Unreal: the symbolism of Trump signing a surrender agreement at Versailles in which the US agrees to pay massive reparations is just too perfect.
I wouldn't be surprised if Macron weaponized Trump's complete ignorance of history and told him something like: "Mr. President, Versailles is where the most consequential deal of the 20th century was signed. Yours deserves the same stage."
Either that or Macron stumbled into the perfect historical parallel through sheer obliviousness - which, knowing him, is actually even more likely.
Dear @hildebentele as someone who lived under apartheid in SA, fought against it & served in our first democratic parliament, & as a researcher & writer have travelled in & published extensively about Israel, I can assure you that there are many common features of SA & Israeli apartheid & some important structural differences. I’m happy to explain these to you in detail. It’s also important to remember that my former boss Nelson Mandela & my friend Archbishop Desmond Tutu described Israeli apartheid as more brutal than South Africa’s
Crazy that this is getting barely any coverage. This year’s European Press Prize was just awarded to an investigative report by the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant. It is entitled “What the Wounds Tell” and in it the journalists Maud Effting and Willem Feenstra document the cases of 114 children in Gaza under the age of 15 who were struck by a single bullet to the head or chest. Almost all of them died or were left severely disabled. They chose to document only the cases of boys and girls under the age of 15 (though often much younger: aged 3, 4 or 7) because these are children who can be immediately identified as such. “A single bullet in these parts of the body is a clear indication that these children were deliberately targeted“, the two journalists write.
This is the article: https://t.co/YkZrpqBWBQ
Now that Gaza lies in ruins—shattered, like a beloved face after a long brutality—Israel moves with a terrible confidence to the next act: The act of leaving every soul there not merely wounded, but permanently disabled. Injured, sick, hungry, homeless, without work, without hope. This is not war’s collateral damage. This is design.
As my friend Gideon Levy writes—and he knows, he knows—this is the prelude to expulsion. Think of it: a society without teachers, without doctors, without social workers, without engineers, without clerks. That is not a society. That is a holding pen. A slow erasure. And when nothing functions—no school, no hospital, no office, no heart—then it becomes ‘easy,’ they tell themselves, to scatter the people to the four corners of the earth. Like seeds from a broken pod, except no soil will take them.
We must name this. Not with rage alone, though rage is honest. But with the cold, clear tears of recognition: they are making life impossible so that departure becomes the only ‘choice.’ And the world watches, adjusts its spectacles, and calls for restraint. Restraint! There is no restraint in a slow drowning.
A former senior colleague of Raffi Berg, now the BBC's Middle East online editor, forensically analyses his output as a BBC writer.
It shows a consistent pattern of humanising Israeli soldiers and settlers while dehumanising Palestinians, and burying information that might place Israel in a bad light – talents that seem to have led to his promotion to BBC editor.
Martin Asser concludes: "The world Berg presents in his early BBC features is a rich source of misinformation and / or disinformation."
This article should prove useful to Owen Jones' legal team as they fight Berg's defamation case. Jones cited 13 BBC journalists who accused Berg of skewing the corporation's coverage to make Israel look good.
More here: https://t.co/IcsHVGiCNw
An Israeli-born, Trump-appointed US attorney — who's referred to Palestinians as “animals,” called for Gaza to be wiped “off the map,” and suggested “even the children” in Gaza are terrorists — dropped charges against an Israeli tied to a biolab in Nevada.https://t.co/xyXP4Mtnlu
One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world - the ancient city of Tyre - designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its incredible historical sites. This is what it looks like today following multiple Israeli airstrikes.
Let’s talk about Rania Mallah, killed yesterday in an Israeli strike on Bourj al-Shamali in Tyre.
For 12 hours, Rania was buried beneath the rubble & known to still be alive.
Her family kept calling her mobile phone.
She would switch it on to let them know she was still there. Still breathing. Still waiting to be rescued.
To let Lebanese Civil Defence rescuers know where she was trapped.
Rescue teams pulled others out & kept digging with their bare hands in search of her, until orders came to halt all rescue operations until the following morning.
But they had Rania’s number.
They kept calling her.
And she kept answering.
She never spoke.
But they could hear her breathing.
For 12 hours, Rania lay there alone beneath broken concrete, stones, darkness, dust & fear. Most likely injured. Listening to voices above her, knowing people were trying to reach her but were being prevented from continuing.
Just like in Maarakeh, rescuers were forced to stop searching overnight.
Still, they kept calling her phone to give her hope. To let her know she had not been abandoned.
By around 1:00 a.m., roughly 12 hours after the strike, her phone finally went dead.
The battery had most likely run out.
This morning, rescuers resumed the search.
They found Rania.
Next to her was her mobile phone.
She had died.
Israel killed her twice.
The first time with a bomb.
The second time when rescuers were prevented from saving her.
‘The castle is protected under the Enhanced Protection mechanism of the Hague Convention, one of the highest levels of international protection granted to cultural heritage during armed conflict’ - @GreenSoutherns
Tony Blair is the living embodiment of what happens when political office becomes a down payment on future plunder. Ejected in 2007 by his own MPs as a massive liability, he bequeathed Britain a wild casino economy primed for the 2008 crash. And when the British economy crashed and burned, Mr Blair kept quiet while honing his skills at securing power by other means.
His first job, after his ejection from 10 Downing Street, was as the West’s Middle East envoy, with a supposed emphasis on Gaza. It took six painful years for Mr Blair’s tenure to prove a failure so profound it amounted to active complicity in Israel’s ethnic cleansing, in Palestinian erasure, and in paving the ground for the ongoing genocide.
Soon after, the Chilcot Inquiry demolished Blair’s Iraq lies, exposing him as a liar, a chancer and a war criminal responsible for countless corpses of Iraqis, but also of British soldiers.
Then came Blair’s real innovation: the financialisation of the ex-premiership itself. The Tony Blair Institute, fuelled by £130 million from Oracle's Larry Ellison—coincidentally, the largest individual donor to the Friends of the IDF—became a shadow state, brokering governance contracts for autocrats and companies like Palantir that weaponise AI to produce mega-death abroad and full-on surveillance of Western populations.
Now, in May 2026, this corporate fixer issues a 5700 word tantrum demanding that Labour embrace Trump even more than Starmer already has, denounce what is left of Labour’s betrayed Green New Deal, and trash the remnants of workers' rights. This is not the wisdom of an aging statesman. It is the frantic squirming of a man fearing his grip on oligarchic power might soon wane and whose entire post-10 Downing Street existence depends on preventing the many from ever reclaiming what the few have plundered.
https://t.co/1Onlpx9Nkh