David Storey

As an Irish Jew my Star of David is no longer a badge of pride but a mark of shame I’m aware that by writing these words, I’ll alienate members of my family, friends and wider community

"It is important to stress that the anger and condemnation of the brutality of the Israeli regime does not make Ireland anti-Semitic, as some Israelis and their diplomatic representatives in this country claim. It makes us proudly anti-genocide"
www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

A wasteland of rubble, dust and graves: how Gaza looks from the sky The Guardian joins a Jordanian military airdrop for a rare chance to observe a landscape devastated by Israel’s offensive

The erasure of people and place
@alessiomamo.bsky.social & Lorenzo Tondo
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Any comment, FIFA?

Palestine Action ban is an attack on fundamental freedoms | Letter A letter from 52 scholars including Tariq Ali, Judith Butler, Angela Davis, Naomi Klein and Avi Shlaim

"As scholars dedicated to questions of justice & ethics, we believe that Yvette Cooper’s recent proscription of Palestine Action represents an attack both on the entire pro-Palestine movement &on fundamental freedoms of expression, association, assembly & protest"
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...

Landscape of erasure
#Gaza

'The Depravity of Gaza's Aid Crisis Shows What Happens When Profit Comes Before Human Rights' In just over a month, the UN reports that over 850 Gazans have been killed at, or within close proximity to aid distribution sites in Gaza

"It is grotesque depravity, actioned at the hands of one of the world’s most powerful militaries, backed by the US, and facilitated by US contractors in the pursuit of profit"
 Emma De Souza on Gaza and the facade of aid
@bylinetimes.bsky.social
bylinetimes.com/2025/08/05/g...

I saw many atrocities as a senior aid official in Gaza. Now Israeli authorities are trying to silence us Devastated hospitals, mass graves, bodies eaten by dogs in the street. After speaking out, I discovered my visa will not be renewed, says Jonathan Whittall of UN OCHA

"What is unfolding is not inevitable. It is the result of deliberate political choices by those who create these conditions and those who enable them.....International law cannot be a tool of convenience for some if it is to be a viable tool of protection for all"
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

YouTube video by Mothers Against Genocide A Mother's Heart for Palestine (Funds Direct to GAZA-Download/Donate on MyChannl)

A mother's heart for Palestine
youtu.be/-a5Qjd-epSM?...

Trump’s Texas gerrymander is supercharging a new war on democracy Texas Republicans just unveiled a shocking plan to give their party five new House seats.

Redrawing the electoral map:
@ariberman.bsky.social on contemporary gerrymandering in the US
@motherjones.com
#ElectoralGeography
www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

The US is complicit in genocide. Let’s stop pretending otherwise | Mehdi Hasan The US government, enabled by the media, is an active participant in Israel’s atrocities in Gaza

"This will be your shameful legacy..... when all of the bodies have been pulled from the rubble. Not defending your ally or fighting terrorism, but non-stop complicity in a genocide; aiding and abetting the crime of crimes"
@mehdirhasan.bsky.social
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

‘If we keep knocking down places like Smyth’s, soon there’ll be nothing interesting left for tourists to visit’ Customers at the celebrated Dublin 4 pub express concern as it faces threat of demolition

Place heritage:
@frankie49.bsky.social on a pub under threat
www.irishtimes.com/ireland/dubl...

Overlapping emotions @brianbilston.bsky.social

The Arctic Indigenous Peoples and Russia’s War in Ukraine - Conflict and Civicness Research Blog Austin,SJ Russia’s ethnic minorities are notoriously overrepresented in the death toll of Russia’s war in Ukraine. However, the fact that Arctic Indigenous peoples of Russia’s North are among the hard...

"Russia’s Arctic Indigenous peoples are disproportionately impacted by the war in Ukraine. They suffer the highest per capita death toll and are drafted or recruited more frequently than other groups"
@lseblogs.bsky.social
blogs.lse.ac.uk/crp/2025/08/...

Irish President

“I cannot really stand in a public venue & give a public speech & speak about our language when I see such incredible destruction of an entire people being taking place. Are we to watch children starving, women dehydrated who are trying to feed their children?..”

Soon, hopefully!

👍

👍

A visit to Hay on Wye resulting in the inevitable.....
@sathnam.bsky.social @garrettcarr.bsky.social & others

“In Obama’s world, apparently, some lives matter more than others — and it’s not the ones buried under the debris in Khan Younis.”
~Colin Sheridan @colinivan

Irish Examiner

☕️🥐

Evening light, River Wye

Sunshine and sheep in the Wales-England borderlands
#Herefordshire #Powys

I spent decades at Columbia. I’m withdrawing my fall course due to its deal with Trump | Rashid Khalidi The university’s draconian policies and new definition of antisemitism make much teaching impossible

"A university that was once a site of free inquiry and learning (is now) a shadow of its former self, an anti-university...where faculty and students are told from on high what they can teach and say, under penalty of severe sanctions"
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The Sad History of "Changing the Map" of the Middle East Netanyahu is proclaiming that his war against Hamas, the attacks on Iran, and the new attacks on Syria will create a “new” Middle East.  Israel has been using military force against Syria for the past...

The Sad History of “Changing the Map” of the Middle East
@counterpunchmedia.bsky.social
www.counterpunch.org/2025/07/30/t...

Farage’s firestarter politics A year after riots swept Britain, Reform’s leader and his supporters are warning of future unrest unless their policies are followed. The message is a threat wrapped in respectability

"Farage, Anderson, Goodwin and Pearson frame their interventions as warnings....But the more you read and the more you hear of what they say, it sounds instead like a threat"
@jamesrball.com on Farage'sfirestarterpolitics
@thenewworldmag.bsky.social
www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-f...

An effigy of refugees, burned by a crowd: this is where Europe’s brutal fantasy of border control has led us | Maurice Stierl The shocking scene in Northern Ireland is the result of a decade spent militarising Europe’s fringes – and dismissing the human cost, says migration and border researcher Maurice Stierl

'We are being served “border spectacles” – performative but nonetheless violent and racist acts of exclusion, demarcating those who supposedly belong and those who do not'
@mauricestierl.bsky.social on Europe's ''border fantasies'
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

It seems strange that recognition of a Palestinian state is conditional on Israel's behaviour 🤔

#Geosky

Silence on Gaza will be 'moral failure', says President President Michael D Higgins has urged his European counterparts to call for action on Gaza and said "failure to take an initiative will be rightly construed as a moral failure".

Silence on Gaza will be 'moral failure', says @president.ie
www.rte.ie/news/2025/07...

Protesting over Gaza’s starvation feels like screaming into a void – but we mustn’t stop | Nesrine Malik Political platitudes and a few trucks of aid won’t save the children dying now. But they show leaders can’t ignore public opinion for ever, says Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik

There is "a permanent moment of impending action... Action that never comes. And while we wait, the status quo is maintained in a holding pattern until the latest horror fades from our screens and front pages"
@nesrinemalik.bsky.social
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Denying Gaza's starvation is no less vile than denying the Holocaust | Opinion ***

'Denying Gaza's Starvation Is No Less Vile Than Denying the Holocaust'
Gideon Levy @haaretzcom.bsky.social
www.haaretz.com/opinion/2025...