New Internationalist

‘How could the occupier have the right to self-defence?’

Conrad Landin

A man waves a Palestinian flag. AHMED ABU HAMEEDA/UNSPLASH October 7 was just another rainy day in Dundee. But for one young woman who had recently arrived in the city, it was to be a special day back home. Saga, a young master’s student in dental public health who asked to be identified only by her first name, had moved from Gaza to Scotland a few weeks before. Her uncle was getting married on October 7, and Saga spoke to family members as they made preparations for the wedding. She soon realized something was wrong. As her close family went to their relatives’ home in Deir al-Balah, in the south of Gaza, ‘they all had pale faces, and they were struggling with the internet,’ she tells New Internationalist. In the space of a few hours, Hamas militants launched their attack on Israel, and Palestinians began to realize the scale of the counterattack that would follow. ‘Normal life turned to emergency life,’ says Saga. And it’s been different ever since. ‘I am afraid to ask about... Full article

The UK kids skipping school for Palestine

Lydia Noon

‘Every child deserves a childhood’, reads a placard at Bristol’s school strike for Palestine. LYDIA NOON ‘There’s one ribbon for each of the children killed in Gaza,’ said Zeinab*, gesturing to a large plastic box of green, white, red and black ribbons in the colours of the Palestinian flag. ‘I hope there’s enough,’ she added quietly. On Friday 3 November, Zeinab’s two children joined around 400 others from across Bristol, southwest England, as part of the city’s School Strike For Palestine – the first UK school strike since Israel’s bombardment of Gaza began last month. The strike was organized by a collective of local campaigners and parents, supported by Bristol Stop the War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign Bristol and The Green Party. That same day, hundreds of 17 and 18-year-old school students in East London also boycotted an assembly featuring Labour MP Wes Streeting due to his party’s position on Israel-Palestine. In Bristol, the children and adults... Full article

History on repeat: Aberfan and Mariana

Rebecca Jarman and Diana Salazar

Locals stand on the bank of the Doce River in Bento Rodrigues a village almost totally destroyed when the Fundão tailings dam collapsed in Brazil. MOVEMENT OF PEOPLE AFFECTED BY DAMS The Welsh village of Aberfan and the tiny settlement of Bento Rodrigues, in southern Brazil, are on opposite sides of the world, but they are united by tragedy. Both victims of the worst mining-related disasters in recent history, albeit almost 50 years apart, the two towns tell the same tale of greed, negligence and contempt for working-class lives. This Sunday, 5 November, marks eight years since Bento Rodrigues was destroyed by a wave of toxic mud unleashed by the collapse of the Fundão tailing mine in Mariana. Nineteen people were killed and hundreds lost their homes. At least 45 million cubic metres of waste crashed its way 600 kilometres down the Rio Doce eventually spilling into the Atlantic in the worst environmental disaster in Brazil’s history. Eight years on, the communities affected are... Full article

Fifty years of independent journalism

Vanessa Baird

The cutting of the cake at New Internationalist’s 50th birthday celebrations I don’t think the bunch of young and desperately inexperienced people who, against all conventional advice, launched a consumer magazine on ‘Third World development’ in 1973, could have dreamed that it would still be published 50 years later. I doubt their initial backers, Oxfam and Christian Aid, thought so either. But here it is and here we are. New Internationalist was already a strapping teenager by the time I joined, so I missed out on its earliest trials, traumas, tantrums and tribulations, which have a quite mythical quality about them. As the world changed, so did New Internationalist – expanding its concerns, exploring and contributing to revolutions in feminism, environmentalism, personal and identity politics, global and climate justice. All the while it retained its core commitment to tackling social and economic inequality in a way that is both radical and accessible. The company’s... Full article

Has Netanyahu misjudged tolerance for his actions?

Andrew Feinstein

Press statement by Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu at the European Union headquarters in Brussels, Belgium on 11 December 2017. ALEXANDROS MICHAILIDIS/SHUTTERSTOCK The appalling violence unleashed against Palestinians by Israel in the wake of Hamas’s attack on 7 October constitutes war crimes and could even become a genocide. This is taking place with the uncritical support of Western governments who are profiting massively from the arms sales that accompany the waves of bombing. But has Israel’s government made a profound miscalculation? Might the ferocity, brutality and barbarism of the assault on Gaza and other Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs) lead to more and more people around the world questioning the nature and functioning of the Israeli state and its ongoing, illegal occupation of Palestine? Widespread solidarity In the UK, US and Europe the mainstream media has largely parroted the rhetoric of senior politicians in accepting ‘Israel’s right to... Full article

Justice from the King?

