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      Israel’s far-right security minister to visit Yale day after Mar-a-Lago dinner

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      Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was set to address a meeting at Yale University, a day after being honored at a lavish dinner at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.Ben-Gvir, who has past convictions for supporting terrorism and was considered persona non grata under the Biden administration, attended a fundraising event at the Florida resort on Tuesday, where he told attendees about harsh new measures implemented against Palestinian prisoners.“I love the American people very much,” Ben-Gvir told attendees via a translator. “We have a joint war against the jihad.”Trump himself was absent and the minister was not expected to meet the US president, but Ben-Gvir’s spokesperson said the minister met with “dozens of senior businessmen from Miami” and the Republican House majority whip, Tom Emmer, according to the Times of Israel.Emmer did not respond to a request for comment.Ben-Gvir posted on X that he “had the honor and privilege of meeting with senior Republican Party officials at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate”, though it is unclear who those officials were.“They expressed support for my very clear position on how to act in Gaza and that the food and aid depots should be bombed in order to create military and political pressure to bring our hostages home safely.”Ben-Gvir, a hardline Jewish settler from the occupied West Bank who has advocated for the deportation of all Arab citizens, has been an integral part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition since 2022, and has threatened to leave his side should the war in Gaza end.His presence in the Israeli government has been a source of international concern; major American Jewish organizations distanced themselves from his current visit, and demonstrators allied with Yale’s Students for Justice in Palestine set upprotests on the university’s grounds ahead of his scheduled appearance at a meeting of Shabtai, a Jewish society based at the university.Yale did not return a request for comment.Khaled Elgindy, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, expressed alarm at Ben-Gvir’s reception in the United States.“The fact that someone like Ben-Gvir … is even being hosted by US institutions is in and of itself deeply disturbing,” said Elgindy. “That the GOP is aligned with the most fanatical elements in Israeli politics, while perhaps not surprising, is extremely alarming and does not bode well for the stability of the region.”Ben-Gvir was convicted in 2007 of racist incitement and support for groups on terrorism blacklists. For years, he prominently displayed a photo in his living room of Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Muslim worshippers in Hebron in 1994.In 2022, the Biden administration condemned Ben-Gvir’s visit to the memorial of violently racist and anti-Palestinian rabbi Meir Kahane, whom the national security minister was a follower of in his youth.“Celebrating the legacy of a terrorist organization is abhorrent. There is no other word for it,” US state department spokesperson Ned Price said at the time. “We urge all parties to maintain calm, exercise restraint, and to refrain from actions that only serve to exacerbate tensions and that includes in Jerusalem.”But since joining Netanyahu’s coalition government, Ben-Gvir has continued his provocations, including an inflammatory visit to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound last year – also a historically significant and highly venerated holy site in Judaism – that drew international outrage and a rebuke from Netanyahu himself last summer. Ben-Gvir again visited the Al-Aqsa mosque earlier this month, prompting more outrage in the region.The White House did not return a request for comment.Following Yale, Ben Gvir was expected to address a gathering on New York’s Upper East Side, focusing on “securing Israel post-October 7th”. More

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      Trump says Hegseth is ‘doing a great job’ despite reports of second Signal chat

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      Donald Trump offered public support for defense secretary Pete Hegseth a day after it emerged that Hegseth had shared information about US strikes in Yemen last month in a second Signal group chat that included family, his personal lawyer and several top Pentagon aides.“He’s doing a great job. Ask the Houthis how he’s doing,” Trump said dismissively, referring to the rebel group in Yemen targeted by those missile strikes, on the sidelines of the White House Easter egg roll event on Monday.Hegseth was revealed to have shared, in a series of messages, plans about US strikes against the Houthis on 15 March before they happened in the Signal group chat that included his wife, his brother and a number of his top military aides.The details that Hegseth sent in were essentially the same information that he shared in a separate Signal group chat earlier this year that mistakenly included the editor of the Atlantic in addition to JD Vance and other top Trump officials, a person directly familiar with the messages said.But pressure on Hegseth has so far come from people outside of the White House. Trump called the defense secretary on Sunday after the story broke and aides concluded that it had been leaked to the news media by a former Hegseth aide who was in the group chat but abruptly fired last week.Trump has resisted firing top officials in his second term, not wanting to be seen as caving to a media swarm even if he has been unhappy with the negative coverage. Trump also stuck by his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, who had added the editor of the Atlantic to the first chat.According to a person familiar with the call, Trump told Hegseth that he had his support and that disgruntled leakers were to blame for the story, which was first reported by the New York Times.Trump also told his team to back Hegseth in public, and senior Trump aides repeated their defense line that none of the information shared in either of the group chats were classified, although the accusations have centered on why it was shared with Hegseth’s wife, for instance, since she is not a Pentagon official.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe defense secretary himself appeared furious when asked about the second Signal chat during the White House Easter egg roll event on the South Lawn, telling reporters that the story was a “hit piece” that repeated his defense that it had been pushed by “disgruntled former employees”.But Hegseth faced growing pressure to resign after John Ullyot, his former spokesperson, wrote in an extraordinary opinion essay in Politico on Sunday that the Pentagon was “in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership”.Republican congressman Don Bacon, who sits on the House armed services committee, did not explicitly call for Hegseth’s resignation but suggested he would not keep Hegseth in place were he was the president.“I had concerns from the get-go because Pete Hegseth didn’t have a lot of experience,” said Bacon, a former air force general. “I’m not in the White House and I’m not going to tell the White House how to manage this … but I find it unacceptable and I wouldn’t tolerate it if I was in charge.” More

