WorldcrunchStay updated with comprehensive news on Israel from Worldcrunch. Discover insights on Israeli politics, economic strategies, societal issues, and cultural landmarks with translations from top international sources. Highlights include Jerusalem, Israeli history, and cultural events.
The recent images showing a wounded Palestinian tied to the hood of an Israeli military vehicle is not an isolated incident. Despite the accumulation of evidence indicating the Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, the country’s politicians and officials continue to claim that their army is the world’s most moral.
An Israeli missile struck children playing soccer in a schoolyard a day after international outrage at Russia’s bombing of Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital. As the Israel-Hamas war drags on, ceasefire negotiations get harder as the rest of the world looks away.
The concept of “resistance” adopted by militants in the Middle East has a close relationship with oppression and “divine victory,” which Hamas and Hezbollah both embrace in a false interpretation of the Koran, despite the heavy human and material losses inflicted.
A new Palestinian body is crucially needed to unify the Palestinian people in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel and across the diaspora. The organization founded by Yasser Arafat and overseen since by Mahmoud Abbas has let its people down one too many times.
After nine months of war, most Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced multiple times. Often that leaves the sense of being at home, even a destroyed home, fading from their consciousness.
The October 7 attack and Israel’s brutal response have left a trail of devastation, which materializes in very different tragedies for Palestine and Israel, a story of missed opportunity for Turkey — and a tragicomedy of U.S. leadership.
For three decades, negotiations to solve the Palestinian cause focused on giving Israel guarantees and reassurances out of fear for its security and continued existence, not to end the occupation and the suffering of the Palestinians.
Faced with a deepening shortage of resources and shuttered bakeries, Palestinians are resorting to makeshift means to survive, using clay ovens fueled by firewood from destroyed homes to cook their food. Resourcefulness that fights famine in the short term but may have long-term health effects.
As the war in Gaza nears nine months, bombardments continue, even in the camps where displaced people live. Death and fear are everywhere, as is hunger. Palestinian human rights activist Moustafa Ibrahim is also displaced now. In this personal essay, he addresses the hopelessness that people in Gaza face as they see Israel committing genocide.
Zionism shares with Nazism the claims of building what they call National Socialism, though the nationalism always takes over. There are lessons in the Oscar-winning film The Zone of Interest, and the current politics of the far right in Europe.
The Israeli army’s spokesman said that those talking about eradicating Hamas are “throwing sand in the eyes” of the Israeli public. It was a clear challenge to Benjamin Netanyahu, who counterattacked even as he remains under fire from all sides.
Spain, Norway, Ireland and Slovenia’s formal recognition of Palestine as a state highlights that Arab countries, many of which recognized Palestine in 1988, have not built upon that step.
Mediation efforts are ongoing to halt the escalation between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which could degenerate into all-out war at any moment. But diplomacy seems powerless in the face of the logic of war.
In 19 years in Gaza, she always felt lost in her mind, body and even time. She was desperate to escape abroad, and made one attempt after another to find a way out. Eventually she did, for better or worse.
The political project in the Arab world, both of tyrants and their opponents, has been focused on visions of glory and repeating slogans. But what is a movement if it doesn’t seek to improve the lives of those for whom it claims to speak?
Hamas attack on Oct. 7 created a deep rift in the confidence of Israel’s citizens, in their country’s security, military and moral superiority. The Zionist project may never recover.
The Israel-Hamas war has made transportation almost impossible in Gaza, where more than 80% of the population is displaced and more than 65% of the road networks are destroyed. The high costs are forcing some Palestinians to stay put despite the dangers.
More and more Palestinians in Gaza have no choice but to resize their clothes after losing weight after eight months of war. They desperately search for tailors to fix or tighten their clothes, who try to do their job despite the lack of electricity.
Israel’s special forces rescued four hostages on Saturday, an apparent major success of the war in Gaza. Yet, paradoxically, the operation has created a political crisis for Benjamin Netanyahu, leading to protests and the resignation of several war cabinet ministers.