Anthony Lang’at

A view of Jamji Tea Estate operated by Ekaterra and previously by Unilever. Evicted Kenyans violently pushed out by colonial era settlers are calling for justice. ANTHONY LANG’AT Kitur Sang stands on the side of the road in Chepulu village, Kericho county, Kenya, and faces east. He looks beyond the tiny tea-growing hamlets to sprawling estates which extend for miles to the southwestern edge of the Mau Forest in Bomet county. With nostalgia, the 99-year-old recalls his teenage years when he grazed cattle, sheep and goats, hunted antelopes and harvested honey inside the forest, which is now thousands of hectares of tea plantations. But it’s not all fond memories; Sang’s childhood was dominated by violent evictions at the hands of British settlers who were establishing tea estates aided by the colonial government. Kitur Sang,99, a resident of Kericho County. His family was evicted from Kaptuigeny, present day Chemasingi Tea Estate for the establishment of tea estates.... Full article

Settlers displace West Bank Bedouins amid Israel’s Gaza attack

Tom Anderson

Palestinians flee the Bedouin village of Ein Rashash, east of Ramallah, in the West Bank, on October 18 2023, following ongoing attacks by Israeli settlers from a nearby illegal outpost. OREN ZIV Trigger warning: Sexual violence, assault, racism ‘Today we have no food, no clothes, no schools, no homes, nothing. Now, we’re wandering. I’m 50 years old. Everything I have worked for, for my children, it’s over. The occupation has taken my house and everything else. They’ve done to me what they did in 1948, and today I’m a refugee.’ These are not the words of a displaced Palestinian in Gaza, but of Abu Bashar, a Bedouin community leader from the West Bank village of Wadi al-Siq. On 12 October, armed settlers and Israeli soldiers stormed his village, nestled in the hills east of Ramallah, telling residents they had one hour to leave, or they’d be killed. In the scramble to escape, Wadi al-Siq’s 187 residents were forced to abandon cars and belongings, fleeing on foot in scenes... Full article

How Palestine became Israel’s spyware test-bed

Antony Loewenstein

An Israeli soldier puts her hand under a mini drone in Beersheba, a city in the Naqab desert. In 2022, drones made up 25% of Israel’s total weapons exports. AMIR COHEN/REUTERS Investigative journalist Javier Valdez Cárdenas was gunned down on the streets of Culiacán, northwest Mexico, in May 2017. It was in broad daylight. Just moments beforehand, the reporter had stepped out of the newsroom of Riodoce, the Mexican weekly he co-founded to investigate drug cartels. It would be another four years until one of his killers, Juan Francisco Picos Barrueta, was sentenced to 32 years in prison for the crime. Violence against journalists is all too common in Mexico. But this wasn’t a straightforward, brazen execution of a reporter who had dedicated his life to exposing organized crime and corruption. Two years after his death, his widow Griselda Triana, also a journalist, was informed by the Canadian digital watchdog group Citizen Lab that her mobile phone had been infected with a... Full article

‘This is the second Nakba. The time to act is now’

Ahmed Abu Artema

I’m recording this message from Gaza. I don’t have the words to describe the dire situation here right now. There is no food, there is no water, there are no supplies. Outside the few shops that remain open, long lines of people wait for scarce loaves of bread. No cars drive in the streets; people are too scared of being targeted by the Israeli war planes flying above us. The hospitals cannot receive more patients. Relentless bombing has razed entire neighbourhoods to the ground. You would no longer recognize them. The situation in Gaza is lacking all conditions of life. Where I am in the south of the strip, the bombing is not as intense at this moment. Israel’s strategy is to bombard the north to forcibly transfer Palestinians to the southern region. But although it claims this area is safe, a hospital has been hit and many homes too. We do not know where the next one will strike. Everyone is scared that they will be the next victim. This is not an Israeli occupation. It is genocide... Full article

Taxcast: Busting the myths of the war on drugs, part 1

Naomi Fowler

The US government has spent an estimated $1 trillion since the country began its ‘war on drugs’ in the 1970s. But in the 50 years since then, the cross-border flows of illegal drugs, arms and money have only increased. It’s a mess – but it didn’t need to be this way. The first instalment of this two-part series on the war on drugs exposes the mistakes of the so-called ‘war on drugs’ and shows how to stop wasting lives. For starters, why did the US choose to fight drugs instead of the tax havens that enable it? ‘The tools of tax avoidance are the same tools that enable the illicit drug trade’s extraordinary resilience to prohibition,’ Eric Gutierrez, of the International Centre of Human Rights and Drug Policy, says on the podcast. ‘It was always about the US and the UK in particular, protecting and leveraging their own national trading interests on both sides of the Atlantic,’ says Dr Mary Young, Associate Professor of International and Organised Crime at the Bristol Law... Full article