israeli prime minister to be dropped and continuing to back his policy for distributing food to Palestinians in Gaza through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), despite hundreds of Palestinians being shot and killed while trying to reach the distribution points.“Netanyahu has made sure that he appears to be taking Trump’s demands for an end to the war seriously; for example sending a team of negotiators to the ceasefire talks in Doha,” said Emma.At last night’s dinner, Trump was upbeat about the prospect of a ceasefire. When the US president was asked about Israel’s reported plans to force all Palestinians in Gaza into a new “humanitarian city” built on the ruins of Rafah, Trump directed Netanyahu to answer the question. In response Netanyahu said he was working with the US on finding countries that will “give Palestinians a better future”.Does Netanyahu really want to end the war?While Netanyahu is aware he needs to appease Trump’s desire to present himself as a peacemaker by announcing a ceasefire, Emma said that Netanyahu’s critics say he has multiple, compelling reasons not to want a lasting end to the war.He is still very much beholden to far-right parties within his coalition government who are vehemently opposed to a ceasefire. National security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich have both threatened to leave the government if Netanyahu ends the war.“There are very powerful voices in the Israeli government who are openly on a messianic mission to ethnically cleanse Gaza ,” said Emma.There is also the separate issue of that corruption trial which, even with Trump’s support, he may not be able to avoid if he loses political office.A third reason Netanyahu might want to keep the war going, Emma said, is that it allows him to delay any official examination of how the 7 October attacks happened on his watch. She thinks one possible option is that Netanyahu could attempt a “political fudge”, accepting a ceasefire and appearing to agree to Trump’s plan that it should lead to a permanent end to the war, while telling allies at home that Israel can return to fighting once the 10 hostages are home.What about Hamas?The hostages held by Hamas are the group’s only significant leverage in the talks, said Emma.Militarily, Hamas has been crippled by Israel’s relentless assault and obliteration of its senior leadership, (although Emma pointed out that Hamas is far from eliminated as a fighting force.“Agreeing to give up more hostages in a situation that doesn’t seem to be concretely leading to a permanent end to the war is arguably not that attractive an option for them,” says Emma. “I think their key aim now will be to end the war in a way that preserves some kind of power and influence in Gaza and trying to making sure that some elements of their organisation are still functioning.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhat if the talks fail?The Israeli offensive has reduced most of Gaza to ruins since 2023, displaced almost the entire 2.3 million population, destroyed its healthcare system and killed more than 57,000 people, burying thousands of others under the rubble.The total siege imposed for 11 weeks after the collapse of the last ceasefire has only partly been lifted to allow a small amount of food aid and medical supplies into the territory. Aid workers are saying that fuel stocks are close to running out, which would lead to the “complete collapse” of humanitarian operations, the health system and communications.Amid all the discussions about the ceasefire, the voices of Palestinian people themselves have seldom been heard, so I want to end this newsletter with Lama, a 12-year Palestinian girl who was interviewed by our Gaza correspondent Malak A Tantesh about what is really at stake if peace is not achieved.“I was so happy during the last ceasefire. We felt a bit safe. When the war returned, I cried a lot because it meant going back to the suffering of tents, the summer heat and repeated displacement,” Lama said.When asked about what she was afraid of if the ceasefire talks failed, she told Malak that she was scared of being “torn apart, killed, paralysed or losing a limb”.What else we’ve been readingView image in fullscreen

      If you weren’t tuned in to Australia’s extraordinary “mushroom murders” trial, in which Erin Patterson was found guilty on Monday of deliberately poisoning three relatives, Nino Bucci has a startling breakdown of every twist and turn in the unbelievable tale. Charlie Lindlar, acting deputy editor, newsletters

      Hugh Muir looks back on Ken Livingstone’s speech of defiance and unity that followed the 7/7 London terrorist attacks through the prism of our increasingly divisive politics 20 years on. Annie

      One often hears that we can’t raise taxes on the super-rich or they’ll leave the UK and take their money with them … but is it really true? Lauren Almeida digs into the data in this fascinating piece. Charlie

      Amid the tsunami of Oasis coverage, I loved this piece by Lauren Cochrane on how the band’s fans are having a fashion moment and dusting off their bucket hats and parkas for the reunion tour. Annie

