Articles

The Israeli Supreme Court ruled in favor of the government's planned cable car over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The ruling was met with approval by proponents such as Jerusalem's mayor, Moshe Lion, who claimed the project will reduce air pollution and "allow comfortable and efficient access to the Western Wall and the Old City." However, the decision has been met with condemnation by many, including city planners and architects, environmental groups, and Karaite Jews, a minority sect with a cemetery located along the proposed cable car's path. Palestinian groups have especially criticized the proposed path through East Jerusalem, an area ceded to Arab control in the 1949 armistice but occupied by Israel in 1967. Advocacy group Ir-Amim tweeted: "Folks will hop in in [West Jerusalem] and have no idea they're cabling over the heads of occupied Palestinians."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, just days after issuing blatant nuclear threats, engages in the classic anti-Semitic trope of blaming Nazism on the Jews. Speaking to Italian TV, Lavrov responded to a reminder that Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish thusly: "When they say 'What sort of nazification is this if we are Jews,' well I think that Hitler also had Jewish origins, so it means nothing. For a long time now we've been hearing the wise Jewish people say that the biggest anti-Semites are the Jews themselves." This as Russian state media voices openly call for "total annihilation" of Ukraine, and more mass graves are being discovered daily. Russia will be glorifying this campaign of extermination in massive military parades next week, commemorating the Soviet Union's 1945 victory over Nazi Germany.

In Episode 112 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to deconstruct the cynical fascist pseudo-anti-fascism of Vladimir Putin’s war drive against Ukraine. Putin’s speech announcing his “military operation” in Ukraine says his aim is to “denazify” the country. This as Ukraine’s Jews prepare to flee the advancing Russian forces in a mass evacuation. While Ukraine has been going in a more democratic direction since the 2014 Maidan Revolution, Russia over this same period has seen a consolidation of increasingly autocratic power in the hands of Vladimir Putin—who has ruled continuously as either president or prime minister since 1999. As courageous anti-war protesters flood the streets of cities across Russia in defiance of the authorities, the morally and intellectually bankrupt “left” in the United States echoes Putin’s lies. Especially called out for regurgitating Kremlin propaganda that paints Ukraine as a “Nazi” state and blames NATO for Putin’s war of aggression are the now essentially pro-war CodePink and the very ironically named Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). Any genuine anti-war position must begin with repudiating Putin’s fascist ambition to rebuild the Russian empire.