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      Sci-fi Musk is brainstorming ways to breed his ‘legion’ more efficiently | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Elon Musk’s never-ending daddy issuesI regret to inform you that, once again, we are all being forced to think about Elon Musk’s gonads. Musk, who has had at least 14 children with four women, hasn’t officially launched a new mini-Musk for a while, but the Wall Street Journal has just dropped some disturbing details about the billionaire’s well-publicized breeding fetish.You’ll be familiar with some of these details already. By now we all know that Musk seems to think that the only way to save western civilization is if people like him have as many children as possible. And you’ve probably read the New York Times report which alleges that Musk, who likes preaching what he practices in regards to populating the world, has a habit of wandering around offering his sperm to strangers.What you might not know, however, is that Musk is so committed to this idea of himself as a superhero saving the universe that, even in private conversations, he apparently speaks like he is a character in a poorly written sci-fi novel. According to the Journal, Musk reportedly refers to his children as a “legion” and has been brainstorming ways to breed more efficiently.“To reach legion-level before the apocalypse we will need to use surrogates,” he reportedly said to Ashley St Clair, the mother of one of his children, in a text message seen by the newspaper.Surrogacy can often be a complex ethical issue. Not in this case. Musk appears to view women as nothing more than walking wombs he can use to further his own narcissistic agenda. Ethics aside for a moment, one has to wonder why a man who styles himself as a tech guru can’t figure out a faster way to pop out offspring than surrogacy. At the very least, I’m surprised that Musk hasn’t yet followed the lead of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who reportedly had visions of using his ranch in New Mexico as a base where women would be inseminated with his sperm and give birth to his babies. But that may come later I suppose. All the money that Doge, Musk’s pet government project, has cut from libraries and medical research might, at this very moment, be getting funneled into an Official Institute of Accelerated Insemination.While Musk may not have a birthing ranch (yet), he does own a very expensive social network which, according to the Journal, he’s been using to solicit more baby mamas. Musk has apparently been engaging with the cryptocurrency influencer Tiffany Fong on X, sending so many followers her way that she earned $21,000 over a two-week period from the revenue-sharing programs for creators on the platform. Once she was enjoying how lucrative it was to be on his good side, the billionaire asked Fong if she was interested in birthing his child. You know, as you do. Fong politely declined and Musk swiftly unfollowed her, causing her X-related income to drop.We all know that Musk has very thin skin. How has he responded to the Journal’s embarrassing reporting? Honestly, in an unusually restrained fashion. Nobody has been sent to El Salvador (yet), no reporters have been doxed. Musk has just dismissed the piece as scurrilous gossip. On Tuesday he tweeted “TMZ > > WSJ”. And, in normal circumstances, Musk would be correct that, as long as all parties involved are consenting adults, his private life is no one else’s business. But Musk is not your run-of-the-mill rich guy, is he? I don’t think Donald Trump or JD Vance believe in very much other than their own advancement. But Musk is an ideologue: he’s inserted himself into the top levels of government and is busy rearranging the US according to his worldview. Understanding all the ins and outs of this worldview is now very much a matter of public interest.It’s also illuminating, I think, to look at the sort of coverage Musk’s shenanigans get, particularly in the conservative press. While people love gawking at Musk, he’s still widely seen as an eccentric genius. Even the headline of the Wall Street Journal piece: “The tactics Elon Musk uses to manage his ‘Legion’ of babies – and their mothers”, seemed to suggest admiration for his multitasking. I’ve offered up this thought experiment before, but just humor me again and imagine a world where a woman acted like Musk. You can’t, can you? She’d be eviscerated on Fox News. There’d be a million thought pieces about what a terrible mother she was. Absolutely nobody would consider her a genius and she certainly wouldn’t be advising the president. There is perhaps no better embodiment of gendered double standards than Musk. And now he’s set on exporting those double standards to Mars.Give Fatima Hassouna a ‘loud death’Being a journalist in Gaza is a death sentence, with Israel apparently set on ensuring a complete media blackout of the ongoing genocide. On Wednesday, days before her wedding, Fatima Hassouna, a young photojournalist who is the subject of a new documentary, became one of the latest journalists to be killed by Israel. A strike on her home killed her along with 10 members of her family, including her pregnant sister. “If I die, I want a loud death,” Hassouna had written on social media. “I don’t want to be just breaking news, or a number in a group, I want a death that the world will hear.”This is what it means to be Palestinian: to have to beg the world to care about you. To have cowards avert your eyes as you are massacred. To have the architects of your annihilation trot around the world being treated as VIPs by countries that once pretended to care about human rights.Self-identifying ‘hot girls’ are mobilizing to elect a progressive as New York City mayorI fully endorse this.Young women now binge drink more than young menWhile gen Z may drink less than previous generations, the gender gap in risky drinking has been narrowing. A new study finds that women aged 18-25 are now actually drinking slightly more than men the same age.Sudan: two years of war and shameful international neglect“Last week, Amnesty International released a new investigation finding the Rapid Support Forces committed widespread sexual violence, including rape, gang rape and sexual slavery, amounting to possible crimes against humanity,” Amnesty International’s Erika Guevara Rosas said in a statement marking the two-year anniversary of the outbreak of Sudan’s civil war. “Despite these atrocities, the world has largely chosen to remain passive. Alarmingly, the UN Security Council has failed to implement a comprehensive arms embargo on Sudan to halt the constant flow of weapons fueling these heinous crimes.”A crack in the manosphere: Joe Rogan’s guests are revoltingI chuckled a lot at this headline.Everyone is making fun of Katy Perry for her little space trip, even Wendy’sThe fast-food chain is refusing to apologize to the singer for a tweet suggesting she should be sent back to space. The Blue Origin flight has been widely panned, with the model and actor Emily Ratajkowski saying she was “disgusted” by the 11-minute space flight. “That’s end time shit,” Ratajkowski said. “Like, this is beyond parody.”The week in pawtriarchyRemember when Trump got attacked by an angry bald eagle during a photoshoot in 2015? Unfortunately, the bird kingdom did not properly organize to stop his presidency back then but it seems that some of our feathered friends have decided to fight the Maga powers that be. Last Friday a pigeon landed on Fox News’s Peter Doocy’s head while the White House correspondent was wrapping up a segment on tariffs. Not the first time that a Fox News correspondent has looked bird-brained.

