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  There was a time when rode into every Middle Eastern catastrophe like a TED Talk with a press pass. If there was a war to explain, a regime to modernize, or a “vital message” to send with cruise missiles, Tom was there — sleeves rolled up, metaphors polished. Back when the invasion of was sold as a democratic software update, Friedman wasn’t exactly storming the barricades. He was midwifing “creative destruction.” The region would be shocked into sanity. History would bend toward market reform. Fast forward. Now he’s discovered that might be bending something else entirely. When an Ex–Prime Minister Uses the Words “Ethnic Cleansing” What jolts Friedman’s latest column is not campus rhetoric. Not activist slogans. Not fringe NGOs. It’s — a former Israeli prime minister — using language that once would have detonated diplomatic careers. Olmert wrote in Haaretz that: “A violent and criminal effort is underway to ethnically cleanse territories in the West Bank.” Let...

  The Administrative Erasure of Hüseyin Doğru Europe prides itself on being the global capital of press freedom. And yet, in 2025, the Council of the European Union placed a German journalist under sanctions using a legal regime originally designed to counter Russian destabilisation. The journalist: The legal instrument used against him: Council Regulation (EU) 2024/2642 Concerning restrictive measures in view of Russia’s destabilising activities CELEX: 32024R2642 Council Decision (CFSP) 2024/2643 Restrictive measures framework (Common Foreign and Security Policy) CELEX: 32024D2643 Council Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/2021 (3 October 2025 – listing amendment including Doğru) CELEX: 32025R2021 These are not criminal statutes. They are foreign-policy instruments. And under them, a journalist inside the European Union was designated as supporting destabilising activities. What the Official Listing Says According to the Official Journal entry (Annex t...

  On a cold February evening in 2026, 18-year-old Zeeshan Afzal was stabbed to death in the parking lot of Oldbury Jamia Masjid, near Birmingham. He had just prayed. He had just stood shoulder to shoulder with other worshippers in Ramadan — the month of mercy, of restraint, of forgiveness. Minutes later, he lay bleeding in the dark. Police have said the investigation is ongoing and that the killing is not currently being treated as religiously motivated. That is an important and responsible clarification. Motive must be established by evidence, not emotion. And yet. Across Muslim communities in Britain and Europe, the question whispers through homes and WhatsApp groups alike: Are we safe? Even at the mosque? The Atmosphere We Cannot Ignore Even when a specific case is not officially labeled a hate crime, it unfolds within a larger social climate. And that climate matters. Across Europe, reports of anti-Muslim hate crimes have surged in recent years. Mosques vandalized....

  In the city of Sambhal, the future of India is being rehearsed in plain sight. Three-quarters of the city’s 300,000 residents are Muslim. Yet today, many say they live as if under occupation — their public religious life curtailed, their protests criminalized, their grief surveilled. The spark was a legal challenge to the 16th-century Shahi Jama Masjid , a mosque that Hindu nationalists claim was built over a sacred Hindu site. After a court-ordered archaeological survey, tensions exploded. Police fired tear gas and live rounds. Families say at least five people were killed. Hundreds were booked. Thousands were listed as “unnamed accused,” a legal cloud that can expand at will. Internet shut down. City sealed. Dissent crushed. Sambhal is not an anomaly. It is a method. The Ideological Spine: Hindutva and the RSS To understand Sambhal, one must understand the ideological infrastructure behind it. The (RSS), founded in 1925, promotes Hindutva — the idea that India is fun...

In a world where identity is weaponized and religion is drafted into political armies, the sight of an ultra-Orthodox rabbi standing beside Palestinian flags unsettles nearly everyone. Yet there stands — black coat, beard, sidelocks — calmly declaring something that scrambles modern assumptions: “ Judaism is not Zionism.” For him, this is not rebellion . It is obedience . Affiliated with , a small and highly controversial Haredi sect, Rabbi Beck represents a theological current that predates modern nationalism. His argument is not secular. It is not progressive. It is not post-modern. It is ancient . And that is precisely the point. The Interview That Disturbs Categories In one widely circulated long-form interview, the exchange unfolds with almost disarming simplicity. Interviewer: Rabbi Beck, how can you oppose Israel as a Jewish rabbi? Rabbi Beck: Judaism and Zionism are two completely different things. Judaism is a religion. Zionism is a political movement founded little more ...

  ✦ Francesca Albanese.  “The common enemy of humanity is the system that has enabled the genocide in Palestine — including the financial capital that funds it, the algorithms that obscure it, and the weapons that enable it. It is a system that normalizes destruction as security, occupation as defense, starvation as policy, and silence as diplomacy. It is sustained not only by bombs and bullets, but by boardrooms, media narratives, diplomatic shields, and public indifference. The tragedy is not only that Palestinians are being erased — it is that international law is being hollowed out in plain sight. When accountability becomes optional for the powerful, humanity itself becomes collateral damage. The question before us is not merely about Palestine. It is about whether the world still believes in justice, or whether power has finally replaced principle as the highest law.” ✦ The System Is the Crime There is something deeply unsettling about what said. Not because...

Nearly six decades after Israel occupied the West Bank in the aftermath of the , the territory is witnessing its largest civilian displacement since that war. According to reporting by Fatima AbdulKarim and Patrick Kingsley (Feb. 17, 2025), roughly 40,000 Palestinians have fled their homes following a weeks-long Israeli military operation across northern West Bank cities including Jenin, Tulkarem, and areas near Tubas. For Palestinians, this is not just a military episode. It is a historical echo. A Displacement Measured in Generations Many of those now displaced are descendants of refugees uprooted during the 1948 war — the event Palestinians call the Nakba . Entire neighborhoods known as “refugee camps” were originally built to house families expelled or forced to flee during Israel’s creation. Now, history is repeating itself. Residents describe soldiers using loudspeakers to order evacuations. Families left carrying whatever they could hold — bags, blankets, documents, c...

  If you ever wanted to witness how confusion, opportunism, theology, nationalism, and bigotry collide in real time — you didn’t need a medieval church council. You only needed to tune into a meeting of the . There, amid political loyalists and pop-culture appointees, a spectacle unfolded: Zionism was denounced, antisemitic conspiracies were flirted with, and centuries-old theological errors were recycled as if they were fresh revelations. But the deeper issue is not one controversial appointee. The deeper issue is this: What precisely is Zionism? And how does it intersect — or collide — with antisemitism? Because in today’s discourse, the two are either falsely merged or lazily separated without thought. Let us disentangle them carefully. 1. What Is Zionism — Precisely? Zionism , in its original and political form, is a 19th-century nationalist movement. It emerged in Europe not from theology, but from crisis. The father of modern political Zionism, , was not respon...

By Malik Mukhtar February 2026 It took only eight hours of indirect talks in Muscat to trigger alarm bells in Jerusalem. Within days, Israeli Prime Minister announced an emergency trip to Washington to meet U.S. President . Eight hours of diplomacy. An emergency flight across an ocean. This is not about scheduling. It is about fear — fear of exclusion, fear of miscalculation, fear that history might be moving without Israel at the table. The Trauma That Still Echoes Officially, Netanyahu insists that any negotiations with Iran must include limits on ballistic missiles and the dismantling of Tehran’s regional proxy network. That demand is not abstract. Missiles from Iran and its allies have left scars — visible and psychological. Northern Israeli towns remain partially displaced. The memory of rocket sirens is not theoretical; it is nightly lived experience. The strikes last summer during the so-called “12-Day War” were not distant battlefield statistics. They were direct h...