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Adobe’s Firefly seems to be following in the woke footsteps of Google’s failed Gemini AI image producer — generating photos of black Nazis and black and female founding fathers. In a test of the product conducted by The Post on Thursday, Firefly produced an image of two smiling black men standing in front of an American flag when prompted to create a photo of the “founding fathers of the USA.” Searches for the 1787 Constitutional Convention also produced images of both black men and white women standing in front of the historic State House in Philadelphia, Penn., and a search for “German war soldiers in World War II” yielded photos of smiling black and Asian men in military fatigues … Similar tests conducted by Semafor and the Daily Mail produced nearly identical results …

The technological revolution once promised a new era of expanded democracy and enhanced opportunity. Instead, we face today a reality that blends the worst aspects of George Orwell’s Big Brother and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World controllers … While comical for some, this seemed less to show the tech giant’s casual incompetence, but rather a deep-seated desire to reinvent reality along progressive lines. It also reflects deeply entrenched bias in Google’s development team, who appear to see it as their mission to reshape society, and even the past, to fit their predilections … Most dangerous of all, these big tech firms have become giant oligopolies with almost unlimited funds and a net worth greater than Canada, Russia, South Korea, Australia and Spain combined.

… Netanyahu understands that the ‘power structure’ in the U.S. – as in Europe – that controls much, if not most of the money shaping U.S. politics, and particularly the stance of Congress, is heavily dependent on the Israeli ‘cause’ existing, and continuing to exist, and it is not therefore the case that Israel is wholly dependent on the U.S. power structures and its ‘good will’ (as Biden pre-supposes). The ‘cause of Israel’ both gives domestic U.S. structures their political meaning, their agenda and their legitimacy. A ‘No Israel’ outcome would pull the carpet from under them, and would leave U.S. Jews experiencing existential insecurity. Netanyahu knows this – and also appreciates that the existence of Israel, per se, offers Tel Aviv a certain degree of control over U.S. politics.

… To understand present-day Germany, American conservatives should imagine a place where people like Joe Biden’s handlers have been building their progressive version of “democracy” for generations. There, any state employee or academic in a public university who expresses disagreement with the anti-fascist, woke state religion will almost inescapably lose his job and perhaps be attacked by an anti-fascist mob galvanized into action by the media. Those Germans who dare complain about the Biden-like immigration policy in their country, most explicitly the supporters of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) Party, will see the ruling leftist party bloc pull out all stops to ban them from expressing their views in public.

“Hitler — You knew him — What was he like?” I have been asked that question a thousand times since 1945, and nothing is more difficult to answer … Hitler’s most notable characteristic was ever his simplicity. The most complex of problems resolved itself in his mind into a few basic principles. His actions were geared to ideas and decisions that could be understood by anyone … His intellectual curiosity was limitless. He was readily familiar with the writings of the most diverse authors, and nothing was too complex for his comprehension … The universality of Hitler’s knowledge may surprise or displease those unaware of it, but it is nonetheless a historical fact: Hitler was one of the most cultivated men of this century.

A middle school in Omaha, Nebraska, has apologized to students and families after a quotation from Nazi Germany leader Adolf Hitler was displayed in a school hallway as the “quote of the day,” the Omaha World Herald reported Tuesday [Feb. 2021]. A staff member had written the adage, “The man who has no sense of history is like a man with no ears or eyes” on a board that was set up in an eighth grade hallway on Monday. Later that evening the school sent a message out to staff, students, and their families saying it was “extremely sorry” … The school apologized for “the insensitivity this showed to our Jewish population and to other students.” It said the school would be taking steps including teaching students that Hitler should not be quoted without context.

… After the US’ action, three countries – Iraq, Syria and Iran – expressed their anger and strong condemnation of US airstrikes in the first instance. Above all, it must be said that this action by the US is a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of Iraq and Syria and runs counter to the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter. The US has claimed to be striking the “Iran-backed forces,” but it has caused civilian casualties in Iraq and Syria. The recklessness shown by the US in asserting its hegemony requires the international community to find ways to restrain it … To maintain its hegemony, the US is still using the simple, brutal means of economic sanctions and military strikes. With a significantly diminishing marginal effect, this is far from what’s needed to adapt to the complex and rapidly developing situation.

