Thursday night, Israel launched a major military strike inside Iran, targeting nuclear facilities and high-ranking officials. At least twenty senior Iranian military leaders were killed, and some damage was inflicted on Iran’s nuclear program facilities. We do not yet know the full scope of the Israeli government’s goals, but the timing is important. The attacks came just two days before the U.S. was set to resume direct negotiations with Iran. For weeks, Donald Trump has offered conflicting rhetoric about Israel and Iran, alternating between saber-rattling and calls for restraint. It’s tempting to read some grand strategy into this, but more likely, Trump’s incoherence and his flailing foreign policy left space for Israel to act without consequence. Regardless, this is extraordinarily dangerous, and it is further proof that the international community’s failure to address Israel’s expansionist, destabilizing agenda is allowing it to push the region toward catastrophe.
It is hard to believe, but Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza is reaching new depths. The territory’s medical infrastructure has collapsed. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Palestinians face starvation. Israel continues to restrict aid, and the so-called distribution sites run by the U.S.- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation are chaotic, deadly scenes where hungry people are attacked for trying to survive. As Navi Pillay, chair of the UN’s Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, put it: “We are seeing more and more signs that Israel is carrying out a systematic campaign to eliminate Palestinian life in Gaza.” The commission’s new report will be released soon, but reports alone will not stop the carnage.
Here in the U.S., Trump’s political crackdown is growing more severe.
His administration has deployed military troops in Los Angeles. Palestinian and pro-immigrant protestors there are being violently repressed. The same imperial logic links it all together, from Gaza to L.A., from the Madleen to Mahmoud Khalil: challenges to injustice are now met with militarized force. But resistance is rising, too. Court victories, hunger strikes, student actions, and civil society organizing continue to challenge the machinery of violence. This week’s reporting documents it all—please read and share it widely.
By Dave Reed