Speaking to the world's leaders, the pope said, "Stop! It is time for peace! Sit at the table of dialogue and mediation, not at the table where rearmament is planned, and deadly actions are decided!" However, all the world's people also have a duty to reject the violence in their own hearts and minds, and help build a kingdom of peace each and every day in one's own home, school and community, he said. "Let us believe once again in love, moderation and good politics," he said, urging people to learn more and "get personally involved" in being part of "the mosaic of peace!"

Pope Leo XIV prays during an evening prayer vigil for peace in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican April 11, 2026. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

Carol Glatz

April 11, 2026

Pope Leo XIV called for a prayer vigil April 11 to tell the whole world it is possible for all people of all religions and ethnicities to live together and that "we want to be united as brothers and sisters, united in a world of peace."

"Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of power! Enough of war! True strength is shown in serving life," he said during the special vigil for peace in St. Peter's Basilica.

"Those who pray are aware of their own limitations; they do not kill or threaten with death," he said. "Instead, death enslaves those who have turned their backs on the living God, turning themselves and their own power into a mute, blind and deaf idol, to which they sacrifice every value, demanding that the whole world bend its knee."

"Let us listen to the voices of children," who write to him all the time, recounting "all the horror and inhumanity of actions that some adults boast of with pride," he said. 

The vigil, which drew thousands of people inside and outside the basilica, featured the recitation of the glorious mysteries of the rosary. Before each mystery was recited, women wearing traditional dress from countries representing the different continents of the world lit small lamps from a flame from the Lamp of Peace from Assisi that was placed below a statue of Our Lady Queen of Peace.

Prayer can move mountains, he said in his remarks in Italian. "War divides; hope unites. Arrogance tramples upon others; love lifts up. Idolatry blinds us; the living God enlightens."

It just takes a tiny bit of faith "to face this dramatic hour in history together," he said....READ MORE  

https://www.usccb.org/news/2026/pope-decries-horror-inhumanity-some-adults-boast-pride 

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“My journey in politics began with Palestine... We said we cared about freedom, cared about justice, we cared about safety, we cared about peace, and yet we did not dare to apply those things to Palestine...” — The Mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani

https://x.com/i/status/1985942654174035983     video speech 

Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani has won the New York mayoral election to become the city’s first Muslim mayor, polls projected late on Tuesday after voting closed in the closely watched election. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/11/5/us-election-results-2025-key-takeaways-from-historic-night-across-the-us

 

Born in Uganda to Indian parents, Zohran Mamdani has made history as New York City’s first Muslim mayor - and its youngest leader in more than 100 years.   BBC https://x.com/i/status/1986032566621680040

 

IMEU Policy Project

 

@imeupolicy

 

STATEMENT: Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for mayor stood for all the things that New York City, our country, and the Democratic Party must aspire to: an abiding respect for human rights and the dignity of every person, including Palestinians.

 

https://x.com/imeupolicy/status/1985899278728827093/photo/1 

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"What we are witnessing right now is the rise of two Americas. One for the billionaire class. And one for everybody else" The American political system is badly broken- Bernie Sanders in The Guardian

An unhoused person sleeps on a bench at the Columbus Circle monument, in view of the US Capitol in Washington DC, on 18 August. Photograph: Dominic Gwinn/Middle East Images/AFP/Getty Images

Wed 24 Sep 2025 06.00 EDT

Let’s take a deep breath and, for one moment, forget about Donald Trump, Jimmy Kimmel, the UN, Charlie Kirk, Gaza, a government shutdown and the other crises that we face.

Let’s talk instead about the reality which the corporately-controlled media and the corporately-controlled political system don’t talk about very much.

What we are witnessing right now is the rise of two Americas. One for the billionaire class. And one for everybody else.

In one America, the richest people are becoming obscenely richer and have never, ever, had it so good. That America is overflowing with unimaginable wealth, greed and opulence that makes the Gilded Age seem very modest.

And then there is a second America – an America where a majority of people live paycheck to paycheck, struggling to secure the very basic necessities of life – food, healthcare, housing and education.

