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Since the Israeli war on Gaza began last year, the military has been imposing severe restrictions on movements across the occupied West Bank, including Hebron, the only Palestinian city alongside Jerusalem where Israeli settlers reside in the Old City.

For decades, this has meant direct Israeli control over parts of Hebron’s Old City, where nearly 35,000 Palestinians and some 800 settlers live.

The settlers are provided with protection by the soldiers, designated segregated roads and given full freedom of movement.

On the other hand, the Palestinians are forced to go through 28 checkpoints and dozens of military barriers, often being subjected to humiliating and long searches, sexual harassment and even arrest without cause.

The military restrictions and the settlers' violence spare no one, including pupils.

Before Israeli settlements began growing in Hebron in the early 2000s, the Old City used to be a vibrant hub for Palestinians,

From sabotaging Oslo to funneling Qatari cash into Gaza, Bibi has spent his career bolstering Hamas to help perpetuate the conflict. Even after Oct. 7, argues historian Adam Raz, he's still advancing the same strategy.

As world leaders debate ways to reduce carbon emissions at the COP29 climate conference in Azerbaijan ((Nov 11-22)), one Australian start-up believes fungi could be the key to mitigating climate change. The company has developed a product for farmers made from live fungi spores to help lock carbon in agricultural soils.

The International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), a business lobby comprised of some of the world’s largest fossil fuel producers and greenhouse gas emitters, is hosting a series of events in its COP29 BusinessHub pavilion, sponsored by oil and gas giants including Chevron, ExxonMobil, SOCAR, and TotalEnergies.

New documents show how a deceptive PR strategy pioneered in 1950s California first exposed the risk of climate change and then helped the industry deny it.

Though most animals, including humans, are born, age, and eventually die, some species can break away from this traditional lifecycle: they seemingly defy age and revert to younger versions of themselves.

The study

The world is in the throes of unprecedented repression regarding climate activists, human rights defenders, journalists, academics and others who express opposing views to their government. The problem is widespread and three leading civil society networks – Climate Action Network, Publish What You Pay and Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice assert this as an epidemic impeding crucial climate action and violating human rights laws across the world. Without these voices of civil society, the fight for climate justice cannot succeed, jeopardising the integrity of climate summits themselves.

"Protests are fundamentally disruptive, that is the nature of protests [but] the fact that there is disruption doesn’t mean it’s not a protected right"

Linda Lakhdhir

Legal Director, Climate Rights International

For the past year, the Washington Post’s senior diplomatic columnist, David Ignatius, has been loyal to the U.S. and Israeli national security teams, playing the role of stenographer in sharing and repeating their optimism about peace in the Middle East.  He has reported one hopeful scenario after another, and avoids criticizing the self-serving comments from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Antony Blinken over the past year regarding the outlook for peace.

The world’s largest institutional emitter, the U.S. military, sits beyond the reach of the metrics meant to hold countries accountable for climate pollution. Exempt from transparency requirements at the COP or within U.N. climate agreements, the military sector is, in fact, the leading institutional driver of the climate crisis. It burns through fossil fuels on a scale that surpasses entire nations while waging wars that destroy lives, communities, and the land itself. It’s a deliberate omission, one meant to hide the environmental and social costs of militarism from view.

In the past year alone, the war on Gaza has been a horrifying example of militarism’s environmental toll. Entire communities were leveled under the firepower of U.S.-funded bombs. In just two months, emissions from these military activities equaled the yearly carbon output of 26 countries. This violence bleeds beyond borders. U.S. police forces train with the Israeli military, and they’ll soon bring their war tactics to Atlanta’s Cop City, where a training center is planned on sacred Indigenous land.

It’s easy to despair in the face of such unaccountable power. But in times of crisis, clarity can become a weapon. We must expose the truth that militarism is antithetical to climate justice. True climate solutions don’t come from polite panel discussions led by those who wield the tools of destruction. They come from radical honesty and demands for accountability. They come from a commitment to ending the empire choking our planet and communities. And they come from a shared goal of mutual liberation that doesn’t ignore the plight of the many to serve the few.

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