SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
juan cole
'Genocide Alert!' Israel Slammed for Cutting Off Power to Gaza Water Plant
One expert noted that "this collective punishment of civilians" violates the Geneva Conventions as well as a preliminary injunction from the International Court of Justice.
Mar 10, 2025
Outrage over the Israeli government's decision to cut off electricity to a water treatment plant in the decimated Gaza Strip mounted on Monday.
As Common Dreams reported Sunday, Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen said that he "signed an order for the immediate halt of electricity to the Gaza Strip" as part of a policy to use "all of the tools that are at our disposal to ensure the return of all the hostages" taken by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
The Times of Israel noted that the new move by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government "was mainly expected to affect a single desalination plant, the only facility in the strip still running on a power line supplied from Israel."
Responding on social media Monday, the Peace & Justice Project—founded by Jeremy Corbyn, an Independent member of the U.K. Parliament—condemned the cutoff as Israel's "latest act of genocidal collective punishment against the Palestinian people."
"This latest despicable act must be condemned by all governments and Israel must be sanctioned," the group added.
Also speaking out on social media, Francesca Albanese, United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, declared, "GENOCIDE ALERT!"
"Israel cutting off electricity supplies to Gaza means, among others, no functioning desalination stations, ergo: no clean water," Albanese said. "STILL NO SANCTION/NO ARMS EMBARGO against Israel means, among others, AIDING AND ASSISTING Israel in the commission of one of the most preventable genocides of our history."
Unconscionable, and immoral: Israel stops electricity supply to Gaza to ratchet up pressure on Hamas | The Times of Israel www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_ent...
[image or embed]
— Timothy McBride ( @mcbridetd.bsky.social) March 9, 2025 at 11:53 AM
Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas' political bureau, called the move "a desperate attempt to pressure our people and their resistance through cheap and unacceptable blackmail tactics," according to The Times of Israel.
He tied the decision to Israel halting all humanitarian aid into the Palestinian enclave last week, saying that "we strongly condemn the occupation's decision to cut off electricity to Gaza, after depriving it of food, medicine, and water."
Clean water has been a key issue in Gaza since October 2023. Oxfam said last July that Israel had systematically reduced the water available by 94%, with just 4.74 liters per resident obtainable each day—less than a third of the recommended minimum amount in emergencies.
A Human Rights Watch report from December accuses Israel of "extermination and acts of genocide" in Gaza "by intentionally depriving Palestinian civilians there of adequate access to water, most likely resulting in thousands of deaths."
Netanyahu said that last week's block on aid was done "in full coordination" with U.S. President Donald Trump, who proposed an American takeover of Gaza—a plan that Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Sunday "is taking shape."
Israel and Hamas reached a fragile three-part cease-fire and hostage-release deal in January. Stage one expired on March 1, and negotiators have not yet agreed to terms for the second phase, but talks are being held in Qatar this week.
"Food cut off, almost all electricity cut off, with the remaining energy now cut off too, in order to cut off water supply. This is a 'cease-fire' Israel-style," said Nick Dearden, director of the U.K.-based group Global Justice Now. "Barbaric collective punishment. Stop all weapons, suspend trade deals, economic sanctions now."
Since we made this statement Israel has announced it is cutting off electricity to Gaza. We say again: the threat of starvation and denial of vital humanitarian aid and services should never be used as a tool of war or a bargaining chip in negotiations. www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-eve...
[image or embed]
— Quakers in Britain ( @quaker.org.uk) March 10, 2025 at 11:51 AM
University of Michigan professor Juan Cole wrote Monday on his website, Informed Comment, that "the Israeli government is cutting Palestinian civilians in Gaza off from staples as a means of pressuring Hamas to release all Israeli hostages with no quid pro quo so that Netanyahu can start bombing again."
"This collective punishment of civilians violates the Geneva Convention[s] and other elements of internationally agreed on laws of war to which Israel is signatory," noted Cole. "It also violates the preliminary injunction of the International Court of Justice, in which Israel also has membership."
Israel faces an ongoing genocide case at the Hague-based court over its deadly blockade and assault of Gaza—assisted by billions of dollars in U.S. weapons. Like his predecessor, Trump's administration is working to send even more arms to Israel.
"Cutting off humanitarian aid to millions of civilians is a war crime. That is exactly what the extremist Netanyahu government is doing now to Palestinians in Gaza," U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Monday. "I've introduced resolutions to block billions in offensive arms sales to Israel and will demand votes on these bills."
This article has been updated with comment from U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Keep ReadingShow Less
New Year's Attacks Underscore Ties Between Military Service and Violent Extremism
"U.S. military service is the strongest predictor of carrying out extremist violence," noted one expert.
Jan 03, 2025
As right-wing figures blamed factors ranging from Islam to the Biden administration's nonexistent "open borders policy" for the deadly New Year's Day attacks in New Orleans and Las Vegas, progressive observers noted Thursday that the men who carried out those attacks both served in the U.S. military, which one historian called "a consistent incubator of violence that returns home."
Republican U.S. President-elect Donald Trump was among those weighing in on the New Orleans attack, in which authorities say 42-year-old Shamsud Din-Jabbar—who was killed at the scene during a shootout with police—plowed a pickup truck into a crowd of New Year's revelers on Bourbon Street, killing 15 people and wounding dozens more.
Apparently misinformed by an erroneous Fox News report, Trump falsely called Jabbar a career criminal and recent immigrant and attributed the New Orleans attack to President Joe Biden's "open border's (sic) policy."
"That Mr. Trump persists in deploying the politics of hate and bigotry is a bad sign for the U.S."
Jabbar was born and raised in Texas. He was an active-duty U.S. Army soldier from 2007-15 and a veteran of the war in Afghanistan.
"He was, in short, a patriotic American who did his part in fighting the War on Terror," Juan Cole wrote Thursday on his Informed Comment site. "He was not an immigrant or a member of a foreign criminal gang."
"That Mr. Trump persists in deploying the politics of hate and bigotry is a bad sign for the U.S.," Cole continued. "Even if Jabbar had been a immigrant, his actions would have said nothing about immigrants, who have low rates of criminality compared to the native-born population and whose productivity has been one key to American economic success."
