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This Easter, the government announced it had issued 6,000 permits, though there are 50,000 Christians – mostly Catholic or Greek Orthodox – living in the West Bank beyond East Jerusalem. However, in reality, just 4,000 were given, according to Christian leaders, and often only to a few members of each family who applied.

These permits are valid for just one week and do not allow the Palestinian pilgrims to stay in Jerusalem overnight, meaning they have to make the gruelling journey back to the West Bank by bus or taxi – crossing a multitude of army checkpoints – every evening, limiting the festivities they can take part in. A group from the village of Taybeh said the Israeli military still did not allow them to cross over to Jerusalem for Palm Sunday even though they had valid permits.

The few who do make it to the Old City have been met with increased police brutality in recent years. In April 2023, Palestinian Christian worshipers and international pilgrims were beaten by Israeli police and armed forces as they attempted to reach the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Palestinian Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi pleaded with the school for protection for months, and expressed concern about an apparent FBI visit and a possible break-in to his residence before the Trump administration detained him during a citizenship interview this week, emails obtained by Zeteo show.

“I am writing to you with a final plea for urgent help. My life is in danger, and Columbia University’s inaction is putting me at further risk,” Mahdawi, a green card holder, wrote in a March 17 email to then-Columbia President Katrina Armstrong, School of General Studies dean Lisa Rosen-Metsch, Columbia chief operating officer Cas Holloway, senior vice president for Columbia Health Melanie Bernitz, and Columbia dean of religious life Ian Rottenberg.

“On Monday, March 10, 2025, following the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, I sent an urgent email requesting immediate support, as I am being explicitly targeted for deportation, doxxed, and followed. Yet, to this moment, I have received no response from you,” he continued.

Harvard is refusing the plainly illegal demands by the Trump administration. That sends an important signal: resistance is possible.

But universities must realize that the government is adopting a divide-and-rule tactic: they should collaborate on a shared litigation strategy, take a common approach in getting the public on their side, and do everything possible to have Congress push back against Trump treating money allocated by the legislature as if it were a private slush fund to be used for political blackmail. Some faculty have already begun to unite. In principle, not just progressives, but self-respecting conservatives – if any remain – should be responsive to such a three-pronged strategy.

It has become abundantly clear that Trump 2.0 is using a moral panic about “woke” and pro-Palestinian protests as pretexts to subjugate institutions posing multiple threats to aspiring autocrats: universities constitute an independent source of information; they encourage critical thinking; they gather in one spot young people easily outraged by injustices. Of course, like all institutions, they have flaws; but, unlike, let’s say, businesses, they give wide latitude to criticism and position-taking (if you think colleges are censoring speech, try some political oratory on the factory floor or in the boardroom).

“Since the war began 1.5 years ago, the Israeli Authorities have banned the entry of international media to Gaza to report independently,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement.

In addition to the ban, credible accounts and eyewitness testimonies from relief organisations on the situation in Gaza are being discredited and questioned, Lazzarini lamented.

“The free flow of information and independent reporting are key to facts and accountability during conflicts. Gaza should be no exception,” the UNRWA chief said.

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Two of Donald Trump’s top national security aides will hold talks in Paris on Thursday with European politicians and security advisers, as the US and Europe search for common ground on ending the Ukraine war and averting an Iran conflict.

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, are expected to hear concerns about Russia amid so-far fruitless US attempts to arrange a ceasefire three years after Russia invaded its neighbour.

Rubio and Witkoff will meet the French president, Emmanuel Macron, as well as British and German figures, including the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy.

Bernie Sanders has been repeatedly uttering the phrase “Israel has a right to defend itself” on his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour with Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, which in the year 2025 can only be interpreted as blatant genocide apologia.

Israel does not have “a right to defend itself” against an occupied population in a giant concentration camp. Under international law it has a right to end the occupation, and that’s it. “Israel has a right to defend itself” is just a slogan people say when they want to justify supplying an ongoing genocide.

Sanders has been mixing his support for Israel in with periodic criticisms of Netanyahu and the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza, always taking care to make his criticisms about the behavior of Israel’s current leadership and not the nature of the racist apartheid state itself.

Sanders is doing this for two reasons. Firstly, he is working to galvanize a big tent inclusive coalition of Democrats in opposition to Trump, and he wants that big tent to include people who think genocide is bad and people who think genocide is fine. He doesn’t want to offend the pro-genocide liberals.

Secondly, Sanders is doing this because he himself is a Zionist. Like other liberal Zionists, Bernie Sanders upholds a vision of an Israel that has never, ever existed: one which remains an ethnostate dominated by Jews, but which conducts itself in a kind and just manner, without constantly murdering and abusing Palestinians.

This iteration of the state of Israel is a fiction. An imaginary fantasyland, like Narnia. Everything about Israel is stacked against the possibility of such a status quo ever emerging, and Israel has always done everything it can to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state. By pretending it is possible to have the Zionist entity and also have peace and justice, liberal Zionists help manufacture public consent for continuing to feed weapons to the genocidal apartheid state of Israel.

The Yemeni Cancer Control Fund, a government body tasked with overseeing the country’s healthcare system, agreed, alleging that they were part of what it called:

A systematic American policy that has targeted the Yemeni people for years through bombings and a suffocating blockade, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis and spreading deadly diseases, including cancer, which has surged due to the use of internationally banned weapons since 2015.”

The newly built Al Rasool Al-Azam Hospital was the centerpiece of the region’s healthcare network. Costing over $7.5 million.

The destruction of the Al Rasool Al-Azam Oncology Center was far from a unique occurrence. In fact, the attack carries on an extremely long and well-documented tradition of the United States targeting hospitals.

In 2015, the U.S. Air Force carried out a bombing campaign against a Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. The trauma center, one of the newest, largest, and most recognizable buildings in the city, was deliberately targeted; Doctors Without Borders had already supplied the military with its precise coordinates.

An internal inquiry revealed that the airmen aboard the AC-130 gunship that carried out the operation pushed back against their superiors, questioning the strike’s legality. However, they were overruled and ordered to bomb the hospital regardless of their concerns. A Doctors Without Borders report concluded that the U.S. knew where the hospital was and that it did not hide any Taliban fighters and targeted it anyway. At least 42 people are known to have been killed in the incident.

The White House said China is now facing up to a 245 percent tariff on imports to the U.S. "as a result of its retaliatory actions," another escalation in a trade war between the world's two largest economies.

The top potential tariff is higher than the previously stated 145 percent and was referenced in a fact sheet published by the White House late on Tuesday.

It accompanied an executive order signed by President Donald Trump that launched an investigation into the "national security risks posed by U.S. reliance on imported processed critical minerals and their derivative products."

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said Tuesday that all weapons in Lebanon must come under exclusive state control in 2025, outlining that Hezbollah’s disarmament will come through direct coordination with the terror group.

However, after the president’s statements, a senior official in Hezbollah pushed back on talk of disarmament, saying that the group plans to “stick to its weapons and its resistance.”

Aoun said he is committed to avoiding internal conflict while pursuing the agenda, which could greatly weaken Hezbollah’s longstanding military and political power in the country, saying he recently told US deputy Mideast envoy Morgan Ortagus, “We want to remove Hezbollah’s weapons, but we will not ignite a civil war in Lebanon.”