The Hebrew University [of Israel] has suspended Prof. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian of the Faculty of Law after a series of inflammatory statements, the university said in a statement Tuesday. The unusual move came a day after Shalhoub-Kevorkian, an outspoken critic of Israel and Zionism, told Channel 14 in an interview that Zionism should be abolished, and called into question the rapes and other atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7. Shalhoub-Kiborkian said … “it’s time to abolish Zionism. It can’t continue, it’s criminal. Only by abolishing Zionism can we continue.” She continued, “They [Zionists] will use any lie. They started with babies, they continued with rape, and they will continue with a million other lies. We stopped believing them, I hope the world stops believing them.”

As the U.S. navigates involvement in the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, few Americans want the country to take a more active role in solving the world’s problems, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. While an American role as the “world’s policeman” has become an increasingly contentious partisan issue, a majority of both Democrats and Republicans agree that the U.S. should not get more involved than it currently is in the ongoing conflicts between Russia and Ukraine, and Israel and Hamas. The poll shows that 4 in 10 U.S. adults want America to broadly take a “less active” role in solving global conflicts. Only about one-quarter think the U.S. should take a more active role, and about one-third say its current role is about right.

Last week President Biden delivered a dark and angry speech meant to convince the low percentage of Americans who still feel positive about his presidency that everything is fine and will only get better if he is re-elected for a second term. … The message of Biden’s speech was that if you do not support the re-election of Joe Biden, you are an insurrectionist and hate America and democracy … Biden started his speech by comparing Russian President Vladimir Putin with Hitler, claiming that Putin is “on the march” in Europe just as Hitler was in 1941, and that just as in those days, if he is not stopped in Ukraine he will continue to rampage through the continent. It was blatant fearmongering, based on no evidence … In all, Biden’s final State of the Union before the election reveals a president and administration that is out of gas and out of ideas.

An annual “threat assessment” compiled by US intelligence agencies was released on Monday and said that Israel will likely face resistance from Hamas for years to come, another sign that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stated goal of “eradicating” the Palestinian group isn’t realistic … The US threat assessment said that while Hamas isn’t going away, Netanyahu could lose his hold on power … The assessment also said that Iran had no role in Hamas’s October 7 attack and acknowledged Tehran is not seeking a nuclear weapon. “Iran is not currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons-development activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear device,” the report reads.

… For decades, this magazine and a coalition of foreign policy restrainers have warned that our reckless, irrational, and incoherent strategy toward Russia in Europe would lead to a Russia more antagonistic towards the West, and distract from other geopolitical arenas … What Americans are witnessing now, half a world away, is the result of decades of misguided policy towards Russia … The temptation to portray Russia as Europe’s next Hitler was too much for the U.S. and NATO to withstand … Those who claim that NATO’s expansion has not been a threat to Russia betray their ignorance … To expect zero repercussions from such a contradictory, benighted foreign policy is a direct consequence of the contradictions intrinsic to the liberal idealism that permeates the Washington foreign policy establishment.

Men detained by Israeli forces since the start of the war are returning to Gaza with harrowing accounts of mock executions, constant beatings and humiliating mistreatment / Palestinian men detained by Israeli forces since the start of the war in Gaza have told Middle East Eye how they were physically tortured with dogs and electricity, subjected to mock executions, and held in humiliating and degrading conditions … Other men also described being electrocuted, attacked by dogs, doused with cold water, denied food and water, deprived of sleep, and subjected to constant loud music.

The apparent ability of Israel, one of the world’s smallest countries, to shape the Middle East policies of the world’s remaining superpower has been a source of puzzlement, conjecture, and constant frustration on the part of those fighting for justice for the Palestinians and for the peoples of the region, as a whole … In the arena of foreign policy, no lobby has proved more powerful than that of the organized American Jewish community in support of Israel; what is generally referred to as the Israel Lobby and in the halls of Congress, simply as “the lobby.” Its power is all the more impressive when one realizes the lobby represents no more than a third of America’s six million Jews.