"Nor is Jabbar's religion a reason to engage in Muslim-hatred," he asserted, decrying the New York Post for "ominously" reporting that "Jabbar referenced the Quran" and had animals including sheep, goats, and chickens in the backyard of his Houston home.
"D'oh," Cole added. "He was a Muslim. He also referenced the Quran when he was in Afghanistan as part of the U.S. Army's fight against the Taliban."
Matthew Livelsberger, the 37-year-old suspected driver of the Tesla Cybertruck blown ups outside the Trump International Las Vegas Hotel on Wednesday, was an active-duty U.S. Army soldier. The explosion of the truck, which was laden with fireworks and fuel canisters, injured seven people. Authorities said Livelsberger fatally shot himself inside the vehicle before the blast.
While given scant in-depth coverage in the U.S. corporate media, numerous observers highlighted the attackers' military backgrounds.
The Intercept's Nick Turse on Thursday published a piece asserting that "U.S. military service is the strongest predictor of carrying out extremist violence." Citing a new, unreleased report from researchers at the University of Maryland's National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), Turse, who viewed the publication, noted that "from 1990 to 2010, about seven persons per year with U.S. military backgrounds committed extremist crimes," and that "since 2011, that number has jumped to almost 45 per year."
Turse continued:
From 1990 through 2023, 730 individuals with U.S. military backgrounds committed criminal acts that were motivated by their political, economic, social, or religious goals, according to data from the new START report. From 1990 to 2022, successful violent plots that included perpetrators with a connection to the U.S. military resulted in 314 deaths and 1,978 injuries—a significant number of which came from the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
"Military service is also the single strongest individual predictor of becoming a 'mass casualty offender,' far outpacing mental health issues, according to a separate study of extremist mass casualty violence by the researchers," Turse added.
Both Jabbar and Livelsberger were once stationed at Fort Liberty, formerly Fort Bragg, in North Carolina. Although their time there overlapped, there is no indication that the men knew each other. Turse called Fort Liberty "an exceptionally troubled Army base."
"Investigations found, for example, that 109 soldiers assigned there died in 2020 and 2021," he wrote. "Ninety-six percent of those deaths took place stateside. Fewer than 20 were from natural causes. The remaining soldier fatalities, including macabre or unexplained deaths, homicides, and dozens of drug overdoses, were preventable."
The issue of violence committed by soldiers and veterans gained national attention during the height of the so-called War on Terrord—which is still ongoing—amid a wave of domestic and other killings and suicides attributed to post-traumatic stress disorder. According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), more than 1 in 6 veterans of the Afghanistan or Iraq wars screened positive for PTSD, compared with about 1 in 10 nondeployed vets.
The VA also reported in 2018 that 1 in 4 male and 1 in 5 female veterans deployed during the War on Terror who received care from the agency had PTSD.
There is also the issue of who the military allowed to enlist. In an effort to fill the military's ranks during the War on Terror, some service branches lowered recruiting standards and allowed neo-Nazis, gang members, and other violent criminals to serve.
"This policy, which was behind many atrocities abroad, is now coming home," author Matt Kennard said Thursday on social media.
In 2022, Democratic U.S. lawmakers led by Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.) introduced an amendment to 2023 military spending bill requiring the Pentagon and federal law enforcement agencies to publish a report on countering white supremacist and neo-Nazi activity in the armed forces.
The measure passed—without a single Republican vote.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Failed US Military Pier Offered 'Humanitarian Gloss' as Israel Starved Gaza
"The entire operation was a failed exercise in public relations by the Biden administration," said one observer.
Jul 12, 2024
After failing to re-anchor its "humanitarian pier" in Gaza, the Pentagon said Thursday that the much-ballyhooed project—which critics dismissed as a "public relations ploy" that did next to nothing to stop the deadly starvation spreading in the besieged Palestinian enclave—would shut down indefinitely.
Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder said U.S. troops had failed to reconnect the floating Trident Pier to Gaza's shore due to "technical and weather-related issues," according to The Washington Post.
The $320 million project—which consists of a floating offshore barge and 1,800-foot causeway to the shore—was touted as eventually being able to accommodate up to 150 aid trucks per day. Instead, it facilitated the shipment of the equivalent of about a single day's worth of prewar food deliveries while operating for a total of less than three weeks.
"As a pier, it's shutting down. As a metaphor, it will live forever," said Tom Philpott, a senior researcher at Johns Hopkins University's Center for a Livable Future.
Stephen Semler, co-founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute, welcomed the project's demise.
"The U.S. pier was never supposed to work. It was designed to give a humanitarian gloss to [U.S. President Joe] Biden's pro-genocide policy in Gaza," he said on social media. "Good riddance to this failed PR stunt."
However, during a Thursday press conference, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan defended the pier, arguing that it "has made a difference in trying to deal with the heartbreaking humanitarian situation in Gaza."
"I see any result that produces more food, more humanitarian goods getting to the people of Gaza, as a success," he asserted. "It is additive. It is something additional that otherwise would not have gotten there when it got there. And that is a good thing."
Even if the pier had achieved its expected capacity, it would still have been far fewer than the prewar daily mean of more than 500 truckloads that U.S. and United Nations officials said are required to meet the needs of a population facing critical shortages of food, water, medicine, and other lifesaving supplies.
The pier was in operation for only about 20 days in May before it broke apart during stormy conditions. The structure was subsequently repaired, but then was dismantled just a week after reopening in June due to more rough seas.
It is also likely that the pier was used for military purposes during the June raid by Israel Defense Forces troops, who killed or wounded hundreds of Palestinians—including many women and children—during the rescue of four Israelis kidnapped by Hamas militants on October 7.
