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.

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.

Google fired 28 workers on April 17 after dozens of employees participated in sit-ins at the company's offices in New York City and Sunnyvale, Calif., to protest a cloud computing contract with the Israeli government. Nine were arrested at the company headquarters in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood after they refused police orders to disband their occupation. Another five were arrested at the Sunnyvale headquarters. Tensions had been building between management and activist employees over Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion joint Google-Amazon deal to supply the Israeli government with cloud services, including artificial intelligence. Google employees affiliated with the group that organized the sit-ins, No Tech for Apartheid, said in a statement that the firings were "a flagrant act of retaliation."

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.

The US vetoed a resolution to approve Palestine's application for full membership in the United Nations on April 18. The resolution before the Security Council was put forward by Algeria, and received 12 votes in favor—more than the required nine. Two countries, the UK and Switzerland, abstained.

The UN Human Rights Council on April 5 adopted a resolution, A/HRC/55/L.30, reiterating the Security Council's call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza—and further calling for an embargo and prevention of the supply of weapons to Israel by UN Member States.

At least 42 people were reportedly killed March 29 in Israeli air-strikes near the Syrian city of Aleppo, allegedly targeting an arms depot belonging to the militant group Hezbollah. Those killed include members of Hezbollah and Syrian soldiers. Israeli air-strikes in southern Lebanon on March 27 killed 16 people, and one person in Israel was killed by a barrage of rockets fired by Hezbollah from south Lebanon. Earlier in the week, a series of air-strikes on Syria's eastern province of Deir el-Zor killed 15 people, including a World Health Organization staff member as well as an Iranian military adviser. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for those strikes. (TNH)

Calling out the "Blood Libel" rhetoric and imagery in anti-Israel invective would certainly be a lot easier if Israel were not actually killing children, in large numbers, with leading voices openly calling for genocide of the Palestinians. And if pro-Israel (and MAGA) propaganda did not cynically conflate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Yet from Manhattan to Cincinnati to Dallas to Berkeley and Santa Barbara, slogans and graffiti have tarred Jews as Zionists and "baby-killers"—playing into the hands of Israel's propagandists. Bill Weinberg discusses the dilemma in Episode 218 of the CounterVortex podcast.