      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More

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      US judge rules Mahmoud Khalil can be deported for his views

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      Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and Palestinian organizer, is eligible to be deported from the United States, an immigration judge ruled on Friday during a contentious hearing at a remote court in central Louisiana.The decision sides with the Trump administration’s claim that a short memo written by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, which stated Khalil’s “current or expected beliefs, statements or associations” were counter to foreign policy interests, is sufficient evidence to remove a lawful permanent resident from the United States. The undated memo, the main piece of evidence submitted by the government, contained no allegations of criminal conduct.During a tense hearing on Friday afternoon, Khalil’s attorneys made an array of unsuccessful arguments attempting to both delay a ruling on his eligibility for removal and to terminate proceedings entirely. They argued the broad allegations contained in Rubio’s memo gave them a right to directly cross-examine him.Khalil held prayer beads as three attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security presented arguments for his removal.Judge Jamee Comans ruled that Rubio’s determination was “presumptive and sufficient evidence” and that she had no power to rule on concerns over free speech.“There is no indication that Congress contemplated an immigration judge or even the attorney general overruling the secretary of state on matters of foreign policy,” Comans said.A supporter was in tears sat on the crowded public benches as the ruling was delivered.Following the ruling, Khalil, who had remained silent throughout proceedings, requested permission to speak before the court.Addressing the judge directly, he said: “I would like to quote what you said last time, that ‘there’s nothing that’s more important to this court than due process rights and fundamental fairness.’”He continued: “Clearly what we witnessed today, neither of these principles were present today or in this whole process.“This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court, 1,000 miles away from my family. I just hope that the urgency that you deemed fit for me is afforded to the hundreds of others who have been here without hearing for months.”Khalil, 30, helped lead pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia last year. He was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers in New York on 8 March and transferred to a detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, where he has been detained for over a month. His case was the first in a string of Ice arrests instigated by the Trump administration targeting pro-Palestinian students and scholars present in the US on visas or green cards.The ruling means that Khalil’s removal proceedings will continue to move forward in Jena, while a separate case being heard in federal court in New Jersey examines the legality of his detention and questions surrounding the constitutionality of the government’s claims it can deport people for first amendment-protected speech if they are deemed adverse to US foreign policy.Khalil’s legal team is asking the New Jersey judge to release him on bail so that he can reunite with his wife, who is due to give birth to their first child this month.His lawyers slammed the decision, which they said appeared to be prewritten. “Today, we saw our worst fears play out: Mahmoud was subject to a charade of due process, a flagrant violation of his right to a fair hearing, and a weaponization of immigration law to suppress dissent. This is not over, and our fight continues,” said Marc van der Hout, Khalil’s immigration lawyer.“If Mahmoud can be targeted in this way, simply for speaking out for Palestinians and exercising his constitutionally protected right to free speech, this can happen to anyone over any issue the Trump administration dislikes. We will continue working tirelessly until Mahmoud is free and rightfully returned home to his family and community.”During a short prayer vigil held outside the detention centre on Friday afternoon, a group of interfaith clergy read messages of support. A short statement from Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla, who is due to give birth this month, was also delivered in front of reporters.“Today’s decision feels like a devastating blow to our family. No person should be deemed ‘removable’ from their home for speaking out against the killing of Palestinian families, doctors, and journalists,” the statement read.It continued: “In less than a month, Mahmoud and I will welcome our first child. Until we are reunited, I will not stop advocating for my husband’s safe return home.”The New Jersey judge has ordered the government not to remove Khalil as his case plays out in federal court. A hearing in that case is set for later on Friday. More

