Germany

Condemn Poland plan to suspend asylum rights

Over 40 human rights groups have warned Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk against implementing his plan to temporarily suspend the right to claim asylum. Among the groups are Amnesty International, several asylum law organizations, and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation. In an open letter on Oct. 14, the organizations stressed that the fundamental right to asylum is binding on Poland under international law, as the country has ratified the Geneva Convention, and under EU law as provided by Article 18 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Additionally, Article 56 of the Polish Constitution enshrines the right to asylum. Acknowledging that "[w]e live in difficult times of war and conflicts breaking out all over the world," the statement nonetheless asserted that fundamental rights, as the core values of Europe, are not subject to discussion or restriction.

Gaza at issue in Nagasaki commemoration

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.

'Criminalization' of climate protests in Europe

European governments have reacted to a growing wave of direct-action protests by climate activists with heavy-handed policing, effectively criminalizing such campaigns, seeking to dissolve groups, and imposing restrictions on basic rights, Human Rights Watch charged in a July 22 statement. "This creates serious risks to environmental activism and civil society as a whole and undercuts vital efforts to address the climate crisis," the group found. 

Russian playwright gets prison for 'justifying terrorism'

A Russian military court on July 15 convicted a playwright and a theater director and sentenced them each to six years in prison over a play that was found to "justify terrorism." The judge found writer Svetlana Petriychuk and director Yevgeniya Berkovich, who had been in pre-trial detention since May 2023, guilty under Article 205.2 of the Russian Criminal Code. This provision makes the offense of "justifying terrorism" punishable by up to seven years imprisonment.

Anti-Semitism versus anti-Zionism: beyond parsing

The Zionist propaganda machine continues to weaponize the accusation of anti-Semitism to delegitimize any effort to resist Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza. This increases rather than decreases the responsibility of activists to distinguish—and oppose—actual anti-Semitism. Yet in recent weeks, sectors of the activist response to the Gaza genocide in the United States have utterly surrendered to the most abject, undisguised, unambiguous anti-Semitism—playing right into the hands of the Zionist calumnies. Bill Weinberg discusses this difficult reality in Episode 231 of the CounterVortex podcast.

Gaza aid groups brace for Israeli invasion of Rafah

As Israel continues to threaten a full-scale assault on Rafah in southern Gaza, local, regional, and international aid groups have been scrambling to try to prepare to respond to the catastrophic humanitarian impact a ground invasion is expected to have. Facing a severe scarcity of supplies and resources, people involved in the effort say whatever preparations they are able to make will undoubtedly fall far short of the needs.

Podcast: from Warsaw Ghetto to Gaza Strip

Masha Gessen in a New Yorker essay draws a parallel between the Warsaw Ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland and the Gaza Strip, where Israel's long siege is now escalating to genocide. Some Israeli military tactics in Gaza mirror those of the Nazis in Warsaw. Yet, while some voices on the ostensible "left" go so far as to glorify Hamas, Israel's online partisans are drawing a parallel that reverses the roles, depicting Hamas as the new Nazis. In a case of paradoxical fascistic pseudo-anti-fascism, the genocidal rhetoric of figures such as hardline Israeli cabinet member Bezalel Smotrich dehumanizes the victims by portraying all Gazans as Nazis. In Episode 223 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg turns to the words of Leon Trotsky and Albert Camus to make sense of the seeming contradiction.

Marek Edelman: Jewish hero, anti-Zionist

In Episode 222 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg marks the 81st anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising by reviewing the new documentary on Jewish armed struggle against the Nazis, Resistance—They Fought Back. A nearly forgotten element of this struggle was the consciously anti-Zionist politics of some of the resistance leaders—most notably Jewish Combat Organization subcommander Marek Edelman, who was the last surviving leader of the Ghetto Uprising when he died in his native Poland in 2009. Edelman was a follower of the General Jewish Labor Bund, which rejected the colonization of Palestine in favor of fighting for a dignified and secure place for Jews within Europe. This history is especially critical at this moment in light of credible accusations that the self-proclaimed Jewish State is committing genocide in Gaza, and propagandistic efforts to cynically conflate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

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