The Gaza war is bringing us an awesome display of Jewish power over the US media and political culture. It’s a display that could effectively wake Americans up to how deeply entrenched Jews are in the American power structure. Even the mainstream media is featuring images of Gazan suffering, bloodied children, and the over 10,000 Gazan deaths, mostly women and children. Even clueless White liberals must be starting to wake up about Israel … The Biden administration seems to be realizing that their blind support for Israeli violence can’t be sold to their voters, and are pleading with the Israelis for humanitarian pauses. To no avail. As always, “America’s greatest ally” thumbs its nose at America when it wishes. And why not?

CNN is facing a backlash from its own staff over editorial policies they say have led to a regurgitation of Israeli propaganda and the censoring of Palestinian perspectives in the network’s coverage of the war in Gaza. Journalists in CNN newsrooms in the US and overseas say broadcasts have been skewed by management edicts and a story-approval process that has resulted in highly partial coverage of the Hamas massacre on 7 October and Israel’s retaliatory attack on Gaza. “The majority of news since the war began, regardless of how accurate the initial reporting, has been skewed by a systemic and institutional bias within the network toward Israel,” said one CNN staffer. “Ultimately, CNN’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza war amounts to journalistic malpractice.”

… The hostility and prejudice against Arabs and Muslims engendered by Hollywood and US television infects not only tens of millions of Americans, but also hundreds of millions of credulous viewers worldwide. Such noxious propaganda over a period of decades inevitably has grave long-term consequences. This flood of ethnic-religious poison understandably produces deep resentment among hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims around the globe — creating a vast and growing reservoir of resentment and rage that one day will almost certainly erupt with terrible fury.

Good work, Mr. President Biden. You have managed to do what America’s enemies have not – creating widespread hatred for the United States around the globe. Your destruction of the Gaza refugee camps has inflamed antisemitism everywhere. There is widespread disgust and anger at the US government over your decision to give Israel’s new far right government carte blanche to massacre rebellious Palestinians in the open prison of the Gaza Strip. The death toll is now over 31,000 killed and at least 70,000 seriously injured, not counting the long-term effects of malnutrition and even starvation. Most victims are women and children … Americans should be ashamed of Biden. His administration, infiltrated and directed by far-right neocons, does not represent America’s values or traditions.

A new report from the Swedish police … shows that something has gone terribly wrong in Sweden. According to the latest police report, some 62,000 people in Sweden are connected to criminal gangs. To put this into perspective, consider that Sweden is a small country with only 10.4 million people. “We are talking about system-threatening crime with a large capacity for violence that silences witnesses, threatens social workers, and infiltrates authorities and political parties,” Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer said at a recent press conference … We now have around 60 no-go zones in Sweden, with the police describing some of these as “lawless areas.”

According to the Federal Reserve, credit card delinquencies increased by 50 percent in 2023, while consumer debt grew to 17.5 trillion dollars. A recent survey by Clever Real Estate found that three in five Americans have credit card debt, and that 23 percent of Americans increase their credit card debt every month. The survey also found that 48 percent of Americans (including 59 percent of millennials) use credit cards for essential living expenses … The reliance of so many Americans on credit cards for basic necessities is one reason why many Americans are dissatisfied with the economy. The large amount of consumer debt is also a reason the Federal Reserve will not increase interest rates to anywhere near what they would be in a free market.

A portrait of Lord Balfour, the former prime minister, at the University of Cambridge has been damaged by a pro-Palestinian protester. In video posted on social media by Palestine Action, a member of the group is seen spray-painting and slashing the portrait at Trinity College. A woman can be seen defacing the work with red paint before slicing the canvas with a sharp object. Balfour was one of the chief supporters of creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine, cemented by the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which gave British backing to the movement. A nephew of Lord Salisbury, he succeeded his uncle as prime minister in 1902 and subsequently became foreign secretary.

… Diverse documentary evidence shows that Zionists pushed for the U.S. to enter the war on Britain’s side as part of a deal to gain British support for their colonization of Palestine … In 1917 British Foreign Minister Lord Balfour issued a letter to Zionist leader Lord Rothschild. Known as the Balfour Declaration, this letter promised that Britain would “view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” and “use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object.” … The influence of Brandeis and other Zionists in the U.S. had enabled Zionists to form an alliance with Britain, one of the world’s great powers, a remarkable achievement for a non-state group and a measure of Zionists’ by-then immense power.