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      To my husband, Mahmoud Khalil: I can’t wait to tell our son of his father’s bravery | Noor Abdalla

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      Exactly a month ago, you were taken from me. This is the longest we have been apart since we got married. I miss you more and more every day and as the days draw us closer to the arrival of our child, I am haunted by the uncertainty that looms over me – the possibility that you might not be there for this monumental moment. Every kick, every cramp, every small flutter I feel inside me serves as an inescapable reminder of the family we’ve dreamed of building together. Yet, I am left to navigate this profound journey alone, while you endure the cruel and unjust confines of a detention center.I could not be more proud of you, Mahmoud. You embody everything I ever hoped for in a partner and the father of my children. What more could I ask for as a role model for our children than a man who, with unwavering conviction, stands up for the liberation of his people, fully cognizant of the consequences of speaking truth to power? Your courage is boundless, and now more than ever, I am in awe of your strength and determination. Your voice, your belief in justice, and your refusal to be silenced are the very qualities that make you the man I love and admire.We will not forget those who have orchestrated this injustice, the government officials and university administrators who have targeted you without cause, without any shred of evidence to justify their actions. They sit in their ivory towers, scrambling to fabricate lies and distort the truth, throwing accusations like stones in the hope that something will stick. What they fail to realize is that their efforts are futile. Their wrongful detention of you is a testament to the fact that you have struck a nerve. You’ve disrupted the false narratives they’ve worked so hard to maintain, and spoken a truth that they are too terrified to acknowledge. What more do we have than our fundamental right to free speech, when they constantly attempt to strip us of our dignity, telling us we are unworthy of life, of respect, of voice? Now, they seek to punish that very speech, to silence the words that challenge their corrupt and oppressive systems.They are trying to silence you. They are trying to silence anyone who dares to speak out against the atrocities happening in Palestine. But they will fail. We will not be silenced. We will persist, with even greater resolve, and we will pass that strength on to our children and our children’s children – until Palestine is free. I eagerly await the day when I can tell our son the stories of his father’s bravery, of the courage that courses through his veins, and of the pride he should feel to carry Palestinian blood … your blood. And, more than anything, I pray that he will not have to grow up fighting the same fight for our basic freedoms.We will be reunited soon. Until then, I will continue to fight for you, for us and for our family. Your resilience and your courage will guide us through the storm. You are my best friend, my comrade, the very air that sustains me when it feels as though there is none left. I know your spirit is unwavering, that they cannot break you, and that you will emerge from this stronger than ever. I have no doubt that, when you are finally released, you will raise your hands in the air, chanting: “Free Palestine.”

