Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Dr Sarah Marusek
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The Haredim and Netanyahu: Will the traditional right wing camp fall apart?
It may not have occurred to David Ben-Gurion 77 years ago, when he approved a limited exemption from military service for a few hundred yeshiva students, that he was sowing the seeds of a crisis that would threaten Israel’s existence. The goal at the time was purely political, as...
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Netanyahu’s latest gamble: A ‘Third-Force’ headed by a criminal gang leader
The genie is now out of the bottle, despite Benjamin Netanyahu’s vain efforts to suppress news of his devious third-force created to counter the Palestinian resistance. Sooner or later, his “bad changes” will return to haunt him. War criminals especially of the Netanyahu-type who morbidly celebrate their gruesome massacres...
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No milk, no diapers: US aid cuts hit Syrian refugees in Lebanon
Amal Al-Merhi’s twin ten-month-old daughters often go without milk or diapers. She feeds them a mix of cornstarch and water, because milk is too expensive. Instead of diapers, Amal ties plastic bags around her babies’ waists. The effects of their poverty is clear, she said. “If you see one...
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The crux of negotiations: Are Iran’s ballistic missiles more dangerous than its nuclear programme?
Donald Trump has been, and will remain, an unpredictable man. He is a master of surprises at every level. Before announcing his major tariff increases for all imports to the US from all exporting countries worldwide, he had publicly begun strengthening Israel militarily with a generous shipment of the...
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The US is disappearing dissenters in broad daylight
Just before breaking her fast during Ramadan, Rumeysa Ozturk—a Turkish PhD student at Tufts University—was forcibly taken by masked federal agents as she left her Somerville home to meet friends. There were no warnings, no charges and no explanation. Within hours, she had vanished into a system that has...
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Education is at risk in the West Bank from Israel’s military operation and funding cuts
Every day, Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank run the gauntlet of Israeli roadblocks, checkpoints and settler attacks on their way to school. Since the launch of Israel’s major military operation in the West Bank in January, though, the trip has become even more perilous. Thousands of troops...
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Savagery ensues as Netanyahu gets Trump green light to continue his genocide
The intensity of the resumed Israeli missile strikes and bombings across the besieged Gaza Strip is not only the settler-colonial regime’s continuation of its genocide of the Palestinians, but also a decisive rejection of the ceasefire that its war criminal leaders signed up to. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu —...
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The death of the American dream after Trump axes refugee funds
Ali landed in the United States as a relieved refugee from Iraq just as Donald Trump moved back into the White House. His timing wasn’t good. “When I came to America, they assured me… they’ll help me financially, provide a place and food,” said Ali by telephone. “But when...
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Children in Gaza defy trauma to return to school
Children have returned to school in Gaza, taking classes in tents or in the rubble of schools where families sheltered during the war, but trauma, aid blockades and the threat of more fighting could derail their drive to learn. At least 14,500 children have been killed in the war...
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Sudan’s refugees face deadly game of ‘snakes and ladders’ in Libya
The mayday relay came in from Eagle 3, a surveillance aircraft for the EU’s Frontex border agency – a rubber boat crammed with 70 people was taking on water off the coast of Libya. Humanity 1, a rescue ship operated by the German NGO SOS Humanity, rushed to the...
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World’s longest-serving prisoner freed after 44 years in Israeli prisons
After 44 years in Israeli prisons, the world’s longest-serving political prisoner was freed on Thursday as part of the Gaza ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement. Nael Barghouti’s time in prison saw him become one of the most prominent figures in the Palestinian prisoners’ movement. His release marks a pivotal...
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Palestinian refugees in Jordan fear ‘new Nakba’ with Trump’s displacement plan
Palestinian elder Mohamed Ahmed Jafar was forced to take refuge in Jordan after Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967. Ever since, he has been living in the Jerash refugee camp, known locally as the Gaza camp, in northern Jordan. Jafar, 77, said that US President Donald Trump’s plan...
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Top 5 Israeli violations of Gaza ceasefire deal
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to end the Gaza ceasefire deal by noon on Saturday after Hamas said it would postpone the release of Israeli captives in response to Tel Aviv’s non compliance with the terms of the truce. Twenty-four days into the ceasefire, Israel’s over 265...
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Vanishing mountains: winter air pollution smothers Iran
Toxic air that cloaked Iran this winter sent thousands to hospital, shuttered schools and forced Tehran to admit it must do more to tackle its top pollutants: old cars and filthy fuel. In the capital, a sprawling mountain-ringed metropolis that is home to more than 18 million people, residents...
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‘We need everything’: Gazans ponder mammoth task of rebuilding
As bombs rained down and entire neighbourhoods around her were pulverised, Shayma Abualatta found the only way to cope with the trauma of Gaza’s 15-month-long war was to make sure she did all she could to get an education. Now the 21-year-old, who is studying computer science and computer...
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Syrian exodus reveals fears of some behind the joy of many
The exhausted-looking man stood on the Lebanese side of the Masnaa border crossing and turned his back on Syria as he scanned cars parked along the hilly road that marks the most direct route from Beirut to the Syrian capital, Damascus. He had left his home in Damascus with...
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Cradle of freedom? Saudis lambasted for hosting UN internet forum
Saudi Arabia plays host this month to a major United Nations effort to discuss internet policy, drawing accusations of rank hypocrisy from rights activists who say the kingdom represses free speech and jails online critics. Just this January, activists say Riyadh sentenced a Saudi woman to 11 years in...
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FACTBOX – Syria: the war in numbers
On 15 March, 2011, a 40-strong crowd gathered in Old Damascus chanting political slogans. The brief protest in Syria’s capital marked the start of nearly 14 years of war and brutality that ended with the fall of President Bashar Al-Assad. On 8 December, 2024, Syrian rebels seized Damascus after...
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‘Invisible’ refugee children caught in Europe’s migration red tape
As silently as they had arrived, three teenagers slipped away following a member of a smuggling gang, hardly older than themselves, through the shadowed-filled station in the north-eastern Italian city of Trieste one cold winter evening. Less than 100 km (62 miles) from the Italian border with Slovenia, Trieste’s...
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Developments in Syria will require much more than toppling Assad
After 54 years of the Assad dynasty’s rule in Syria, the regime fell on 8 December after an opposition advance that lasted just 11 days. The Assad regime was infamous for its oppression, tyranny, executions, torture and killing its own people. We know that the opposition forces benefited from...
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In Lebanon, people with disabilities isolated, abandoned by war
As bombs rained down on Beirut’s southern suburbs, Ali Hussaini faced a heart-wrenching challenge: how to explain what was happening to his two partially deaf daughters. “They would ask me what is going on. Why are we running away?” Hussaini said. “When the bombs hit, I would try to...
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‘We will die from hunger’: Gazans decry Israel’s UNRWA ban
After surviving more than a year of war in Gaza, Aisha Khaled is now afraid of dying of hunger if vital aid is cut off next year by a new Israeli law banning the UN Palestinian relief agency from operating in its territory. The law, which has been widely...
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Israel continues to increase trade with Arab and Muslim world
Despite calls by Ireland, Spain, Belgium, Slovenia and others for the European Union to reconsider its trade relations with Israel due to its continued offensive against the Palestinians in Gaza, Israeli foreign trade data during the first nine months of this year indicates a growth in the occupation state’s...
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Will Netanyahu stop the war after the ‘big day’?
The powerful and decision-making individuals in the Arab and Muslim countries await the result of the “big day”, i.e., the day of the American presidential elections on 5 November. Some are eager for Republican Party candidate, Donald Trump, to be the new president, while others hope that Democratic Party...