Comparisons between the wars in Europe and the Middle East tell us a lot about the standpoint of those who compare. They also signal to a new world order that has yet to be shaped.
Israel is like a huge elephant in a room of fragile ceramic pieces. It may be able to get out, but Israel will certainly not emerge from its war in Gaza completely unscathed.
Israel’s war on Gaza, with the support of the West, is not far from the necessities of capitalist accumulation in many regions of the world, or at least about managing the crisis of contemporary global capitalism.
The killing of an Egyptian soldier by Israeli fire on the border with Gaza, and Israel’s control of a buffer zone has increased tensions between Israel and Egypt, which finds itself in a difficult position.
Palestinian women are suffering disproportionately in the Gaza conflict, where they represent 70% of casualties and more than half of the displaced people.
Eight months into the Israel-Hamas war, Israel has lost the battle of world public opinion. This may seem unfair to Israelis, but the right to self-defense does not authorize anyone to disregard international humanitarian law. And undermining these legitimate international bodies will only cause wider chaos.
Since the war in Gaza broke out, the Israeli military sealed off the Palestinian enclave and barred independent journalists from entering. In many cases, it targeted the few journalists still working there, especially photojournalists. Daraj spoke with one such reporter, Ahmed al Danaf.
The Israeli Prime Minister appeared on French television to try to convince European audiences of his war aims. But his main weakness is his lack of vision for the “aftermath”: he has nothing to offer the Palestinians.
Ukraine is not allowed to attack Russian territory. Israel, on the other hand, has free rein. These are the would-be restrictions of Western weapons in two wars that might seem to have little in common.
The efforts of chief prosecutor Karim Khan to try Israel’s Prime Minister and Defense Minister over the Gaza war could be a starting point to hold Israeli political and military officials accountable for crimes have committed over many years against Palestinians.
Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of a “tragic accident” after the deadly bombing of a camp for displaced Palestinians near Rafah; but this rare act of contrition does not mean the Israeli leader has changed his strategy, despite the indignation of the rest of the world at the number of civilians killed.
The “day after” the war in Gaza increasingly becomes hard to even imagine, as Israel’s prime minister sticks to his guns despite all evidence that says Hamas cannot be eradicated. The humanitarian toll, including Sunday’s airstrike on a displacement camp in Rafah, makes negotiations look increasingly impossible.
Egyptologists and religious scholars alike blasted the new Netflix docudrama series that chronicles the story of Moses, raising both current political issues and the deeper questions around the religion-science dialectic.
Two young Palestinians have sought to help children in war-torn Gaza. They first established a classroom between tents of displaced people to educate children. The second used virtual reality glasses as a psychological treatment especially for injured children.
U.S. President Joe Biden is pushing Saudi Arabia and Israel to sign on to a broad “normalization” deal, which would be a landmark of his first term in the White House. But Israel’s Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman each have their own calculations standing in the way.
The Israel-Hamas war has revived the urgency of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the two-state solution. The West views that this solution would soften polarization in Western societies, and calm down the Middle East, so the United States and NATO can again focus their efforts on confronting the real adversaries in Beijing and Moscow.
The announcement of the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor that he would seek arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and defense minister, as well as three Hamas leaders, provoked indignant reactions in Israel and the U.S. and revealed the rifts between the West and the global South.
The Israel-Hamas war in Gaza has created an unprecedented crisis for moderate Arab countries, mainly for those who have ties with Israel, and for Saudi Arabia that was on the verge of reaching a normalization deal with Israel. It’s hard to envision a future for Gaza without them.
The higher cost of the war will not deter Hamas leaders from claiming victory once any truce is reached. It will only push the discussion of a real solution for the region farther away from all.
According to Egyptian poet Alaa Khaled, student protests in the universities in the United States and Europe are not only directed against the practices of Israel, and in solidarity with Palestine, but are an instinctive expression of the desires of young people lost in a nihilistic modern culture.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was taken to task by hostage families during his Memorial Day speech on Monday — just the latest sign of the deep divisions in Israeli society as the war enters its eighth month, with no vision for the future.