The most profound realities of human existence are often the ones that can never be measured or quantified. Wisdom. Beauty. Truth. Compassion. Courage. Love. Loneliness. Grief. The struggle to face our own mortality. A life of meaning.
As we begin a new week, the media is filled with reports that President Trump is ready to approve a US ground operation against Iran, either to seize Iran’s uranium or to attack an island off the country’s coast. Thousands of US troops have sped to the conflict area to await President Trump’s decision.
The US needs to help Israel harm people or else the people who are mad about being harmed might harm Israelis. It’s circular reasoning all the way through.
I have always found it interesting, and at times revealing, when seasoned activists and intellectuals in the West, including those who see themselves as deeply committed to Palestine, raise the same familiar point: Arab governments must stand up to Israel and the United States in solidarity with their brethren in Palestine.
War is the most horrific series of events upon which any government can engage. It is systematic, industrialized, indiscriminate killing. It kills innocent adults and little girls. It often ruins the post-war lives of the killers. It is young men violently fighting old men’s power games. It is the health of the state.
This new crisis comes at a pivotal moment, as the European Union faces increasingly strong internal challenges to its climate policies.
In the EU’s initial response to the US-Israeli strikes, Kaja Kallas read the agreed wording calling of “maximum restraint, protection of civilians, full respect of international law”. The question of the war’s legality has laid bare a union roughly split into three camps — one applauding Washington, one hedging, one condemning