The simple truth is that never before in our history have so few had so much wealth and power while so many live in economic desperation... READ MORE   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/24/bernie-sanders-opinion-billionaire-politics 

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"Statehood cannot be declared in press releases while genocide burns Gaza and land is stolen daily in the West Bank. Recognition of Palestine is hollow if it ignores the uprooting of people and the violence that became a daily reality. Better to first recognize the atrocities and confront injustice than to offer symbolic statehood to a people whose very existence is already rooted in their land yet their land, and their lives are under attack." Sliman Mansour of Palestine

                 A caricature that was published in Al Fajr English language newspaper in the 1990’s.

sliman.mansour

Statehood cannot be declared in press releases while genocide burns Gaza and land is stolen daily in the West Bank. Recognition of Palestine is hollow if it ignores the uprooting of people and the violence that became a daily reality. Better to first recognize the atrocities and confront injustice than to offer symbolic statehood to a people whose very existence is already rooted in their land yet their land, and their lives are under attack.

Please don’t succumb to hopelessness over Palestine... "As the war gets livestreamed to our phones, it is easy to be overwhelmed and feel helpless. But even small acts of activism add up" Arwa Mahdawi in The Guardian

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/02/please-dont-succumb-to-hopelessness-over-palestine-your-voice-can-still-make-a-difference

It is hard to stay hopeful in today’s “monstrous times”, but for the sake of the people bearing the brunt of modern monstrosities, it is imperative that we do.

Your voice can still make a difference

Arwa Mahdawi

Tue 2 Sep 2025 

‘It is hard to stay hopeful in monstrous times’ … A pro-Palestinian demonstration in Warsaw, Poland. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

I don’t know if Frankenstein star Christoph Waltz is normally a man of few words but he didn’t have much to say at a recent Venice film festival press conference. Waltz uttered only six words, with “CGI is for losers” constituting four of them. The remaining two were “I don’t”, in response to a question about how he stays hopeful in today’s “monstrous times”.

Waltz is certainly not alone in despairing of a world which seems to elevate liars, cheats, and adjudicated sexual predators. It’s hard to feel hope when a genocide has been livestreamed to our phones for almost two years and there is no justice in sight; just a systematic slaughter of the journalists who serve as messengers. No peace prospects on the horizon; just well-paid consultants putting together ethnic cleansing prospectuses so a “Gaza Riviera” can be built. (Oh, sorry, we’re supposed to say “voluntary relocation”, aren’t we?)

As a British Palestinian, I urge you to keep (or start!) speaking up for Gaza and Palestinians. The situation in Gaza and the West Bank gets worse daily. But please do not succumb to hopelessness or assume that you are powerless to change things. While it may seem like nothing will shame politicians into meaningfully upholding international human rights law, your voice does make a difference. Writing to your MP; protesting; donating; supporting the Freedom Flotilla Coalition; advocating online; boycotting companies such as Airbnb which profit from illegal settlements. These sorts of things do make a difference.

Plenty of people are keen to tell you otherwise. There is a certain form of hopelessness that has been repackaged as sensible centrist thinking. Don’t bother with your silly little acts of activism or your social media posts, these people will tell you, they won’t achieve anything.

Look, for example, at the contemptuous reaction in many quarters to Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey’s decision to boycott King Charles’s state banquet for Trump in protest over Gaza. Per a sneering piece in the Telegraph, this boycott “betrays a serious lack of seriousness”. Davey would be far more serious, apparently, if he just joined other politicians in doing nothing, except perhaps issuing an occasional statement expressing “serious concern” about Israel bombing another hospital or executing another aid worker.

Of course, Davey’s boycott won’t shame Trump into acting. But it might cause someone to think more deeply about the perverseness of holding an extravagant state banquet while a US-enabled Israel, which has a history of weaponising food and controlling the calorie intake of a captive Gaza population, has orchestrated a human-made famine. It may pressure other politicians into some sort of action.... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/02/please-dont-succumb-to-hopelessness-over-palestine-your-voice-can-still-make-a-difference

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"The way they talk about the Palestinians “finally realizing their dream” of dignity and self-determination like they haven’t spent years and billions of dollars obstructing that dream, like all we need is a TED talk on goal-setting and time management" Susan Muaddi Darraj

On social media, Rashida Tlaib, described the description of "joy" at the convention as "a false narrative".

