The Pentagon carried out air-strikes on Iran-backed militia forces in Iraq in retaliation for a drone attack on a US airbase in Erbil, while a senior commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps was killed in a presumed Israeli strike in Syria. Israel continues to trade cross-border fire with Lebanon's Hezbollah, while Yemen's Houthi armed movement claimed responsibility for drone attacks targeting the Israeli port city of Eilat. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that Israel is now fighting on "seven fronts"—Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Yemen.
The International Criminal Court released a statement saying it received a referral from Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros, Djibouti and South Africa regarding the Situation in the State of Palestine. ICC prosecutor Karim AA Khan affirmed that an investigation is currently ongoing with its own dedicated team. The five countries made the referral in accordance with their powers under the Rome Statute. All five of the referring countries are party to the Rome Statute, as is the State of Palestine; Israel is not.
Three Palestinian human rights groups, Al Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, filed a lawsuit with the International Criminal Court asking for an investigation into alleged crimes by Israel. The submission, accuses Israel of war crimes, genocide and incitement to genocide, in the context of the bombardment of the Gaza Strip. This submission follows mounting allegations of Israeli war crimes by international human rights groups, including the use of toxic white phosphorous on civilians and attacks on medical services.
The Israeli Ministry of Intelligence is recommending the forcible and permanent transfer of the Gaza Strip's 2.2 million Palestinian residents to Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, according to an official document revealed in full by progressive Israeli website Local Call, and acknowledged by the ministry as authentic. The document, which has been translated into English, recommends that Israel act to "evacuate the civilian population to Sinai" during the course of the conflict; establish tent cities and later more permanent settlements in the northern Sinai that will absorb the expelled population; and then create "a sterile zone of several kilometers…within Egypt, and [prevent] the return of the population to activities/residences near the border with Israel."
A member of the Israeli cabinet broached a nuclear strike on the Gaza Strip, making outraged headlines in the Arab world. Jerusalem Affairs & Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu of the ultra-nationalist Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party said in a radio interview that there are "no non-combatants in Gaza," and using a nuclear weapon on the Palestinian enclave is "one of the possibilities."
An angry mob in Russia's Caucasus republic of Dagestan stormed the airport of regional capital Makhachkala, seking to confront passengers arriving on a flight from Israel. Some held signs reading "Child killers have no place in Dagestan" and "We are against Jewish refugees." This was but the most prominent of several such incidents across the Russian Caucasus since the Gaza assault began.
With Israel intensifying air-strikes in the Gaza Strip, a northern front appears to be opening in the war. Civilians are fleeing both north Israel and south Lebanon as Israeli and Hezbollah forces exchange fire across the border. Following Israeli air-strikes on targets in Syria, drone attacks by presumed Iranian-backed forces hit US military bases and outposts in both Syria and Iraq. The US responded with air-strikes on Iranian Revolutionary Guards positions in eastern Syria. The Iranian military has announced that it will launch large-scale maneuvers, involving infantry, air and naval forces.
British socialist Daniel Randall’s important 2021 book Confronting Antisemitism on the Left offers an important critique of the phenomenon—but is limited by stopping short of a forthright anti-Zionism that can incorporate Jewish liberation into an anti-oppressive praxis. Drawing on my experiences in the US and Randall’s in the UK, I argue that Left anti-Semitism has some of its strongest roots in a Stalinist approach that instrumentalizes Jews and other oppressed groups as political chess pieces. This can be repudiated in a Jewish cultural resurgence that calls for “smashing Zionism not Israel.”
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