"It seems clear that the entire operation was a failed exercise in public relations by the Biden administration, which has sat on its hands while the extremist Netanyahu cabinet, full of the Israeli equivalent of neo-Nazis, has half-starved or in some instances whole-starved the Palestinians of Gaza," Middle East expert Juan Cole wrote Friday, referring to the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
At least dozens of Palestinians, mostly children, have died in Gaza due to a lack of food, water, and medical treatment. Palestinian and international agencies say that Israel's 280-day war on Gaza has left at least 137,500 people dead, maimed, or missing; around 90% of the embattled strip's population forcibly displaced; and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians starving.
"A U.S. administration has to have an answer when reporters ask it why it is allowing Palestinian children to become emaciated, and the pier was an attempted answer," Cole added. "The other possibility was for the Biden administration to man up and just tell Netanyahu and his rogues' gallery cabinet that they cannot starve innocent civilians as part of their campaign against Hamas, and that if they do not cut it out there will be hell to pay. But Biden is in the tank for the Israeli government."
U.N. experts and others have called Israel's forced starvation of Palestinians in Gaza "a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine."
The International Court of Justice—which is weighing whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza—has ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts in the embattled enclave, to "immediately halt" its offensive in Rafah, and to stop blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza in the face of worsening "famine and starvation." Israel is accused of flouting all three ICJ orders.
Meanwhile, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan accused top Israeli officials of using "starvation as a weapon of war" and "extermination" in his May application for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Khan is also seeking to arrest three Hamas leaders for alleged crimes including extermination and rape.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Netanyahu Accused of 'Genocidal Intentions' in Gaza After 'Holy Mission' Speech
"The biblical reference to Amalek is genocidal," noted one theologian after the prime minister invoked an ancient enemy. "The Bible commands to wipe out Amalek, including women, babies, children, and animals."
Oct 30, 2023
Human rights defenders on Monday accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of an "explicit call to genocide" after he delivered a televised address calling Israel's imminent invasion of Gaza a "holy mission" and invoked an ancient mythical foe whom the God of the Hebrew Bible commanded the Israelites to exterminate.
Declaring the start of a "second stage" of Israel's war on Gaza—which he described as a "holy mission"—Netanyahu said that "you must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible."
According to the Hebrew Bible, the nation of Amalek was an ancient archenemy of the Israelites whose extermination was commanded by God to Saul via the prophet Samuel.
"The biblical reference to Amalek is genocidal... Why are Western politicians silent?"
"Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass," states the Old Testament in 1 Samuel 15:3.
The holy text further states that Saul infuriates God by sparing some of the Amalekites and their livestock.
"If it was not obvious from the carpet bombing, use of white phosphorus, and indiscriminate killing that the Zionist government of Israel [has] clear genocidal intentions, then the... reference to Palestinians as Amalek in Netanyahu's speech describing his plans for Gaza should be enough to convince you," British religious scholar Hamza Andreas Tzortzis wrote on social media Monday.
"The biblical reference to Amalek is genocidal. The Bible commands to wipe out Amalek, including women, babies, children, and animals," Tzortzis added. "Why are Western politicians silent? Stop the genocide now!"
As
Truthout's Aidan Orly noted last week:
For centuries, Christian leaders have used Amalekite language to justify genocide, including against Native Americans and against Tutsis in Rwanda. Right-wing Jewish groups have also employed the Amalek trope. Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Palestinian worshippers in the Tomb of the Patriarchs in 1994, likely influenced by Amalekite language employed by the far-right Kahane movement of which he was a part.
Orly added that "Israel's current minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, is also associated with this movement, which has largely dissipated but is still technically outlawed in Israel as a terrorist group."
U.S. academic and Informed Comment publisher Juan Cole accused Netanyahu of declaring "a holy war of annihilation of civilians of Gaza."
"Netanyahu may have gestured to, and defiled, the Bible by excusing his genocide against the civilians of Gaza with reference to 1 Samuel. But his real bible is Revisionist Zionism with its fascist and explicitly colonial ideology," Cole wrote Sunday on Informed Comment, referring to a form of Zionism—the movement for a Jewish homeland in Palestine—that seeks to conquer not only all of Palestine but also Jordan and parts of Lebanon and Syria.
"The Iron Wall is now advancing into Gaza, doing to small children and pregnant women what the authors of 1 Samuel in prosaic Babylon probably only dreamed of doing to the mythical Amalekites," Cole added.
Netanyahu isn't the only Israeli leader who has made what critics have called genocidal statement in recent weeks. Israeli President Isaac Herzog
asserted earlier this month that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza, while Defense Minister Yoav Gallant vowed to "eliminate everything" there.
Ariel Kallner, a member of parliament from Netanyahu's Likud party,
urged a "Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of '48," a reference to the forced expulsion and ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 Arabs from Palestine during the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1947-48.
Tally Gotliv, another Likud lawmaker, demanded "not flattening a neighborhood," but "crushing and flattening Gaza without mercy."
Some U.S. Republicans have
echoed Israeli leaders' statements, while President Joe Biden and members of his administration have been accused of denial of—and complicity in—genocide for casting aspersions upon official Palestinian casualty reports and providing diplomatic cover and billions of dollars in military aid for Israel's government.
The backlash against Netanyahu's comments came as Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tanks and troops advanced on Gaza City as the relentless Israeli aerial and artillery bombardment continued.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, Israeli forces have killed 8,306 people in Gaza—including 2,136 women and 3,457 children—with more than 21,000 others injured, nearly half of all homes destroyed or damaged, and over 1.4 million people forced to flee for their lives. Israel has killed more children in the past three weeks than the combined number of children killed in all of the world's armed conflict zones since 2019, according to the charity Save the Children.
In the illegally occupied West Bank, at least 121 people have been
killed and more than 2,000 others have been wounded since October 7, when Hamas-led fighters infiltrated southern Israel and killed over 1,400 Israeli civilians and soldiers, while taking more than 200 hostages.
More than 800 international lawyers, jurists, and legal scholars have signed an open letter stating that "we are compelled to sound the alarm about the possibility of the crime of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip."
Raz Segal, a leading Israeli Holocaust scholar, has called his country's assault on Gaza "a textbook case of genocide."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Biden Accused of 'Genocide Denial' After Casting Doubt On Civilian Death Toll in Gaza
Palestinian officials, U.N. experts, and even Israeli media say nearly 7,000 men, women, and children have been killed by Israel's indiscriminate airstrikes and shelling.
