UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Aug. 29 called for an "immediate cessation" of Israeli military operations in the occupied West Bank, saying that the latest "dangerous developments" are "fuelling an already explosive situation" there. The appeal came one day into Israel's new "counter-terrorism operation," the largest in the West Bank since the Second Intifada, with hundreds of troops raiding the city of Jenin and other areas of the territory. At least 14 Palestinians have been killed in the raids, either by air-strikes or gun battles on the ground. In the dark hours of the night, Israeli bulldozers moved into Tulkarm, tearing up roads, followed by an armored convoy. In a raid on a Tulkarm mosque, the IDF said local commander Muhhamad Jabber AKA Abu Shujaa was killed, said to have been a leader of a militant network based in the nearby Nur Shams refugee camp. Air-strikes were also carried out on targets in the town of Tubas. The total now killed on the West Bank since Oct. 7 stands at over 640. (UN News, UN News, NewsHour, The Guardian, The Telegraph, NBC) 

With anti-Semitic and Islamophobic violence in the US both rising since Israel began its campaign of genocide in Gaza, it is incumbent upon Palestine solidarity activists not to play into this dynamic by engaging in rhetoric and tactics that demonize Jews as the "other." Cynical weaponization of the accusation of anti-Semitism by Zionist propaganda increases rather than decreases our responsibility to be clear about recognizing and opposing actual anti-Semitism. Alas, in cases from Chicago to Seattle to Philadelphia to Washington DC, activists have failed to make this critical distinction—not only providing propaganda ammo to Israel's supporters, but displaying a paradoxical point of convergence with the MAGA right. In Episode 241 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg rises to the odious task of calling them out.

Dozens of Israeli settlers, many of them masked, attacked the Palestinian village of Jit, outside the West Bank town of Nablus, on the night of Aug. 15, hurling stones and Molotov cocktails. The group of over 100 assailants put at least four houses and six vehicles to the torch, and apparently killed one resident. The Palestinian Authority health ministry said Rashid Sedda, 22, was killed by gunfire from the settlers and another resident was seriously wounded in what it called an act of "organized state terrorism."

In Episode 239 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg provides an overview of the protest waves and popular uprisings going on across the planet—in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Bangladesh, India, China, Serbia, Venezuela, and in Israel. This as worldwide protests in solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza continue. Amid ongoing protests against Netanyahu in Israel, there have also been protests against Hamas in Gaza. Despite internal dangers and contradictions in all these upsurges, there is a sense that we could be approaching a revolutionary moment such as that seen in 2011—the year of the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street. And with the planet on an accelerating trajectory toward world war, the linking of these upsurges through conscious solidarity and the infusion of anti-war content to their demands is urgently mandated.

A fresh round of Gaza ceasefire negotiations got underway in Doha, Qatar, on Aug. 15. The aim is to reach a deal to bring an end to Israel’s more than 10-month-long war in the Gaza Strip and secure the release of the estimated 115 Israeli hostages still held by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups from their Oct. 7 attacks into Israel last year. Forty-one of the hostages are believed to be dead, and the recorded death toll from Israel's military campaign has now reached over 40,000, according to health authorities in Gaza. That's roughly 2% of Gaza’s population—or one out of every 50 residents—that has been killed.

The US ambassador to Japan did not attend this year's official commemoration of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki Aug. 9 in protest of the city's failure to invite Israel. Ambassador Rahm Emanuel said the event had been "politicized" by Nagasaki's decision to exclude the Jewish state. The embassy said Emanuel would honor the victims of the Nagasaki bombing at a ceremony at a Buddhist temple in Tokyo, and that a lower-ranking US official would attend the Nagasaki event. Five other G7 countries and the EU likewise said in a joint letter beforehand that they would send lower-ranked envoys instead of ambassadors to the ceremony. The letter said the exclusion "would result in placing Israel on the same level as countries such as Russia and Belarus," which were not invited to the ceremony for a third consecutive year. But Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki said his decision was unchanged.

In Episode 237 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg provides some under-reported context for the international crisis that has quickly spiraled since last week's deadly rocket strike on a Golan Heights village, and now threatens to escalate to the unthinkable. Under international law, the Golan is Syrian territory not Israeli. And the kids who were killed in the rocket strike were Druze not Jews. Most of the Druze residents of the Golan have refused Israeli citizenship and remain loyal to Syria. Only one country on Earth recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan—the USA, thanks to Donald Trump. Israel has a complicated history with the Druze, going back well before the occupation of the Golan in 1967. But the origins of the current trajectory toward regional war in a massacre of Druze youth points again to how peoples on the ground are exploited as pawns and propaganda in the cynical Great Power game. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

Israeli warplanes hit several targets in southern Lebanon early July 28, as diplomats worked frantically to prevent a regional war after a rocket strike that killed 12 youths the previous day in the Golan Heights. Israel is blaming Hezbollah for the rocket, which struck a football field in the Druze village of Majdal Shams.