      A compelling piece in the Atlantic (£) from a former New York precinct police chief, Brandon del Pozo, who argues that as ICE agents “rack up arrests on the road to 1 million deportations”, the ghoulish practice of dressing in masks and refusing to identify themselves must end. Charlie
      SportView image in fullscreenTennis | Jannik Sinner was fortunate to advance to the Wimbledon quarter-finals as Grigor Dimitrov was forced to retire through injury when leading by two sets. Novak Djokovic lost the first set in 30 minutes before recovering to beat Alex de Minaur 1-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 and advance. Iga Świątek had a 6-4, 6-1 win over Clara Tauson to set up a quarter-final against 19th-seeded Liudmila Samsonova. The 18-year-old Mirra Andreeva beat Emma Navarro 6-2, 6-3 while Belinda Bencic reached her first Wimbledon quarter-final.Cycling | Tim Merlier took stage three of the Tour de France in Dunkirk after the peloton’s top sprinter and points leader Jasper Philipsen crashed out of the race 60km from the finish.Cricket | Jofra Archer is poised to make his long-awaited comeback in the third Test against India this week, with Brendon McCullum, the England head coach, calling for Lord’s to deliver a pitch that has pace, bounce and sideways movement.The front pagesView image in fullscreenThe Guardian is reporting this morning that “Bosses face ban on non-disclosure deals that silence victims of abuse”. The i paper has “50,000 children will be lifted out of poverty due to rebellion on welfare reforms”. “Trump grants three-week reprieve on return of ‘reciprocal’ trade tariffs” – that’s the Financial Times while the Express takes aim at “‘Hypocrisy’ of Labour’s homes plan”. The Telegraph heralds the French president’s state visit with “No borders between us, King to tell Macron”. “Hand back our £771 million, Mr Macron” says the Daily Mail, tacking “s’il vous plait” on the end in mock courtesy. (A Tory says we’ve paid that money to France without it stopping the boats.) The Times sound more realistic with “PM set to press Macron for ‘one in, one out’ deal”. “Victims’ fury as Epstein probe shut down” – by the “Trump team”, says the Mirror. Top story in the Metro today is “Mushroom murderer targeted me four times”.Today in FocusView image in fullscreenTrump’s big beautiful betrayalEd Pilkington explains the president’s “Big Beautiful Bill” and what it will mean for millions of poorer Americans who voted for him last November.Cartoon of the day | Ben JenningsView image in fullscreenThe UpsideA bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all badView image in fullscreenSometimes it’s the simple things that make all of the difference. Nikki Allen (above) was conditioned to say yes to requests – from a colleague at work, from the PTA, from a friend. But she discovered one night, after distractions kept her from responding to a request for help right away, that urgent queries were not always pressing. “It was the start of a new habit: to stop saying yes on the spot. To pause and think about whether I really want to first,” writes Allen for The one change that worked. “Now, since that night a few years ago, whenever someone asks me to do something … I tell them: ‘Let me check and get back to you.’” It’s a subtle change that has given her more time, energy and autonomy to focus on the things each day that matter much more than other people’s approval.Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every SundayBored at work?And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.

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      in Elections

      Israel Is Fast Alienating the Democratic Base

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      To grasp the significance of Zohran Mamdani’s shocking victory in last month’s Democratic primary for mayor of New York, it’s worth recalling another upset, which took place 11 years ago and some 300 miles to the south, in a Republican congressional primary near Richmond, Va. In 2014 Dave Brat, a little-known economics professor at Randolph-Macon College, challenged Eric Cantor, who was then the House majority leader. Mr. Brat was outspent by a margin of more than 10 to one. Despite that, he won by 11 percentage points, thus becoming the first primary challenger to oust a House majority leader in American history.Ideologically, Mr. Brat and Mr. Mamdani have little in common. But they won their primaries for similar reasons: Each exploited the chasm between his party’s grass roots and its elites. In 2014 many Republican voters loathed the G.O.P. establishment. Today, many Democrats feel a similar fury toward the politicians who claim to represent them. In 2014 Mr. Brat used one issue in particular to illustrate that divide: immigration. Democratic alienation today is more nebulous. No single topic seems to loom as large as immigration did among Republicans a decade ago. Still, Mr. Mamdani’s victory illustrates the huge gulf between many ordinary Democrats and the Democratic establishment on one subject in particular: Israel.Mr. Mamdani focused his message on making New York City affordable. The campaign of the race’s presumed front-runner, Andrew Cuomo, in addition to attacking Mr. Mamdani as inexperienced and soft on crime, focused intensely on his opponent’s unapologetic commitment to Palestinian rights. That commitment was one reason that many political commentators and operatives assumed Mr. Mamdani, a young state assemblyman, could not win. They didn’t appreciate how broadly public opinion on this issue has changed.The shift has been national. In 2013, according to Gallup, Democrats sympathized with Israel over the Palestinians by a margin of 36 percentage points. Those numbers have now flipped, after more than a decade of nearly uninterrupted right-wing rule by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the rise to power of crude bigots like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, and Israel’s mass slaughter and starvation of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip: This February, Gallup found that Democrats sympathize with Palestinians over Israel by a margin of 38 percentage points. According to a February survey by The Economist and YouGov, 46 percent of Democrats want the United States to reduce military aid to the Jewish state. Only 6 percent want to increase it, and 24 percent want it to remain at the level it is.These opinions aren’t restricted to young progressives. Older Democrats’ views have swung even more sharply than young ones against Israel in recent years. Between 2022 and 2025, according to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of Democrats age 50 and over with an unfavorable view of the Jewish state jumped a remarkable 23 percentage points. This shift has largely erased the party’s generation gap on the subject.Only one in three Democrats now views Israel favorably, according to Gallup. That makes Israel significantly less popular than Cuba, and only slightly more popular than China. Despite this, the party’s most powerful figures — from the minority leaders Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries to many of the Democrats likely to run for president in 2028 — oppose conditioning U.S. military support on Israel’s willingness to uphold human rights. This places them in clear conflict with their party’s base.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Zohran Mamdani won by being himself – and his victory has revealed the Islamophobic ugliness of others | Nesrine Malik