Oct 26, 2023
The largest Muslim American civil rights group on Wednesday led condemnation of U.S. President Joe Biden for saying he had "no confidence" in Palestinian health officials' Gaza casualty reports—figures deemed reliable by United Nations agencies, human rights groups, international and Israeli mainstream media, and even the U.S. State Department.
Speaking at a Wednesday afternoon White House press conference, Biden—who earlier this month declared his "rock-solid and unwavering" commitment to Israel following a Hamas-led attack that killed more than 1,400 Israelis—said that "I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed."
"Everyone uses the figures from the Gaza Health Ministry because those are generally proven to be reliable."
"I'm sure innocents have been killed, and it's the price of waging a war," the president continued. "But I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using."
Responding to Biden's remarks, Palestinian American poet, author, and activist Remi Kanazi said: "Genocide denial has a long sordid history. Israel and Joe Biden know exactly what they are doing when they play down the death toll in Gaza."
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) demanded Biden apologize for his "shocking and dehumanizing" comments.
"The Israeli government has openly admitted that it is targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure," CAIR executive director Nihad Awad said in a statement. "Journalists have confirmed the high number of casualties, and countless videos coming out of Gaza every day show mangled bodies of Palestinian women, and children—and entire city blocks leveled to the ground."
"President Biden should watch some of these videos and ask himself if the crushed children being dragged out of the ruins of their family homes are a fabrication or an acceptable price of war," said Awad. "They are neither. Biden should apologize for his comments, condemn the Israeli government for deliberately targeting civilians, and demand a cease-fire before more innocent people die."
After former U.S. Congressman Justin Amash (R-Mich.), who is Palestinian American, said that "several" of his relatives including an infant cousin were among at least 18 people killed in last week's Israeli airstrike on the Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church, journalist Briahna Joy Gray asked Wednesday if Biden thinks he's lying.
While it is nearly impossible to immediately verify Gaza casualties because Israel does not allow foreign journalists into the besieged strip, many experts say figures provided by Palestinian health officials—including branches of the Palestinian Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank—are accurate. They say not only do U.N. agencies, international media, and Israeli news outlets rely upon them, but that the Israeli government and military have rarely if ever challenged the figures following the numerous wars Israel has waged against Gaza in recent decades.
"Everyone uses the figures from the Gaza Health Ministry because those are generally proven to be reliable," Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, told The Washington Post on Tuesday. "In the times in which we have done our own verification of numbers for particular strikes, I'm not aware of any time which there's been some major discrepancy."
"Unfortunately, when reality is too difficult to stomach, Israel and so many of its allies prefer to deny it or bury their head in the sand," Shakir said in a separate interview with The Guardian. "As long as they can create a fog of war and misinformation about what's taking place, it provides cover for this to continue. To continue to have 100-plus Palestinian children killed every day."
Mohammed El-Kurd, The Nation's Palestine correspondent, wrote that Biden's denial "isn't just racism. He's preemptively minimizing the scale of death the Israeli regime has planned for Gaza."
Calls to "flatten Gaza" began immediately—in both Israel and the United States—after Hamas' horrific mass murder and abduction of Israeli and foreign citizens on October 7.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed a "mighty vengeance" for the attacks, while far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared that it is "time to be cruel."
Tally Gotliv, a member of parliament from Netanyahu's Likud party, posted on social media: "It's time to kiss doomsday. Shooting powerful missiles without limit. Not flattening a neighborhood. Crushing and flattening Gaza... Without mercy! Without mercy!"
Dehumanization of Palestinians flourished, with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant calling Gazans "human animals" and Israeli President Isaac Herzog asserting that there are "no innocent civilians in Gaza."
Meanwhile, some Israelis—especially young people—took to TikTok and other social media to post racist videos mocking Palestinians and gaslighting victims of Israel's attacks on Gaza by claiming grieving mothers were lying about their children being killed.
Perhaps most ominously of all, Ariel Kallner, another Likud lawmaker, called for a "Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of '48," a reference to the forced expulsion and ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 Arabs from Palestine during the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1947-49.
In a likely war crime—one of many, according to Amnesty International—compared with Nakba massacres like Deir Yassin and the Lydda Death March, Israeli officials ordered 1.1 million residents of northern Gaza to flee for their lives ahead of an expected ground invasion and possible territorial conquest. Israeli forces then attacked the fleeing Gazans anyway. Around 70 people, mostly women and children, were killed in an October 13 strike on a fleeing convoy.
Nowhere is safe. Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael Al-Dahdouh lost his wife, son, daughter, and 18-month-old grandson in an October 25 Israeli airstrike on a shelter in an area meant to be out of harm's way. They were killed after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken—who has also cast doubt on the Gaza death toll—reportedly asked the Qatari government, which funds Al Jazeera, to "tone down" its coverage of Israel's Gaza slaughter.
As of Thursday, Israel's relentless bombardment of Gaza has killed at least 6,850 people, including nearly 3,000 children, according to Palestinian health officials in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza. More than 17,000 others have been wounded, nearly half the homes in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, and over 1.4 million people have been displaced.
Hundreds of international legal scholars, and one of Israel's leading Holocaust scholars, have accused Israel of committing "genocide" in Gaza.
In the illegally occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed more than 100 Palestinians and wounded nearly 2,000 others since October 7.
Scores of journalists and health workers have also been killed by Israeli strikes on Gaza. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said earlier this week that 35 of its humanitarian workers—many of them teachers—died in Israeli attacks.
Some observers noted Israel's long history of denying atrocities or blaming victims for their own deaths. Recent examples include lying about killing civilians, using banned white phosphorus weapons in urban areas, and the deliberate killing of Palestinian American Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh.
Israeli leaders have also targeted prominent international figures who, like U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, dare point out that Hamas terrorism "did not happen in a vacuum" and were the result of generations of illegal occupation, settler colonization, economic strangulation, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid.