It was a night of death and hunger. When it ended, at least 112 people had been killed and another 760 were injured. Israel tried to deny responsibility – the trucks hit them – but there is no denying its responsibility for what is happening now in the Gaza Strip: Israel is the occupying force there. Not only that: Dr. Mohammed Salha, the acting director of Gaza City’s Al-Awda Hospital, told The Associated Press that of the 176 wounded brought to the facility, 142 had gunshot wounds and the other 34 showed injuries from a stampede. A physician at the city’s Shifa Hospital said that most of those treated there had gunshot wounds … Even if it is proved that it was IDF soldiers who shot at this horrifying assembly and who killed and wounded hundreds of starving people, no one in Israel will be upset by it.

UN experts today condemned the violence unleashed by Israeli forces, which killed at least 112 people gathered to collect flour in Gaza last week, as a “massacre” amid conditions of inevitable starvation and destruction of the local food production system in the besieged Palestinian enclave. “Israel has been intentionally starving the Palestinian people in Gaza since 8 October. Now it is targeting civilians seeking humanitarian aid and humanitarian convoys,” the UN experts said. “Israel must end its campaign of starvation and targeting of civilians.” Israeli troops fired on crowds of Palestinians gathered to collect flour in the south-west of Gaza City on 29 February, killing at least 112 people and injuring some 760.

Mark Weber talks with host Peter Quinones about the enduring legacy of the World War II. The ever more obvious crisis of today’s America, Weber says, is rooted in the universalist-egalitarian outlook of President Franklin Roosevelt and the US during that war, and the policies based on that worldview in the decades since. Weber and Quinones also discuss the reality and legacy of the Reagan presidency, the delusional premises of the “affirmative action” policies that both Republican and Democratic leaders have embraced for more than half a century, and more. Runtime: 58 mins.

Syrian President Bashar Assad recently declared that there is no evidence that six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust and accused the United States of funding the rise of the Hitler movement. In a video of a speech by Assad translated and published by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Assad can be seen telling an audience that “there is no evidence that six million Jews were killed” during the Holocaust. “True, there were concentration camps, but what shows you that this is a politicized issue, not a humanitarian one and not a real one, is that we talk about these six million, but why don’t we talk about the 26 million Soviets who were killed in that war? Are the six million more precious?” Runtime: 1:48 mins.

The U.S. began adding $1 trillion worth of debt about every three months beginning last June, a Bank of America investment strategist Michael Hartnett first pointed out in an investment note published last week. The national debt is currently $34.48 trillion and rising. It surpassed $34 trillion for the first time in U.S. history on Jan. 4 … “The national debt is the amount of money the federal government has borrowed to cover the outstanding balance of expenses incurred over time,” the Treasury Department explains. “Simply put, the national debt is similar to a person using a credit card for purchases and not paying off the full balance each month … Last November, Moody’s Investors Service lowered the U.S. federal government’s credit ratings from “stable” to “negative” citing the national debt and growing budget deficit.

The authors of the book “White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy,” argued that White rural voters are the most dangerous “geodemographic” group in America on MSNBC. Professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Thomas Schaller and journalist and opinion writer Paul Waldman claimed that White rural voters in America were racist and generally anti-democracy. “They are the most racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-gay, geodemographic group in the country,” Schaller said. … “They’re also the most strongly White nationalist and White Christian nationalist,” Schaller said. “Fourth, they’re most likely to excuse or justify violence as an acceptable alternative to peaceful public discourse.”

In the Introduction to Hitler: A Global Biography, Brendan Simms notes that more than 120,000 books and articles have been written about Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich … Simms, a historian and fellow at Peterhouse College, Cambridge, and the author of eight previous books, makes three provocative revisionist claims. First, Simms argues that Hitler viewed Britain, the United States (the “Anglo-Saxon powers”), and “global capitalism,” not Soviet Russia and world communism, as Germany’s principal antagonists before and during the Second World War … Simms’ third and most controversial revisionist contention is that Hitler’s genocide of Europe’s Jews was fundamentally a reaction to the belligerency of the British and American governments, which Hitler believed were controlled by “world Jewry.”

… Brendan Simms’s [biography of Hitler] … written with passion, it grabs the reader by the elbow and propels her from the very first page towards one, ultimate conclusion. The central argument is that at the centre of Hitler’s worldview was a profound preoccupation with ‘Anglo-America’ … The US and Britain were more important reference points than has previously been acknowledged, and that Hitler’s geopolitical vision was genuinely global. The case he makes for this claim is compelling and original … Hitler got a lot of things wrong, Simms tells us, and his career was ultimately a ‘catastrophic failure’. But he was ‘exactly right’ about ‘the overwhelming power of Anglo-America’ and ‘entirely accurate’ in his conviction that the Germans were too weak to prevail against ‘the “Anglo-Saxons”, the global “master race”’.

… Two new books seek answers: Longerich’s “Hitler: A Biography” and the Cambridge historian Brendan Simms’s “Hitler: A Global Biography.” Both were underway well before the tumult of current events, but both biographers recognize that recent political trends have made their subject especially charged. “The questions that Hitler was addressing — inequality, migration, the challenge of international capitalism — they’re as salient as they were when he set out to provide his peculiarly destructive and demented answers,” Simms said. “In a very alarming and upsetting way, Hitler is actually less strange today than he was 20 or 30 years ago.”

… By the late 1930s Hitler had three separate libraries for his ever-expanding collection. At his apartment he removed a wall between two rooms and installed bookshelves. For the Berghof, his Alpine retreat near Berchtesgaden, Hitler built a second-floor study with handmade bookcases; color photographs of the finished space show an elegant setting with Oriental carpets, two globes, and bookcases fitted with glass doors and brass locks … By his own admission, Hitler was not a big fan of novels, though he once ranked Gulliver’s Travels, Robinson Crusoe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Don Quixote (he had a special affection for the edition illustrated by Gustave Doré) among the world’s greatest works of literature.

Ghana’s parliament has passed legislation that intensifies a crackdown on the rights of LGBTQ people and those promoting lesbian, gay or other non-conventional sexual or gender identities in the West African country. The new legislation passed on Wednesday imposes a prison sentence of up to five years for the “wilful promotion, sponsorship or support of LGBTQ+ activities”. The bill still has to be validated by the president before becoming law … The legislation is widely supported in Ghana … Commonly referred to as the anti-gay bill, the sweeping legislation received sponsorship from a coalition comprising Christian, Muslim and Ghanaian traditional leaders, and passed through an unopposed voice vote … About 30 African countries currently ban homosexuality …

The US vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel for a massacre of civilians surrounding an aid convoy in Gaza, a motion supported by all other member states. The Israel Defense Forces has acknowledged its soldiers fired on the crowd. On Thursday, hundreds of Palestinians were killed and injured by Israeli soldiers as they gathered around an aid convoy near Gaza City. As some people took aid off the trucks, the IDF claimed the same Palestinians approached Israeli soldiers nearby, saying its troops felt “endangered” and opened fire. The killing has been dubbed the “flour massacre.” More than 100 Palestinians were killed in the shooting and ensuing panic, while at least 750 others were injured. Tel Aviv has attempted to blame the Palestinians for the deaths, saying the violence was caused by the mob.

If you were a bookmaker taking bets on the position of the United States in the world today, you should take into consideration three recent events. The world’s post-World War II dominant power just lost three times internationally, once politically and twice legally. Losing three times before important international institutions is not a demonstration of hegemonic strength. The three defeats reflect how the United States, and its Middle East proxy Israel, could be losing whatever moral authority they have left. It is one thing for a country to go against the flow and to be an outlier; it is another to go against international law and to be an outlaw.

The U.S. Air Force member who set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., in an apparent protest against the Israel-Hamas war has died, according to a U.S. official. The airman was identified by police as 25-year-old Aaron Bushnell of San Antonio, Texas. Dressed in military fatigues, Bushnell filmed himself yelling “Free Palestine” before collapsing to the ground. In a livestream, Bushnell called the Israeli attack on Gaza “genocide” and said what he was doing was not as extreme as the suffering of the Palestinian people … “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’,” the post read. “The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”

Leaks from within CNN reveal that for months its executives have been actively imposing an editorial line designed to reinforce Israel’s framing of events in Gaza, to the point of obscuring atrocities by the Israeli military … According to staff accounts, CNN’s pro-Israel directives come from the very top … As MEE has noted previously, the entire western press corps, not just CNN and the BBC, has failed in its basic duty to present a balanced picture of what has been going on over the past four months. It has also failed to treat Israeli claims with the scepticism they deserve, especially since Israel has a long track record of being caught out in lies and deceptions … Western media have also largely avoided characterising as “ethnic cleansing” the Israeli military’s order for Palestinians to leave their homes.

Whether reporting from the Middle East, the United States, or anywhere else across the globe, every CNN journalist covering Israel and Palestine must submit their work for review by the news organization’s bureau in Jerusalem prior to publication, under a long-standing CNN policy … It means that much of the network’s recent coverage of the war in Gaza — and its reverberations around the world — has been shaped by journalists who operate under the shadow of the country’s military censor … One member of CNN’s staff who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisal said that the internal review policy has had a demonstrable impact on coverage of the Gaza war. … The CNN staff member described how the policy works in practice. “‘War-crime’ and ‘genocide’ are taboo words,” the person said.

French president Charles de Gaulle, the towering figure of French political life during the late 1950s and 1960s, talked about Jews and Israel during a televised news conference on Nov. 27, 1967. He spoke of “the Jews, hitherto widely dispersed, and who have remained what they had always been, in other words, an elite people, sure of themselves and domineering.” On that occasion, a few months after the “Six Day” Israel-Arab war, he also spoke prophetically about the Israel-Palestine conflict. “Now on the territories she has taken, Israel is organizing an occupation that will be accompanied by oppression, repression and expulsions, and there is now developing a resistance which she will describe as terrorism … It is obvious that the conflict is not over and that there can be no solution except by international agreement.” Runtime: 1:43 mins.

Konrad Adenauer served as Chancellor of the German Federal Republic 1949-1963. In this interview, given in 1965, he says (in English translation): “One should not underestimate the power of the Jews, even today, especially in America. Accordingly, and it has long been my view, after careful and conscientious consideration, I devoted all my effort to help bring about, as much as possible, a reconciliation between the Jewish people and the German people.”

… Americans of Jewish faith cannot visualize the extent to which their rabbis and secular leadership, operating through Organized Jewry, have totally deceived them into confusing humanitarianism with nation-building, religion and nationalism. A home could have been found in 1947 for the 285,000 survivors of Hitler’s concentration camps without ever establishing a state; just as today security for the Jews of Israel can be obtained without the continued expansionism wrought by the West Bank settlements policy or the ruthless repression of the rights of the Palestinian people.

With one phrase, controversial German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser highlighted just how far the German government is willing to go to stamp out its main opposition with a new law. “No one who donates to a right-wing extremist party should remain undetected,” warned the 53-year-old while announcing a new crackdown on bank accounts and funding for political groups, which notably is believed to include the opposition Alternative for Germany (AfD) … The SPD politician presented her new plan together with President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) Thomas Haldenwang and Federal Criminal Police Office head Holger Münch. Under the title “Resolutely combating right-wing extremism,” Faeser presented 13 new measures, with a special focus on targeting those who fund her party’s political rivals.

… The Federal Republic’s support of “the Jewish state” has long been unequivocal … Amid these incessant professions of fidelity, something interesting. An opinion poll conducted in November, when the death toll in Gaza was slightly more than one-third of the 29,000 recorded as I write, fewer than a third of those surveyed approved of the Scholz government’s unwavering support for the Zionist state. In my read, this may reflect a generational change in consciousness among Germans: …. The Israelis have cultivated guilt among those from whom it seeks support for so long and so assiduously we can count it fundamental to its foreign policies … The Israeli objective is to prevent others from acting responsibly in the face of its conduct. Guilt, guilt, guilt, haunted memories, constant reminders of the past in books, films, museums, memorials …

… For many Palestinians, the gathering pace of home demolitions is part of the new ultranationalist government’s broader battle for control of east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war and claimed by the Palestinians as the capital of a future independent state. The battle is waged with building permits and demolition orders … Last month, Israel demolished 39 Palestinian homes, structures and businesses in east Jerusalem, displacing over 50 people, according to the United Nations … The Israeli municipality allocates scant land for Palestinian development, the report said, while facilitating the expansion of Israeli settlements … Since 1967, the government has built 58,000 homes for Israelis in the eastern part of the city, and fewer than 600 for Palestinians … In that time, the city’s Palestinian population has soared by 400%.