Early on in the pandemic, global health experts envisioned a nightmare scenario: Covid-19 vaccines are created, but they go almost exclusively to rich countries that can afford to buy them. People in poorer countries are left to get sick and die. To prevent this, the experts set up an international initiative called Covax, designed to…
Read moreIs the US-Israel alliance doomed?
Throughout the Gaza conflict, President Joe Biden has been about as supportive of Israel as its leaders could have hoped. He has issued statements supporting its “right to self-defense,” blocked UN Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire, and even chose to move forward with a previously approved US arms sale to Israel worth $735…
Read moreWhy the world must witness pictures of India’s mass Covid-19 cremations
Weeks ago, the Indian capital ran out of space for its dead. New Delhi’s public parks and parking lots were converted into sites for mass cremations of Hindus, Sikhs, and Jains. Cremations are an important Hindu funeral ritual, but Indian crematoria declared that they were out of wood for pyres, and burial grounds for the…
Read moreThe “TikTok intifada”
Israel unquestionably has the military advantage in its ongoing conflict with Hamas. But in the fight to control the public narrative of the conflict, Israel’s edge seems to be slipping. In previous rounds of conflict, the Israeli government was often able to capitalize on its widely followed official social media channels, as well as statements…
Read moreThe fighting in Gaza is over. The humanitarian crisis isn’t.
With the ceasefire came relief. The shelling had stopped. People were visiting each other, feeling happy, Salwa Tibi, a Gaza program representative for CARE International, said. Earlier this week, Tibi hadn’t been sure if she would see the next morning, or the morning after that, so heavy was the bombardment from Israeli airstrikes. This week,…
Read moreJournalists can tweet about Black Lives Matter but not about Palestine
Last week, no one had heard of Emily Wilder. Then she became the focus of a national campaign to get her fired. Days later, she was. Things move fast. So there’s a good chance that days from now, the story of a rookie journalist who lost her job because of the way she used social…
Read moreThe Israel-Hamas ceasefire stopped the fighting — but changed nothing
The ceasefire announced Thursday between Israel and Hamas will hopefully end the worst of the violence that in the course of 11 days killed well over 200 people, the vast majority of them Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. In the narrowest sense, Hamas and Israel have both accomplished their immediate goals. Hamas got to portray…
Read moreHow Black Lives Matter reenergized Black-Palestinian solidarity
Marching in a recent Ithaca, New York, demonstration in solidarity with Palestine was one of the truly gratifying moments of my life as an internationalist. Organized by Cornell University undergraduates, the protest against Israel’s latest, massive bombardment of the Gaza Strip and assault on Palestinians within and beyond Jerusalem proved that even in Ithaca —…
Read moreIn defense of the two-state solution
Last week, Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in a conflict that claimed nearly 250 lives. But the underlying status quo makes another round of fighting all but inevitable, and a fundamental solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems further away than ever. Worse, the long-running American solution for the problem — a US-mediated peace…
Read moreThe progressive foreign policy moment has arrived
As the Israel-Gaza war raged, President Joe Biden made clear to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that there was a problem. Full-throated support for Israel among Democrats was waning, namely because of progressives. Among the clearest signs were moves in the House and Senate to block a $735 million weapons sale to Israel, a deal…
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