      Dr Noor Abdalla is a dentist and a soon-to-be mother. She is the wife of Mahmoud Khalil More

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      Cory Booker spoke for 25 hours and didn’t mention Gaza once. That’s no surprise | Judith Levine

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      Seven and three-quarters hours into his 25-hour speech on the Senate floor, the New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker uttered the word “Gaza”. He was not talking about the war. He stepped nowhere near the 50,000 Palestinians killed by the Israeli armed forces since 8 October 2023, or the US’s military and political support of the genocide.Rather, Booker was searching for a particularly ludicrous lie from a presidential administration that has told thousands. “There are lies about USAID, like, I don’t know, 5 million condoms going to Gaza or something outrageous,” he said. Considering the other outrageous things Trump has said about Gaza – such as his plan to “clean out” the strip to make room for luxury resorts – the remark felt trivializing.The word “Gaza” came up once more, when the senator mentioned his “humanitarian and peace-building work” with the UN there.It was not until hour 13, more than halfway through his oratorial marathon, that Booker engaged at any length with the subject of Israel and Palestine. This time it was not about the war, either. Instead, he was condemning the Trump administration’s attacks on free speech at universities and its summary deportation of legally resident foreign students who “espouse certain views on topics like Israel and Palestine”.The senator recounted the abduction of Rumeysa Ozturk, the Turkish Tufts University graduate student who was surrounded on the street by masked plainclothes agents, handcuffed and hustled into an unmarked vehicle, then shipped to a hellish Louisiana detention center, where she faces deportation – all apparently because she co-wrote an op-ed in the student newspaper urging the college to divest from Israel. “Her arrest,” said Booker, “looks like a kidnapping that you might expect to see in Moscow rather than in the streets of Boston.” True.Denouncing censorship, the senator self-censored. “Certain views on topics”: he neglected to specify which views. He didn’t say that punishment is being meted out exclusively to critics of Israel and never to its supporters, or that those supporters are supplying homeland security with the names of the critics – in other words, collaborating in the very violations of constitutional rights that he decries.The atrocities Israel has been committing in Gaza since the temporary ceasefire collapsed are arguably the worst yet. Trump is cheering Bibi on like a fan at a wrestling match. His support of Israel’s policies is not only unconsciously racist, like Biden’s, but blatantly racist. Yet few Democrats are saying – or, more importantly, doing – anything to stop him. In fact, a few days after the speech, Booker voted against Bernie Sanders’ resolutions to block $8.8bn in arms sales to the Netanyahu government. Only 14 of his colleagues voted in favor.Perhaps senators are hoping their constituents won’t notice their inaction. Indeed, as the mudslide of executive orders buries immigrants, federal workers, transgender people, science, regulation, the economy, the rule of law and US democracy, it is hard for the press, or anyone else, to take their eyes off what is going on at home. Even when horrors are taking place abroad. Especially if they’re taking place in Palestine.For example: senior national security officials discussed classified military operations on the commercial message app Signal and inadvertently included a reporter on the call. The super-blunder got a name, and Signalgate was all over the news. But on the subject of that discussion – US airstrikes on Houthi militants in Yemen – virtual silence.Only the most tuned-in of US news hounds know who the Houthis are, let alone why we might bomb them: their attacks on ships in the Red Sea, perpetrated in support of the Palestinians. Was the US strike a good idea? Was it consonant with the US’s Middle East strategy – if there is a Middle East strategy? Do the Houthis pose a threat to national security? Is the Yemen bombing an escalation of US involvement in the Gaza war? Don’t ask the mainstream media. Fixated on the incompetence of Trump’s cabinet and the president’s laid-back attitude toward classified information, Signalgate turned a military aggression in a country against which we have not declared war into a domestic story – about Trump.As in Booker’s speech, as last spring, when university administrators called in the police to break up student Palestine-solidarity encampments, the press focused narrowly on individual Americans’ acts in relation to a response to the war in Gaza, rather than on the war itself.Antiwar activists are having a hard time catching anyone’s eyes – including the eyes of those who are sympathetic to their cause. This Saturday, at opposite ends of the National Mall in Washington, two demonstrations occurred simultaneously: the Emergency March for Palestine and the much larger Hands Off rally, one of about 1,500 taking place nationwide.At the former event, a ribbon-like white banner inscribed with the names of the Palestinian dead flowed from hand to hand above the heads of the participants, drawing the crowd together like a seam stretching into the distance. Solemn, elegant, a symbol of the interminable war and the immensity of its damage, it was the kind of mediagenic political spectacle that deserved to be broadcast widely, at least at the end of the newscast. But it can be viewed only on social media.Why did these two events happen at the same time anyway? Was there no communication between Indivisible and the other Hands Off organizers and the groups, including Jewish Voice for Peace and the Palestinian Youth Movement, that planned the Palestine action? Did Indivisible consider the war too divisive for an action seeking to attract everyone from socialists to Republicans worried about their 401ks? Or was Trump’s stance on Israel not on the bill of indictments against him?What the Trump administration is doing to the US and what he is eagerly helping Netanyahu to do to the Palestinians are of a piece. Both are criminal, immoral campaigns against domestic and international law, causing immense suffering. Yes, it’s exhausting to contend with two major catastrophes at once. But we don’t have the time or the privilege to put either one aside.