"Regardless of how many noncombatants Israel has blown to smithereens, for Netanyahu to deny them water is a war crime," U.S. Middle East expert and Informed Comment publisher Juan Cole noted Thursday.
"The ongoing genocide against the civilian population of Gaza, perpetrated by the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, is an embarrassment for the United States," he added, "which fully supports this reckless disregard for the lives of innocent noncombatants—men, women, and children."
Keep ReadingShow Less
As Iran Elects New President, Experts Urge Biden to Rejoin Nuclear Deal, Lift Sanctions
"The Biden administration must remain resolute and seek a break from the disastrous conditions that helped contribute to this result."
Jun 19, 2021
Progressive Iran-watchers on Saturday reacted to the election of Ebrahim Raisi, the country's conservative judiciary chief, with concern and appeals to the Biden administration to choose conciliation over confrontation with the Islamic Republic, beginning with a U.S. return to the Iran nuclear deal and the easing of crippling economic sanctions.
"The ascension of Raisi to the presidency will be widely viewed as a victory for hardliners in Iran and the U.S. who seek confrontation over conciliation between the U.S. and Iran."
--NIAC
Al Jazeera reports Raisi won just under 62% of Friday's presidential election amid a lower-than-usual turnout of 48.8%. While outgoing Iranian President Hassan Rouhani--who was constitutionally barred for running for a third term--congratulated voters "on their choice," millions of Iranians refrained from casting their ballots after Raisi's strongest competitors were disqualified from the race.
Raisi--who is sanctioned by the United States for his role in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in the 1980s--will take office in August as Iran reels from an ongoing coronavirus pandemic that has claimed over 82,000 lives and the related effects of decades of U.S.-led sanctions that have devastated the country's economy.
The Raisi administration will also have to contend with a new hardline Israeli government whose leader, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, is expected to pressure U.S. President Joe Biden to eschew a return to the scuppered Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known commonly as the Iran nuclear deal, which former President Donald Trump unilaterally abrogated in 2018.
Biden, who campaigned for president on a promise to rejoin the JCPOA, earlier this month lifted some sanctions on a handful of former Iranian officials in a bid to jump-start stalled nuclear talks in Vienna, Austria. On Thursday, the U.S. Treasury Department issued guidance allowing pandemic-related items including face masks, ventilators, and Covid-19 vaccines to be sent to sanctioned nations including Iran, Syria, and Venezuela.
Human rights defenders expressed alarm over Raisi's election.
"That Ebrahim Raisi has risen to the presidency instead of being investigated for the crimes against humanity of murder, enforced disappearance, and torture is a grim reminder that impunity reigns supreme in Iran," Amnesty International secretary-general Agnes Callamard said in a statement.
Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said that "Iranian authorities paved the way for Ebrahim Raisi to become president through repression and an unfair election."
However, Juan Cole, professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan and publisher of Informed Comment, argued that Donald Trump is also partly to blame for Raisi's victory, as the former U.S. president's withdrawal from the JCPOA "put the previously unpopular hardliners in the catbird seat."
Cole wrote:
In 2018, Trump breached the agreement and put Iran under a financial and economic blockade of unprecedented severity. As he intended, these moves crashed the Iranian economy and created public unrest. The U.S. strangulation of the Iranian economy did not accomplish what Trump was aiming for. It did not cause the government to collapse. It did not make [Supreme Leader] Ayatollah Ali Khamenei come begging to Trump for a photo op and a new treaty. It did make people in Iran angry... [and] produced a hatred and suspicion of the United States, which after all broke its word. It bolstered the hard line forces inside Iran who would stand up to the U.S. And it robbed centrists and pragmatists of hope.
Cole also said that "a Raisi government will likely also spell more trouble for President Biden in Iraq, where Iran-backed Shiite militias mortar bases hosting the some 2,000 U.S. troops on a daily basis."
In a statement, the nonprofit advocacy group National Iranian American Council (NIAC) said that "the ascension of Raisi to the presidency will be widely viewed as a victory for hardliners in Iran and the U.S. who seek confrontation over conciliation between the U.S. and Iran."
"Biden... can continue his predecessor's pressure-only approach that decimated moderates, empowered Raisi and his fellow hardliners, and closed the door on broader diplomacy. Or he can restore the agreement Trump worked so hard to kill [and] ease the pressure on the people of Iran."
--Ryan Costello, NIAC
"The authorities of the Islamic Republic will have to grapple with the fact that so few Iranians felt compelled to vote due to anti-democratic machinations and to the efforts to silence and delegitimize voices that fall outside of the exceedingly narrow spectrum of what is deemed acceptable political debate," the group said.
While NIAC attributes "ultimate accountability for the suffering of ordinary Iranians" to the country's rulers, "starting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei," the group argued that Americans "must also hold our own government to account for any role it has played in helping to undermine the aspirations of the Iranian people."
"The lesson from the past four years--where an ascendant Iranian movement for moderation and engagement marked by record-breaking voter turnout in successive elections and a landmark diplomatic agreement with the U.S. was snuffed out and replaced with what we have today--is that U.S. coercion and interventions with Iran benefit the most authoritarian elements of the Islamic Republic," NIAC said.
NIAC policy director Ryan Costello, writing for Responsible Statecraft, said that U.S. proponents of Iran regime change will likely cheer Raisi's victory. Costello noted that Elliott Abrams, the Reagan-era "death squad diplomat" who most recently served as Trump's special representative for Iran, published a 2017 essay entitled, Why I'm Rooting for the Hardliner in Iran's Elections: Two cheers for Ibrahim Raisi!
The gist is that, to regime change proponents, the election of a hardliner like Raisi--who Iran hawks believe would bring the Islamic Republic closer to the brink of collapse--should be welcomed, despite his horrific human rights record.
However, NIAC said that "the best and only effective response" to Raisi's election is for Biden and his administration "to remain vigilant in pursuing the full restoration of the Iran nuclear deal as a first step towards direct diplomacy that can improve lives, prevent war, and create circumstances far more conducive for Iranians to secure their aspirations."
