In Ukraine and Gaza alike, international laws on the proper conduct of war, largely established by the post-War Geneva Convention, are being trampled on by all parties, to varying degrees. Civilians are paying the ultimate price for this.
Category: Ideas
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Wars, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, famines … The news gives us every right to despair – but as the author puts it: “Anyone can be cynical, the challenge is to be an optimist.”
Are the Israelis perpetrating a genocide in Gaza? The answer is tied up in the definition and legal significance of the word itself, which is still not settled.
This wasn’t supposed to be about politics or identity or anti-Semitism, about war or peace. It’s a story about a name. What’s in a name? Nothing at all, says Mr. Shakespeare. Or maybe all of the above when the name is Israely and the year was 2023.
Sooner or later, Hamas’ reign in Gaza will come to an end. What will happen then? An Israeli occupation? The handover of power to local stakeholders? There are clear parallels with Germany’s situation after World War II.
Palestinians believe that Barghouti is capable of uniting the Palestinians and achieving reconciliation between the Fatah and Hamas movements. He may be the only figure who is able to lead negotiations and achieve peace, but Israel will not release him because it doesn’t really want either
As a measure to limit immigration, the British government announced that the minimum income required to bring a foreign spouse into the country on a family visa will rise sharply.
The black-and-white view of the world which separates people into loyalists and traitors is incompatible with the compromises and moderation that make a liberal democracy tick, and which make society free and livable.
In two very different ways, the failure of the United Nations to inhibit aggressive nations is a sign of only more trouble ahead.
Each year, millions of trees are sacrificed for the sake of Christmas — an ecological disaster and a denial of what trees represent for humanity. There are, however, some green alternatives to buying (and killing) your own private tree each year.
Postmodernism’s eagerness to relativize what is commonly considered factual, objective or real is attractive to recent, jaded, generations, but can barely help a contemporary world lurching between chaos and calamity.
Nuclear weapons are a constant fear simmering in the background of modern-day conflicts. With the potential for Iran to join the Israel-Hamas war, and a threatening Russia at war with Ukraine, there is a more urgent necessity of reestablishing communication channels and confidence-building measures among nuclear powers.
Faced with rising violence and climatic catastrophes, stoicism teaches us how to cultivate our inner selves, and how to continue living without giving in to fear.
As Israel ramps up its attacks on Gaza, and support from the West continues, ordinary people in Turkey are falling into the trap of seeing the world as an inevitable showdown between East and West.
The future of Ukraine may be at stake as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban plays hardball with his European counterparts. But the stakes go beyond aid to the war effort, it’s the very status of Europe that is on the line.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s tough words for Benjamin Netanyahu cannot really be reconciled, and point to a paradox: Netanyahu may be the warlord whom the army obeys, but he is also a politician whom the vast majority of his fellow citizens would like to see leave.
Is Venezuela’s President Maduro renewing the country’s long-standing claim to a big part of neighboring Guyana to distract from his unpopularity at home, to postpone next year’s general elections, or to nab some of Guyana’s rocketing oil wealth?
The American superpower (and its European allies) are not seeing the results they’d hoped for Ukraine’s war against Russia, while the Middle East spirals out of control. Chinese leaders may see Washington as too vulnerable to challenge it in the South China Sea.
Egypt is holding a presidential election during which President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is certain to win another term. To protest a lack of genuine democracy, some opponents have chosen to boycott the whole process, others opted to invalidate their votes. It’s a loaded calculation.
The author’s native country, India, is both a burgeoning world power and part of the Global South. And yet, its ambitious Prime Minister Narendra Modi hasn’t dared to say a single word against Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank, even when countries in South America and Africa have severed their diplomatic relationships with Israel.
The UN Secretary-General is raising the tone in the war in Gaza, but it comes at a time when international institutions are extremely weak. Looking back at history, that’s a dangerous thing.
Right-wing movements have surged in Europe, and fascism is on the ascendancy across disparate regions of the world. As populist leaders gain power, the specter of authoritarianism looms large.
It is not only the health of the Pope that worries the Holy See. From the collapse of vocations to the conservative wind in the USA, there are many ills to face.
The term was coined by journalist Cory Doctorow to explain the fatal drift of major Internet platforms: if they were ever useful and user-friendly, they will inevitably end up being odious.
A democracy is not just the vague and dangerously malleable promise of popular rule. It is instead an institutional regime or “republic” that defines and protects the rights of the people, and of individuals.
“There is nothing fashionable about installing so many cameras in and outside one’s house,” says a lawyer from a Muslim community. And yet, doing this has helped members of the community prove unfair police action against them.
Before the outbreak of the Hamas-Israel war, a social media campaign in Turkey aimed to take on anti-Arab and anti-refugee sentiment. But the campaign ultimately just swapped one type of discrimination for another.
There are certain watershed moments where the world comes together in defense of an idea or a people, or maybe both. A call from afar to stand up in the name of the Palestinian people.
Taiwanese, though under the weight of a far more powerful neighbor, have the tendency to idealize Israel and fail to create a self-definition beyond the island nation’s anti-China image.
Javier Milei has scored a stunning victory on a populist far-right platform promising maximum personal liberties and a shrunken state. But the deep rifts and economic hardship in Argentinian society present huge risks for the nation and its incoming president.
Trashing politics and politicians is a classic tool of populists to seduce angry voters, and take countries into quagmires far worse than the worst years of democracy. It’s a dynamic Argentina appears particularly vulnerable to.
The debate over the war in Israel is raging on social media. In this divisive atmosphere, it is impossible to call out anti-Semitism in Muslim communities or on the right wing without being applauded by all the wrong people. What Germans are failing to acknowledge is how much the country’s own history has to do with this.
The post-War generation in Germany was shaped politically by one question: Why didn’t our parents prevent the Holocaust? Nowadays, as baby boomers are retiring, the inner political wrestling seems to have fallen out of time, because anti-fascism has long changed sides.
In recent years, social interest in climatology has grown exponentially, turning meteorologists into quasi-rockstars who, thanks to technology, can interact with their audiences and provide real-time updates.
Majority-Catholic Poland has some of the strictest defamation laws of any democratic country, which includes laws defaming the Catholic Church. For many artists, this has meant years of legal trouble, including threats of jail time.
Sectors of the political Left around the world have practically lauded the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel — finally barely bothering to hide their good ol’ fashioned hatred of the Jews, rather than hiding behind anti-Zionist rhetoric. Something evil has been re-released.
Inspired by a new book on vampires, Italian writer Chiara Valerio analyzes how the figure of the vampire has come to represent life and death over centuries of science, art and culture. When understood through a modern lens, what can the vampire tell us about our own Gothic concerns?
For the future of our world, neither the stakes in Ukraine nor Gaza should be underestimated. But understanding the limits of the comparison is important to trying to find a way out of each, says veteran French political scientist Dominique Moïsi.
Journalist Noor Swirki writes about what its like for Palestinian journalists working from Gaza, with everything on the line, every night and day.