      Judith Levine is a Brooklyn journalist and essayist, a contributing writer to the Intercept and the author of five books. Her Substack, Today in Fascism, is at judithlevine.substack.com More

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      Palestinians must have the final say in Gaza’s reconstruction | Ahmad Ibsais

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      On the 17th night of Ramadan – a time meant for prayer, reflection and mercy – Gaza burned. Once again, our screens fill with images too harrowing to describe: tiny bodies wrapped in bloodstained cloth, fathers carrying their children’s remains in plastic bags, mothers screaming into skies that rain death instead of mercy. In less than an hour, Israeli airstrikes killed more than 350 Palestinians, including 90 children. Entire families wiped out as bombs fell on areas Israel itself had designated as “safe zones”, turning supposed sanctuaries into mass graves.This was not merely a resumption of violence. This is the continuation of a genocide that never truly paused, only ebbed enough to vanish from headlines while Palestinians continued to die by the dozens daily. The heaviness of this moment is unbearable, bringing back the brokenness of the past year that has not yet healed. For this slaughter to continue while the world watches reveals how deeply indifferent global powers have become to Palestinian suffering, how thoroughly dehumanized an entire people must be for their massacre to be debated as a matter of “security concerns”.These newest atrocities underscore the ongoing reality that Palestinians have faced for months now. In the ruins of Gaza, amid the countlessly violated “ceasefire”, Palestinians confront not only the monumental task of rebuilding but also a struggle for who will control their future. Since 2 March, Israel has not allowed in any aid, most importantly food and reconstruction resources, while Palestinians starve through Ramadan. As families return to find neighborhoods reduced to rubble, they face competing visions for Gaza’s reconstruction – including proposals that threaten their very existence on the land.Donald Trump recently suggested transforming Gaza into a “riviera of the Middle East” by resettling its 1.8 million Palestinian residents elsewhere. This proposal reveals a profound misunderstanding of our connection to our homeland, a connection that transcends mere residence and forms the core of Palestinian identity.When outsiders ask why Palestinians don’t leave Gaza, or the increasingly genocidal violence in the West Bank, they fail to grasp that this land isn’t just where we live – it’s who we are. Our relationship with this soil has been cultivated through generations. Since 1967, Israel has systematically uprooted at least 2.5m trees in the occupied Palestinian territory, including nearly 1m olive trees. The olive trees that dot our landscape embody our history, resilience and indigeneity to the land – cultivated over generations of displacement.The question isn’t why Palestinians return to destroyed neighborhoods – it’s why anyone would expect us not to. Palestinians return because Gaza is home. The rubble beneath their feet isn’t debris; it contains memories, histories and the foundations of homes where generations were born and buried. Where the rubble has become a mass grave for 50,000 Palestinians.According to the UN’s latest assessment, rebuilding Gaza and the West Bank will require $53.2bn over the next decade: $29.9bn for physical infrastructure and $19.1bn for economic and social losses. These reconstruction efforts the result of 85,000 tons of bombs being indiscriminately dropped over the total area of Gaza. Behind these staggering figures lies a more fundamental question: will Palestinians be allowed to rebuild, or will they be rebuilt over?The answer must be Palestinians themselves. The future of Palestine will be determined by, with, and for Palestinians – no matter the form we choose. It is not for the United States, Israel, or the Arab states, who stood by as our people died, to decide what is best for us. Without Palestinians, rebuilding efforts merely perpetuate the cycle of violence and dispossession. We are not pieces on their geopolitical chessboard. We are a people with an inalienable right to self-determination, and reconstruction must serve that right – not subvert it.The immediate challenges are overwhelming. Over 80% of Gaza’s physical infrastructure has been decimated – roads, power plants, water facilities, schools, universities and every hospital, in contravention of international law and basic morality. The removal of more than 50m tons of rubble and unexploded ordnance will require decades to clear and restore semblance of normalcy.Yet amid this devastation, Palestinians demonstrate remarkable