NIAC wrote:
The election of Raisi will be met with the same calls from those who oppose diplomacy as an excuse to revert to the dangerous status quo that helped bring us to this point. Instead, the Biden administration must remain resolute and seek a break from the disastrous conditions that helped contribute to this result. Only diplomacy can resolve the serious challenges we face with Iran regarding non-proliferation, regional security, and supporting the human rights of Iranians.
In addition to direct talks, the Biden administration should be considering any and all steps necessary to reduce the burden of sanctions on the Iranian people and on Iranian civil society that has so vastly increased these past four years, and ensure that any such measures are squarely targeted at bad actors rather than the broad Iranian populace.
Costello concluded that Biden "can continue his predecessor's pressure-only approach that decimated moderates, empowered Raisi and his fellow hardliners, and closed the door on broader diplomacy. Or he can restore the agreement Trump worked so hard to kill, ease the pressure on the people of Iran, and restore some semblance of faith that diplomacy can deliver for each country."
"Only the latter has delivered any success," he added, "for both the United States and the people of Iran."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'No One Is Above the Law': Rashida Tlaib Rips Biden Admin's Opposition to ICC War Crimes Probe of Israel
The Michigan congresswoman said the ICC "has the authority and duty to independently and impartially investigate and deliver justice to victims of human rights violations and war crimes in Palestine."
Mar 03, 2021
Responding to the Biden administration's opposition to the International Criminal Court's investigation of alleged Israeli war crimes in Palestine, Rep. Rashida Tlaib on Wednesday defended the probe while reminding the administration that "no one is above the law."
"It isn't unfair to investigate a country for committing war crimes when it has actually, like, committed war crimes."
--Juan Cole,
Informed Comment
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. "firmly opposes" the ICC investigation while vowing to "continue to uphold our strong commitment to Israel and its security, including by opposing actions that seek to target Israel unfairly." In addition to alleged Israeli crimes, the probe will also examine war crimes allegedly committed by the militant Palestinian resistance group Hamas.
State Department spokesperson Ned Price asserted the same day that the ICC--of which neither Israel nor the U.S. are member states--has "no jurisdiction over this matter."
However, Tlaib (D-Mich.) issued a scathing rebuke of the administration's position, tweeting "no one is above the law" and that the ICC "has the authority and duty to independently and impartially investigate and deliver justice to victims of human rights violations and war crimes in Palestine and Israel."
"The U.S. should not interfere with its ability to do so," insisted Tlaib, the first Palestinian American elected to Congress.
On Wednesday, ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda confirmed the decision, announced early last month, to launch a formal investigation of "the situation in Palestine," including three major wars in Gaza that killed thousands of people--most of them civilians.
Bensouda said on Wednesday that the court's decision "followed a painstaking preliminary examination undertaken by my office that lasted close to five years," while vowing her office "will take the same principled, non-partisan approach that it has adopted in all situations."
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's far-right prime minister, called Bensouda's announcement "absurd" and--in a tactic often employed in attempts to delegitimize criticism of Israeli policies and actions--"undiluted anti-Semitism."
Palestine advocates, however, welcomed the ICC probe, while condemning U.S. opposition to it.
"Blinken is flat out wrong on every point he makes," wrote Middle East expert Juan Cole. "The ICC is not investigating crimes on Israeli soil, but in the Palestinian occupied territories. Since Palestine as a permanent U.N. observer state is a member of the ICC and invited the court into its territory, the International Criminal Court has every right to investigate violations of the Rome Statute that took place in those territories."
"The ICC is not treating Israel unfairly," asserted Cole. "It will also look at Hamas violations. Moreover, it isn't unfair to investigate a country for committing war crimes when it has actually, like, committed war crimes."
"Blinken already let the crown prince of Saudi Arabia off without sanctions for murdering Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi," he added. "Now he is running interference for Netanyahu. He is quickly becoming the face of American hypocrisy, which only wants sanctions on Russians and Iranians who are rivals but never on officials from countries that talk nice about the U.S."
Last year, the ICC also approved a probe of U.S. war crimes, including unlawful killing and torture, in Afghanistan. The Trump administration retaliated by sanctioning ICC prosecutors Bensouda and Phakiso Mochochoko.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Seems Increasingly Likely Trump Just Made Up the 'Imminent Threat' Posed by Soleimani
New reporting reveals the president conditionally approved the Iranian general's assassination seven months ago.
Jan 12, 2020
New reporting out Monday further erodes the White House narrative that President Donald Trump was justified in ordering the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani earlier this month because Soleimani posed an "imminent" threat to American targets.
According to NBC News, Trump authorized Soleimani's killing in June--seven months ago--on the condition that Iranian actions resulted in the death of an American. The assassination was pushed by Iran war hawks John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, who wanted the U.S. to carry out the killing in retaliation for Iran shooting down a US. drone in June. Trump responded to the push by responding "that's only on the table if they hit Americans," according to a person briefed on the discussion.
Discussions on targeting Soleimani began even earlier. From NBC:
The idea of killing Soleimani came up in discussions in 2017 that Trump's national security adviser at the time, retired Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, was having with other administration officials about the president's broader national security strategy, officials said. But it was just one of a host of possible elements of Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran and "was not something that was thought of as a first move," said a former senior administration official involved in the discussions.
Middle East analyst Juan Cole added to the mounting scrutiny over Trump's "imminent" threat narrative on Monday. Writing at his Informed Comment blog, Cole noted:
[Soleimani] does not appear to have killed or had killed any Americans at all in the past decade, and from 2015 because of the U.N. Security Council nuclear deal with Iran, Soleimani was not an adversary of the US in recent years. In fact, he was often a de facto ally and the U.S. Air Force gave him air support at Tikrit and elsewhere in the campaign against ISIL (ISIS, Daesh). In fact, for a while there Soleimani was fighting ISIL and al-Qaeda-linked militias in Syria in tacit alliance with the Kurds supported by the United States at a time when Israel allied with an al-Qaeda affiliate in the Golan Heights.
