Features

GAZA'S SHOCK ATTACK: UNVEILING THE CONTEXT

Gaza

by Haggai Matar, +972 Magazine

This is a terrible day. After waking up to air sirens under a barrage of hundreds of rockets fired on Israeli cities, we have been learning about the unprecedented assault by Palestinian militants from Gaza into Israeli towns bordering the strip.

News is flowing in of at least 40 Israelis killed and hundreds wounded, as well as some reportedly kidnapped into Gaza. Meanwhile, the Israeli army has already begun its own offensive on the blockaded strip, with troops mobilizing along the fence and air-strikes killing and wounding scores of Palestinians so far. The absolute dread of people who are seeing armed militants in their streets and homes, or the sight of fighter jets and approaching tanks, is unimaginable. Attacks on civilians are war crimes, and my heart goes to the victims and their families.

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CRIMEA: UKRAINE'S OTHER NATIONAL LIBERATION STRUGGLE

Tatars

by Yevgeny Lerner

Many would-be “peacemakers” on the political right as well as on the political left, including even some on the libertarian left, have “very helpfully” suggested that Ukraine should give up some territories, which they describe as “Russian-speaking,” in order to appease the aggressor.

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UKRAINE: DEBUNKING RUSSIA'S WAR PROPAGANDA

Kharkiv

by Bill Weinberg

The war in Ukraine has left cities in ruins, displaced 12 million people, and brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster. Why did Putin invade Ukraine?

Upon launching the invasion at the end of February, Putin said his aims were ensuring that Ukraine is “neutral,” “de-nazified” and “demilitarized.”

Putin has appropriated the rhetoric of anti-fascism, and his state-controlled media have for years portrayed the Ukrainian leadership as “Nazis.” Increasingly, the words “Ukrainian” and “Nazi” are used interchangeably.

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RUSSIA'S STRATEGY TO DESTABILIZE THE BALKANS

Kosovoa

by Nicholas Velazquez, Geopolitical Monitor

Russia's relationship with Serbia, a state in the heart of the contentious Balkans, will almost certainly be leveraged to imperil European security for the foreseeable future. Serbian President Aleksander Vucic, a former Europhilic parliamentarian turned autocratic leader, continues to advance Russia's destabilizing efforts in the region. Russia's close relationship with Serbia allows for the Kremlin to develop ties with nationalist elements in the Serb diaspora throughout the Balkans to destabilize Kosovo, Bosnia, and other pro-Western states in the region.

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RUSSIAN GENOCIDE OF THE UKRAINIAN NATION

Toward International Recognition

Mariupol

by Nastya Moyseyenko, Jurist

Russia's unprovoked aggression against Ukraine has sparked a strong international reaction, with most states referring to the actions of the Russian army as war crimes. A number of parliaments and heads of state have recognized that yet another international crime—genocide—is being committed by the occupation's troops.

Poland's parliament, the Sejm, was the first to pass a resolution in March, strongly condemning "acts of genocide…committed on the territory of sovereign Ukraine by the Russian Federation armed forces, together with its allies, at the behest of military commanders being under the direct authority of President Vladimir Putin."

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CRIMEA: LEGACY OF THE DEPORTATION

Crimean Tatars Again Being Erased from History in Their Homeland

Tatars

by Olena Makarenko, Euromaidan Press

May 18 is commemorated as a memorial day of the victims of the genocide of the Crimean Tatar people. On that day in 1944, Joseph Stalin began an operation to deport the entire population of Crimean Tatars who had survived the German occupation of the peninsula. Over 200,000 Tatars, baselessly accused of collaborating with the Nazis, were expelled in just two days. In packed and locked railroad cattle-cars and with few provisions or water, they were sent on an arduous journey to remote locations in Central Asia and Siberia. Over 46 percent of the Crimean Tatar people perished during the trip or in the first two years of the exile due to the harsh conditions. A year after the deportation, when World War II ended, demobilized Crimean Tatar soldiers were sent from the Soviet Army directly into exile too.

Only in 1989 did the USSR condemn the deportation, after which the indigenous people of Crimea started returning to their homeland. The deportation was recognized as a genocide by Ukraine in 2015, and afterwards by Latvia, Lithuania and Canada.

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APOLOGY TO THE 'WITCHES': WHY NOW?

witch-hunt

by Carole Linda Gonzalez

Why apologize for something you are not responsible for? Especially when no one is left alive who deserves an apology.

That was the first thought many doubtless had when reading that the first minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, offered a formal apology to those who had been accused of witchcraft between the 16th and 18th centuries and were subsequently executed. The apology was issued on International Woman's Day, this past March 8. Sturgeon said she was taking the occasion to acknowledge an "egregious historic injustice."

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ENVIRONMENTAL WAR CRIMES IN UKRAINE

Kyiv

by Elliot Winter, Jurist

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has entered its third month. The suffering of Ukrainian civilians has been awful and the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) is satisfied that there are "reasonable grounds" to believe war crimes have been committed. Media attention has, quite rightly, focused on the plight of those individuals caught up in the carnage—many of whom have died in terrible circumstances. However, in the background, there is another victim of the invasion: the environment. This brief piece is intended to highlight instances of environmental destruction that have occurred in the context of the invasion and to show that—despite the rigorous tests that apply—these too might qualify as war crimes.

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