resilience. Journalists have documented people returning to northern Gaza, setting up tents in demolition sites, and even beginning construction work on new buildings. The “ceasefire” stipulated that 60,000 trailers and 200,000 tents should have entered Gaza to help house the forcibly displaced Palestinians – only 20,000 tents and no trailers have entered as Israel obstructs aid. However, Israel did deliver bombs as children slept; 70% of those murdered since Israel resumed its violence have been women and children. In Jabalia, men were seen building the walls of their destroyed home – a powerful symbol of determination to remain. There has been total destruction, but Palestinians remain steadfast like firm mountains. Palestinians are rooted in the land, there is no alternative.Does Israel think when it destroyed the stones, Palestinians will leave? As if their cities were not already built on the bones of our ancestors.This determination isn’t naive optimism, it is a recognition that to exist is to resist. We will not ask permission to narrate our pain. We will not wait for perfect victimhood to earn our humanity. Gaza is the site of resistance, rooted in every olive tree, every seed, every grave. We don’t build because we’re certain our homes will stand forever; we build because to stop building is to surrender. After previous bombardments, Gazans would collect concrete from destroyed houses to be crushed into gravel for new structures. Others extracted rebar from damaged walls to reinforce new construction.In the same interview, Trump also suggested Palestinians should leave so they no longer have to be “worried about dying”. Palestinians aren’t afraid of death – we’re afraid of being killed systematically. The solution isn’t removing the victims but stopping those doing the killing. Gaza doesn’t need redesigning as if it were an empty hotel room; it needs an end to the cycle of destruction.When I think about what Palestinians hope for, I’m struck by how basic their dreams are. Palestinians want to get jobs, build homes, visit the beach, perhaps travel knowing they can return. Palestinians dream of an airport, a seaport, welcoming tourists, praying at Al-Aqsa mosque, and returning to villages where their grandparents lived.What Gaza needs now is immediate: it needs life restored, urgently and unapologetically. It needs teachers for children who have been denied not just classrooms, but childhood itself. It needs dignified burials for the dead, those whose names are scribbled on their limbs so they might be recognized beneath the rubble. It needs seeds and soil, not just to replant crops, but feed those forcibly starved. It needs hospitals where women are not forced to give birth without anesthetics, where the wounded are not condemned to die for lack of electricity.And above all, Gaza needs the world to see Palestinians as people – people deserving of life, freedom and solidarity.While international support is crucial, it cannot come with strings that undermine Palestinian sovereignty. Foreign aid should not be conditioned on accepting foreign control. It should not be leveraged to force political concessions or normalize relations with an occupying power. True solidarity means supporting Palestinian-led reconstruction without imposing external agendas.The February letter from Arab foreign ministers to the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, speaks of implementing “a plan to realize the two-state solution”. However, any plan must begin with recognizing Palestinian agency. Without meaningful Palestinian participation, without respecting our right to choose our own political future, such plans remain hollow gestures. And expecting Palestinians to accept a solution from those who attempted to erase them completely is like asking the wounded to trust the hand that still holds the bloody knife.The challenges ahead are enormous, but so is Palestinian determination. As Israel continues to bomb starving Palestinians, their refusal to abandon our land isn’t stubbornness but existence itself. As Israel continues to murder Palestinian journalists, like Hossam Shabat, we will make sure the world not only sees their crimes, but remembers them. In the face of those who would make our lives impossible, we will continue to find ways to remain. We will rebuild not according to someone else’s vision but according to our own needs and aspirations.This rebuilding is more than reconstruction – it is resistance. It is our refusal to be erased, our determination to remain and our unwavering belief in our right to exist on our land. Nothing is more important than staying. Nothing is more revolutionary than returning. And nothing is more certain than that we will rebuild Palestine with our own hands, for our own people, on our own terms.

      Ahmad Ibsais is a first-generation Palestinian American, law student and poet who writes the newsletter State of Siege More

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      The Trump team group chat news is obscuring an essential question | Mohamad Bazzi

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      The revelation that top members of Donald Trump’s administration disclosed secret US military plans against the Houthi militia in Yemen in a private group chat that included a prominent journalist has generated predictable outrage in Washington. Democrats are calling for a congressional investigation and the resignation of some of the officials involved in the breach, including the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the national security adviser, Mike Waltz.In an article published on Monday, the Atlantic magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, outlined how he was able to follow the conversation among members of Trump’s cabinet over two days leading up to a series of US airstrikes on 15 March. But in the widespread outrage over the sharing of military information on a Signal chat, one essential question is getting lost: why is Trump bombing Yemen in the first place? Five consecutive US presidents and administrations (George W Bush, Barack Obama, the first Trump administration, Joe Biden and the second Trump administration) have ordered military attacks on Yemen, which is the poorest country in the Middle East.Collectively, these leaders have continued more than two decades of failed US policies toward Yemen, centered on repeated bombings, counter-terrorism operations and support for a dictator who ruled the country for decades. Trump, who portrayed himself throughout the last presidential campaign as “the candidate of peace”, appears almost eager to repeat past US mistakes in Yemen. During Yemen’s long civil war, years of intense bombing by two US allies – Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – failed to dislodge the Houthis from power. By the end of 2021, the UN estimated that the Yemen conflict had killed 377,000 people – nearly 60% of whom died not in fighting but from indirect causes, including famine, cholera outbreaks and destruction of the health system. And while Yemeni civilians suffered, the Houthis emerged stronger after each military confrontation.Why aren’t Democrats and other critics of the Trump administration asking this basic question: what have two decades of regular US attacks on Yemen achieved, beyond more death and misery in a country where Washington already helped instigate one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters? Anyone interested in real accountability for US policymaking should see this as a far bigger scandal than the one currently unfolding in Washington over the leaked Signal chat.The Trump administration says the latest US strikes on Yemen are intended to pressure the Houthi militia to stop attacks on international shipping lanes in the Red Sea. After the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023, and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza, the Houthis began firing missiles and drones at commercial vessels sailing around the Bab el-Mandeb strait, where the Red Sea comes closest to Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen. The Houthis said they were acting in support of besieged Palestinians and pledged to stop targeting shipping lanes once Israel ended its war on Gaza.The attacks disrupted global shipping, as companies rerouted hundreds of vessels around South Africa, which can add thousands of miles to a freighter’s journey between Asia and Europe. In January 2024, the Biden administration, along with Britain, launched missile strikes against dozens of targets in Yemen. But Houthi leaders did not back down, and they stepped up their attacks on shipping vessels and continued to fire drones and missiles at Israel, most of which were shot down before reaching Israeli territory. Starting in July 2024, Israel carried out four rounds of airstrikes against Yemen, including attacks on the international airport in Sana’a, power stations and several ports.For more than a year, Biden avoided the most clear-cut path to stopping the Red Sea attacks and US escalation against the Houthis: his administration failed to apply pressure on the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to end Israel’s assault on Gaza and accept a ceasefire with Hamas. Biden refused to withhold billions of dollars in US weapons or to stop providing political cover for Israel at the UN security council and other international bodies. Instead, the Biden administration continued to insist that it could bring the Houthis to heel by force.Biden’s strategy failed to secure international shipping in the Red Sea. And the Houthis, who were losing support inside Yemen before the Gaza war, turned US attacks into a public relations bonanza. Houthi leaders portrayed themselves as one of the few movements in the Arab world willing to defend the Palestinian cause and fight Israel and its western allies – in contrast to Arab governments that stayed on the sidelines and occasionally issued statements condemning Israel’s war. The Houthis also used the Gaza conflict to elevate their profile within the so-called “axis of resistance”, a network of regional militias supported by Iran. Two of the main factions in this alliance, Hamas and the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah, were decimated by the Israeli military over the past 18 months, providing a new opening for Houthi leaders to enhance their popularity throughout the Middle East.The Biden administration – along with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy – finally persuaded Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire with Hamas, which took effect on 19 January, a day before Trump’s inauguration. After the truce in Gaza, the Houthis stopped their attacks against commercial shipping in the Red Sea, as they had promised for more than a year. But as the ceasefire’s first phase expired on 2 March, Netanyahu refused to start the second phase of negotiations, which required a complete Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza and talks over a permanent truce. Instead, with the Trump administration’s support, the Israeli government imposed a new siege on Gaza, banning all food and other aid deliveries. Netanyahu backed out of the deal he had initially agreed to, and tried to pressure Hamas into accepting a six-week extension of the ceasefire’s first phase.By 18 March, Israel resumed its brutal war on Gaza with airstrikes that killed more than 400 Palestinians in a single day. In the days leading up to the ceasefire’s collapse, Houthi leaders warned that they would restart their attacks on shipping vessels if Israel resumed its war. And that’s when the Trump administration began threatening renewed US military strikes against Yemen.Trump is now repeating the same failed approach to Yemen as Biden and previous US presidents. In the Signal group chat messages revealed this week by the Atlantic’s editor, Trump cabinet members – who included the vice-president, JD Vance; the secretary of state, Marco Rubio; and the CIA director, John Ratcliffe – expressed disdain for European allies and debated the timing of US attacks on the Houthis. But none of these top officials raised the possibility that pushing for a renewed ceasefire in Gaza would remove the Houthis’s rationale for their aggression against commercial shipping in the Red Sea.The most senior officials on Trump’s national security team did not seem to consider the idea of taking the Houthi leaders at their word: that they would cease disrupting global trade once Israel stops bombing Gaza, as they had done in January. Instead, the US security establishment continues bombing Yemen as it has done for two decades – and somehow hoping for a different outcome this time.

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