Moreover, the entire narrative of the Trump administration was undermined by Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdelmahdi, who told Parliament on Jan. 5 when he asked its members to kick out the U.S. military, that he had personally invited Soleimani to Baghdad as part of a back-channel set of negotiations between Saudi Arabia and Iran aimed at cooling down tensions between the two. Soleimani did not sneak into Iraq on a covert mission. He flew on a commercial jet and went through passport control with his diplomatic passport.
While an attempt was made to invade the U.S. embassy on the Wednesday before Soleimani's arrival, that was done by members of the Iraqi militia, the Kata'ib Hizbullah, who were angry that on December 30, the Trump administration bombed its bases in northern Iraq and killed some two dozen of its fighters.
Cole suggested the Trump administration appeared to be taking a page from the George W. Bush administration, which set up the Office of Special Plans to amass sketchy evidence to push the narrative of a threat of weapons of mass destruction posed by Iraq.
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have also found evidence presented to them by administration officials to be unconvincing.
Among that group is Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who pointed to Defense Secretary Mark Esper's comments to CBS Sunday that he "didn't see" any specific evidence about four U.S. embassies being targeted by Soleimani.
Speaking on MSNBC's Kasie DC show Sunday, Merkley said, "the whole imminent argument is basically made up and they're trying to backfill and give that some substance."
"But it wasn't there," Merkley said. "It wasn't in the [Senate] brieifing. It wasn't detailed... and there's Secretary Esper trying to square the circle and having a hard time doing it."
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has also contributed to the doubt over the administration's stated justification, telling Fox News last week that the administration actually didn't know when or where the purported "imminent" attacks were going to take place.
Soleimani's killing has sparked Agnes Callamard, United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, to call this month for an impartial probe.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Failing Breitbart Comes for Juan Cole on Climate History and It Won't Go Well
I don't demean myself by reading Breitbart. I'd rather lie naked in my garden during a rainstorm and let slugs traverse me, leaving trails of slime. But I know who they are are.
Sep 04, 2019
I understand that the far, far rightwing reused toilet paper that is Breitbart ran a hit piece on me today for daring question the record of Florida's Saint DeSantis on doing nothing about carbon dioxide emissions that are sinking his state.
Breitbart's offices are in Los Angeles, which is itself threatened by the ravages of global heating. We perhaps forget that Malibu was burned down by wildfires, with Kanye and Kim and other celebs fleeing for their lives, not so long ago. Good luck to the brown shirt rag if they want to deny this reality.
Breitbart is the racist piece of excrement that is actually failing, and fast. They've gone from 17.3 million readers (or, you know, people who move their lips while they stare with heavy knitted brows at the site) to 4.6 million Neanderthals in May of 2019. They wouldn't have any readers at all if advertisers had any sense of civic responsibility- who would want their product associated with white supremacy (except for maybe Alex Jones brand brain fluid tampons)? It is bankrolled by the Mercer daughters. Shadowy patriarch Bob Mercer, who gave us Trump as president, is along with his billionaire family an abject climate crisis denialist. I don't wish anyone ill, but if I had heard that they were vacationing in the Bahamas the last few days I would be struck by the irony.
Carbon dioxide emissions, 70% produced by the 100 dirtiest corporations are causing rapid global heating (far more rapid than anything in the geological record, so you could call it unprecedented). CO2 is a greenhouse gas that traps the sun's heat and prevents it from radiating back out to space.
CO2 emissions don't cause hurricanes, but they do heat up water, which puts more moisture in the atmosphere and feeds the strength and speed and longevity of hurricanes. Warm water expands (pay attention, Breitbart; I know you failed 8th grade chemistry because you were sniffing glue in the toilet), which raises the sea level. Global heating also melts surface ice, which likewise raises sea level. Higher sea level contributes to higher storm surges. Climate scientist Michael Mann explains at the Scientific American, which the Breitbart folks can't read because it is hard to hold a magazine while dragging your knuckles on the ground. Mann points out that for every degree C. of warming, you get a 26 foot per second increase in wind speed. The 2019 world average surface temperature is up nearly one degree from the 1950-1980 average.
I don't demean myself by reading Breitbart. I'd rather lie naked in my garden during a rainstorm and let slugs traverse me, leaving trails of slime. Most of their existence they've just made fascist shit up, riffing on Mein Kampf. But from my hate mail, I take it that they questioned my credentials to speak to climate change because I am a historian.
This level if ignorance makes my head hurt. Actually, climate is a major part of historical studies, and I have taught courses on History and Climate Change at the University of Michigan. I know that the geniuses over at Breitbart are contemptuous of learning and, like, knowing the alphabet, so let me make you a bet that none of them has read any of the books on my syllabus. They don't have the slightest idea what they are talking about, just like their Clown-in-Chief, Trump.
My colleague Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (Michigan has an exchange with the Paris School of Higher Studies) was one of the pioneers in writing about the history of climate, with his Times of Feast, Times of Famine (French ed. 1967).
The field has become more sophisticated over time, as the science itself has made strides and as some historians have learned techniques like reading tree ring samples from long-lived trees or deploying ice core samples or seabed cores.
Sam White has authored a groundbreaking book on the Little Ice Age and the history of the Ottoman Empire, The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire, which I've taught in seminar.
Not only historians but humanists are attending to the issue. See, e.g., Alexander Elliott et al., Climate Change and the Humanities: Historical, Philosophical and Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Contemporary Environmental Crisis (Springer, 2017).
Those of us who write modern and contemporary history cannot ignore climate change as a driver of social change. I found that water shortages in Egypt contributed to rural rebellions in Egypt in 2011, in my The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is changing the Middle East (Simon & Schuster, 2014).
I've also done on-the-ground journalism on the issue in places like the Caribbean and Morocco.
We are entering a period of contemporary history where the impacts of global heating and sea level rise on cities such as Alexandria, Egypt, are an unavoidable part of their social and economic history. That is, no modern history of the city that came up to the present could be successful without factoring in human-caused climate change.
Historians belong in this debate, because our moment is world-historical, and only historians can set it in context.