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      Zohran Mamdani’s stunning win in New York’s mayoral primary has been a tale of two cities, and two Americas. In one, a young man with hopeful, progressive politics went up against the decaying gods of the establishment, with their giant funding and networks and endorsements from Democratic scions, and won. In another, in an appalling paroxysm of racism and Islamophobia, a Muslim antisemite has taken over the most important city in the US, with an aim to impose some socialist/Islamist regime. Like effluent, pungent and smearing, anti-Muslim hate spread unchecked and unchallenged after Mamdani’s win. It takes a lot from the US to shock these days, but Mamdani has managed to stir, or expose, an obscene degree of mainstreamed prejudice.Politicians, public figures, members of Donald Trump’s administration and the cesspit of social media clout-chasers all combined to produce what can only be described as a collective self-induced hallucination; an image of a burqa swathed over the Statue of Liberty; the White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, stating that Mamdani’s win is what happens when a country fails to control immigration. Republican congressman Andy Ogles has decided to call Mamdani “little muhammad” and is petitioning to have him denaturalised and deported. He has been called a “Hamas terrorist sympathiser”, and a “jihadist terrorist”.It is a measure of how racist the reaction has been that Donald Trump calling Mamdani a “communist lunatic” seems restrained in comparison. Some of the responses have been so hysterical that I often couldn’t tell what was real and what was parody. Because the idea that Mamdani, whose style is, above anything else, wide-grinned earnestness, was some sinister Islamist sleeper agent is so clearly a joke.But it’s not a joke, and if it is then it’s on me for still, after all these years, underestimating what Muslims in the public sphere do to people’s brains. And how utterly comfortable many are with anti-Muslim hate. And why shouldn’t they be? To date, the most senior figures in Mamdani’s own party, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, have not called out this onslaught, and those politicians and public figures who made them will suffer no censure or consequence. Because, fundamentally, anti-Muslim hate, like all racism when it becomes normalised, thrives when there is a systemic blessing of it through not even registering its offensiveness.But the apathy towards assaults against Mamdani is because he is an outsider in more meaningful ways, not just in his religious background. His crime is not one of daring to be Muslim and a politician – he might have “passed” if he was a conventional Democratic apparatchik – but of having strong opinions about economics and politics that mark him out as a challenger of mainstream orthodoxies regarding capitalism and Israel.Given his leftwing opinions on taxation and rent control, and objections to the slaughter of Palestinians on the US’s dime, a backlash to Mamdani was always likely. But he has done much to counter it. He has made thorough explanations of his abhorrence of antisemitism, of his pledge to combat all hate crime, and of the fact that his economic agenda is based on making the city, from its food to its childcare, more affordable.His offence has been in his unwillingness to water down his principles, not toeing the line on Israel, and not making frankly embarrassing assertions, like those running against him did, that Israel would be his first foreign trip. He has refrained from debasing himself through serial condemnations of phrases that have arbitrarily been erected as litmus tests of a Muslim’s acceptability in the public domain.Mamdani’s refusal to reject the phrase “globalise the intifada”, on the grounds that it expresses “a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights” has been seized upon as an indication that he supports some kind of violent jihad – a reading that ignores his frequent assertions that Israel has the right to exist and condemnations of any violence against Jews. What are we doing here?There is no degree to which Mamdani could have become acceptably Muslim while holding these opinions – even though they are clearly universal enough for him to receive emphatic support from New Yorkers, including from Jews who voted for him, and the Jewish candidate Brad Lander, who endorsed him. He cannot be secular enough, American enough, or elite enough, as the son of a film-maker and a professor, to hold politics that will not be reducible to his inherently suspect identity.Even in demeanour, he has spoken of how he constantly has to measure his tone, lest he be smeared as a “beast”. And in this, he mirrors a broader, exasperating reality – one where Muslims and pro-Palestinians are condemned as threatening, while there is a colossal attack on their rights and safety across the world, simply for opposing an incontrovertible crime being perpetrated in Gaza. From detention and deportation proceedings against activists such as Mahmoud Khalil in the US, to the vilification and securitisation of pro-Palestinian speech and activism in the UK and Europe, the messenger is shot, and then framed as the aggressor.But smears and diversions and outrageous extrapolations will not change the facts on the ground, which are that the Israeli state is occupying the West Bank, starving and killing Palestinians in Gaza, and accused of war crimes and genocide, all with the sponsorship of the US and support of western regimes. In that sense, Mamdani’s victory is a threat, because it reveals how finally, all attempts to maintain an indefensible and intolerable situation have lost their grip on the growing number of people who are thinking for themselves.Mamdani isn’t even mayor yet, and he will probably face an escalating campaign using his identity as a way of discrediting his beliefs, both economic and political. And here is where the response to his win is both alarming and potentially propulsive, like the clammy buildup to the final breaking of a fever. Mamdani is where he is because he is not alone. Not by a long shot. And in drawing out such naked and explicit anti-Muslim hate, Mamdani has inadvertently revealed the ugliness and weakness not just of his opponents, but of the wider political establishment, as well as their anti-democratic impulses.In drawing them out, Mamdani has shown how prejudice is rarely about individuals, but the fear that marginalised minority views could ever become powerful majority ones. In this mayoral race, from Palestine to local policing, anti-Muslim hate is not just a repellent phenomenon confined to Mamdani, it is a barricade against the desires of the voting public. Once people start making that connection, it really is over.

      Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

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      in Elections

      Plenty of Jews Love Zohran Mamdani

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      In 2023, a branch of the Palestinian restaurant Ayat opened in Brooklyn’s Ditmas Park, not far from where I live. The eatery trumpets its politics; the seafood section on the menu is headed “From the River to the Sea,” which I found clever but some of its Jewish neighbors considered threatening. An uproar grew, especially online, so Ayat made a peace offering.In early 2024, it hosted a free Shabbat dinner, writing on social media, “Let’s create a space where differences unite us, where conversations flow freely, and where bonds are forged.” Over 1,300 people showed up. To serve them all, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported, Ayat used 15 lambs, 700 pounds of chicken and 100 branzino fish. There were also sandwiches from a glatt kosher caterer, a six-foot-long challah and a klezmer band.The event captured something miraculous about New York City, which is, for all its tensions and aggravations and occasional bursts of violence, a place where Jews and Muslims live in remarkable harmony. In Lawrence Wright’s recent novel set in the West Bank, “The Human Scale,” a Palestinian American man tries to explain it to his Palestinian cousin: “It’s not like here. Arabs and Jews are more like each other than they are like a lot of other Americans. You’ll see them in the same grocery stores and restaurants because of the halal food.”Eating side-by-side does not, of course, obviate fierce and sometimes ugly disagreements. But while outsiders like to paint New York as a roiling hellhole, there’s an everyday multicultural amity in this city that’s low-key magical.I saw some of that magic reflected in Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign, and especially in the Muslim candidate’s alliance with New York’s Jewish comptroller, Brad Lander. They cross-endorsed, urging their followers to list the other second in the city’s ranked-choice voting system. The two campaigned together and made a joint appearance on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” and Lander was beside Mamdani when he delivered his victory speech.Mamdani’s pro-Palestinian politics have sparked enormous alarm among some New York Jews, but he’s also won considerable Jewish support. In a poll of likely Jewish voters done by the Honan Strategy Group in May, Andrew Cuomo came in first, with 31 percent of the vote, but Mamdani was second, with 20 percent. On Tuesday, he won most of Park Slope, a neighborhood full of progressive Jews, and held his own on the similarly Jewish Upper West Side.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More