 

Susan Muaddi Darraj

@SusanDarraj

The way they talk about the Palestinians “finally realizing their dream” of dignity and self-determination like they haven’t spent years and billions of dollars obstructing that dream, like all we need is a TED talk on goal-setting and time management

 

Arwa Mahdawi: This war [on Palestine] isn’t just being waged with bombs, it’s being waged with “euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness” When you lay out what is happening in clear language, it is indefensible. So political language dresses all those dead and starving children up in euphemism.

If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy, wrote Orwell. That applies today more than ever

Orwell wrote Politics and the English Language in 1946. 

Today, 78 years later, it feels just as relevant. Look, for example, at the carnage in Gaza and the West Bank. Look at the statements from Israeli leaders that clearly suggest genocidal intent. Look at the tragedies that barely make a dent in the public consciousness any more. This week, for example, an Israeli airstrike killed four-day-old twins, along with their mother and grandmother, when their father went to collect birth certificates in central Gaza. Look at the levels of brutality that barely seem to register any more: there is video evidence of the sexual abuse of Palestinians at a notorious Israeli military prison (though the more accurate term is “torture camp”) and, even with that evidence, we know there will be no real accountability.

Look at the dead. Nearly 40,000 people in Gaza are now dead, including nearly 15,000 children. When you look at the scale of devastation, it seems likely that those figures are an underestimate. Further, counting the dead is excruciatingly difficult: kids are being blown into fragments so small that their surviving relatives have to collect pieces of them in plastic bags. Then there are the tens and thousands more who are now dying from starvation, or facing a looming polio epidemic.

Look at the West Bank, meanwhile, where Israel has published plans for new settlements, which violate international law. Since 7 October, the Israeli army and settlers have displaced 1,285 Palestinians and destroyed 641 structures in the West Bank, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Ethnic cleansing is taking place before our eyes.... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/22/centrism-language-israel-gaza

Stop using the term ‘centrist’. It doesn’t mean what you think it does

Arwa Mahdawi    Thu 22 Aug 2024

 

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US surveillance of pro-Palestinian speech has a direct line to McCarthyism - Chip Gibbons in The Guardian

‘Members of Congress in both parties have called for the surveillance of pro-Palestinian activists.’ Photograph: Adam Davis/EPA

The pretext of counter-terrorism as a reason to investigate Americans started with ‘red squads’, Huac and J Edgar Hoover

On Monday, 13 May, the Israeli historian and professor Ilan Pappé landed in Detroit, Michigan. Upon his arrival, agents from the US Department of Homeland Security detained and interrogated him for two hours. According to Pappé, DHS asked him whether he was a Hamas supporter, whether he believed Israel was committing genocide and what his “solution” to the Middle East conflict was. Agents also reportedly asked him to identify “his Arab and Muslim friends in America”.

During his interrogation, DHS agents held a long phone conversation, which Pappé speculated may have been with Israeli officials. Pappé was eventually admitted to the US, but only after DHS copied the entire contents of his cellphone. (Initially, Pappé reported he had been interrogated by the FBI; he has since clarified that it was agents of the DHS.)

Pappé is a respected academic known for his scholarship arguing that the expulsion of Palestinians during the Nakba was a deliberate act of ethnic cleansing central to Israel’s creation. Pappé is also known for his anti-Zionist politics. There is nothing to suggest any connection between Pappé and Hamas.

In the US, however, counter-terrorism authorities are often deployed to surveil political speech. Opponents of Palestinian rights both within and outside government frequently conflate political views they dislike with terrorism. This demonizes supporters of Palestinian rights in the public sphere and paves the way for the type of government harassment to which the DHS subjected Pappé. Such actions are part of both the McCarthyite atmosphere those with pro-Palestinian politics face and the broader history of political policing in the US.

During the first half of the 20th century, a political policing apparatus... READ MORE   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/22/surveillance-pro-palestine-protest

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Mark Twain "Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it."

 

If you are not careful...