Keep ReadingShow Less
"The Nearest in Love": On How the Sri Lankan Death Cult Betrayed the Islamic Values of the Qur'an
These small, fringe groups are frustrated that 99.999 % of Muslims are not interested in their extremism
Apr 22, 2019
A tiny death cult in Sri Lanka calling itself "Sri Lanka Tawheed Jamaat" (not to be confused with a big mainstream organization of the same name in India) appears to be responsible for the eight coordinated bombings at luxury hotels and Christian churches on Sunday.
They commit mindless butchery and terrorism to make the mainstream society hate Muslims, and so can use the backlash against their own acts of terror to recruit Muslims who then feel attacked for no reason.
By now the tactic is familiar, if monstrous. These small, fringe groups are frustrated that 99.999 % of Muslims are not interested in their extremism. They commit mindless butchery and terrorism to make the mainstream society hate Muslims, and so can use the backlash against their own acts of terror to recruit Muslims who then feel attacked for no reason. The engine of Islamophobia thus can be revved up and used to radicalize the Muslims in the "grey zone" who had earlier rejected radicalism. The tactic only works if the mainstream society and authorities fall for it by persecuting the Muslims that had nothing to do with the attack.
Hitting Christians was a way of getting an even bigger effect, since it would attract the attention, they thought, of Christians in Europe and the US, promoting Islamophobia there, as well.
Sri Lanka (once called Ceylon) is 70 percent Buddhist, 13% Hindu, about 10% Muslim and 7% or so Christian. It had been roiled in the 1990s and the first part of the 21st century by a guerrilla insurgency among middle class Tamil Hindus of Marxist leanings, the Tamil Tigers, who invented the tactic of suicide bombing used by Tawheed Jamaat on Sunday. Its small Muslim minority had mostly tried to keep its head down. But it sometimes was targeted, as in 1990 when the Tamil Tigers killed 110 Muslims at two mosques.
The rise of stochastic or random terrorism impelled by suggestions made by ISIL militants on the internet has led to small fringe groups franchising with ISIL and carrying out terrorist operations like that on Easter, which has no immediate political goal. That is, stochastic terrorism does not demand some practical step like a change in a law or an end to persecution of a group. Its whole point is to provoke a backlash against Muslims so as to make more radicals.
The death cult in Sri Lanka, like all religious cults, betrayed and defiled the actual values of Muslim scripture.
The Prophet Muhammad (c. 567-632) had good relations with most of the Christians he knew, and I think he supported the Roman Christians against their adversaries, the Zoroastrian Iranians. The Table 5:82 says of the early Muslims, "you will find that the nearest to them in love are those who say 'We are Christians.' That is because they have among them priests and monks, and they are not haughty."
The Qur'an complained about bad relations between Jews and Christians, which sometimes led to the destruction of synagogues and churches.
In 523 AD, a century before the verses of the Qur'an discussed here, the Yemeni, Himyarite king Yusuf Dhu Nuwas, a convert to an apparently militant form of local Arabian Judaism, and then went on to raze churches and commit a pogram against Christians in the city of Najran (today in Saudi Arabia just north of the Yemeni border). Yusuf Dhu Nuwas was probably allied with Sasanian, Zoroastrian Iran, while the Christians in the region had ties to Christian Ethiopia, which was allied with the Christian, Eastern Roman Empire.
The sixth-century Palestinian historian, Procopius (Prokopios) of Caesarea, wrote that the Roman Emperor Justinian urged the Ethiopian king or Negus to intervene in Yemen and secure it for Christendom against Iran, and so shore up trade in silk and other luxury goods with Asia. (The Jewish Himyarite dynasty, being allied with Iran, could harry Roman ships in the Red Sea trying to go to Sri Lanka/ Ceylon for the Asia trade).
The early biographer of the Prophet Ibn Hisham, who edited the work of Ibn Ishaq (d. 760s AD), held that Qur'an 85:4-7 refers to this massacre by Dhu Nuwas, in part because it mentions an obscure word, al-Ukhdud. While this term can mean ditch, it is also a place name just outside Najran.
The Qur'an says, "Cursed by the people of al-Ukhdud: Fire, fed by fuel, when they sat above it. And they were themselves witnesses to what they did to the Believers."
85:10 concludes, "Those who coerce the consciences of the believers and refuse to repent, the torment of the netherworld awaits them, and the agony of hellfire."
If Ibn Ishaq is right, the Qur'an here condemned a historic wrong that resonated even a century later in the Arabian peninsula, in which a ruling elite with biblical commitments attacked the believers and churches of a rival such group.
Now let us fast-forward nearly 100 years. The Iranians invaded the Near East and took Damascus in 613 AD, then conquered Christian Jerusalem in 614 AD.
Christian sources maintain that Jews in Roman First Palestine sided with the Iranians, and that some of them attacked churches.
A Christian polemical work of the 600s aimed at converting Jews, Jacob the Newly Baptized, has Jacob recall the year 614: "When Christians at Ptolemais departed because of the Persian invasion, the Jews found an occasion to burn Christian churches and pillage their houses, harassing and killing many Christians."
On the other hand, the eastern Roman Empire, Christian-ruled, had also attacked synagogues. Emperor Justinian in the 500s had ordered that synagogues be turned into churches. Maybe a few were, in North Africa, but historians actually think synagogues spread extensively and became more central to Jewish life through the 500s.
In the Qur'an, the chapter of the Cow 2:113 castigated Jews and Christians for each denying the truth of the other's religion, even though they both believe in the Bible:
- "The Jews say, 'The Christians have nothing to stand on'; and the Christians say, 'The Jews have nothing to stand on'--even though they both recite the Bible."
It goes on to scold them for violently attacking one another's religious edifices:
"Who is more of a despot than one who forbids the mention of God's name in the houses of God, and strives to tear them down? They should not have entered them save in fearful reverence. Their lot in this world is disgrace, and in the next they face severe torment."
- (The Cow 2:114)
I believe that the context of this instruction that churches and synagogues both be reverenced by Jews and by Christians is the war between Iran and the eastern Roman Empire.
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More Stories
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy