In Gaza, an ordinary street, and extraordinary horror, as missiles thunder in (The New York Times)
“The taxi was loaded with everything the family would need for Eid al-Fitr, a holiday of feasts and cookies and new clothes that Israeli airstrikes on Gaza have transfigured this year into a time of swooping drones and fear.
In their four suitcases, the al-Hatu family — mother, father, son, daughter — had made sure to pack kaak filled with date paste, the biscuits traditionally shared among friends and family during Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.” Read more
‘They've erased our memories’: Residents of Hanadi tower speak (Middle East Eye)
“More than 50 people were given two hours to evacuate their children and belongings before Israeli air strikes demolished the Gaza residential block.” Watch
Land, revolutions and lessons from Syria
04 May 2021
Syria’s lucrative detainment market: How Damascus exploits detainees’ families for money
13 April 2021
The war that shouldn’t have been (Newlines Magazine)
“Israel and Gaza are at war again. That may be nothing new, but it really wasn’t meant to happen this time.
After weeks of tensions, days of clashes, and a particularly violent morning, the situation on the ground in the Old City of Jerusalem on Monday afternoon was, if anything, relatively calm.” Read more
Ancient Akkadian poems and medical texts reveal grief’s universals (Psyche)
“Along a dried-up channel of the Euphrates river in modern-day Iraq, broken mud bricks poke out of vast, dusty ruins. They are the remains of Uruk, the birthplace of writing that’s better known in popular culture today as the city once ruled by the legendary king Gilgamesh, the hero of an epic about his struggle with life, love and death.” Read more
Syria releases hundreds of social media critics ahead of election (Reuters)
“Syria has freed more than 400 civil servants, judges, lawyers and journalists detained this year in a crackdown on social media dissent, a move seen by rights activists and former detainees as intended to win over public opinion ahead of presidential elections.
Those released after being held under Syria's cyber crimes law were among thousands freed this month under a general amnesty for currency speculators, drug dealers, smugglers and kidnappers ahead of the May 26 election that is expected to hand President Bashar al Assad a fourth term.” Read more
Biden faces Russian test over aid in Syria (The Wall Street Journal)
“The Biden administration is bracing for a showdown with Russia over the delivery of United Nations aid to millions of Syrians outside the control of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a flow that Moscow is poised to block in July.
At stake is the U.N.’s use of the Bab al-Hawa border crossing between Syria and Turkey, which the world body has used to send about 1,000 truckloads of aid a month to a region in northwest Syria with a population of more than four million.” Read more
Syrian family reunited, against the odds, in Greece (Associated Press)
“Torn apart in the deadly chaos of an air raid, a Syrian family of seven has been reunited, against the odds, three years later at a refugee shelter in Greece's second city of Thessaloniki, a centuries-old melting point of cultures overlooking the Aegean Sea.” Read more
From Belarus to Syria, victims look for justice in Germany (AFP)
“Universal jurisdiction also applies in other European countries such as France, Sweden Belgium and Austria.
Yet ‘all hopes are currently pinned on Germany,’ Jeanne Sulzer, head of the International Justice Commission at Amnesty International, told AFP.
Unlike in other European countries, German law allows complaints to be filed even if the suspect is not currently in the country, the French lawyer explained.” Read more
