BRITAIN LOOKS AWAY AS JIMMY LAI ROTS IN PRISON - 12.17.2025

The harrowing imprisonment of Jimmy Lai, a 78 year old British citizen and founder of the pro democracy newspaper Apple Daily in Hong Kong, exposes a stunning moral abdication by the United Kingdom.

Lai has spent over five years in detention, much of it in solitary confinement, under draconian applications of Hong Kong’s National Security Law. His treatment — harsh conditions, deteriorating health, denial of adequate medical care, and the systematic erosion of fair trial protections — has been widely condemned as a gross violation of his fundamental rights.

This is not an abstract issue. It is the clear dismantling of press freedom, the rule of law, and the protections that were supposed to bind the One Country, Two Systems promise. Lai’s prosecution — on charges that critics call politically motivated and rooted in his journalistic work — symbolizes the broader crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong. n

Yet the British government’s response has been tepid. Citizenship should mean unconditional defense of our people’s rights and dignity. Allowing a British national to languish under cruel, punitive conditions — without sustained, decisive diplomatic pressure — is not only shameful, it undermines the very values Britain claims to uphold.

The UK must demand immediate consular access, call for Jimmy Lai’s release, and make his freedom a precondition for any meaningful engagement with Beijing. Anything less is betrayal — of a citizen, of our international obligations, and of the ideals we profess to champion.

UNPROVEN TARGETS, IRREVERSIBLE DEATHS - 12.16.2025

The Pentagon’s claim that it destroyed three more alleged drug boats—as Donald Trump declares fentanyl a “weapon of mass destruction”—raises a fundamental question: where is the proof? No evidence has been publicly presented that these vessels carried drugs, yet they were obliterated with military force. What is certain is that human lives at sea are once again treated as expendable.

This is not law enforcement. It is summary violence wrapped in rhetoric. Labeling fentanyl a WMD is a dangerous distortion designed to bypass legal standards and normalize lethal force without due process. We have learned, at devastating cost, how easily “alleged threats” become justification for irreversible harm.

Blowing up boats does not stop addiction, dismantle trafficking networks, or address the social conditions driving drug use. It does, however, risk killing migrants, fishermen, and civilians whose only crime may be desperation. When evidence is replaced by explosions, accountability disappears.

America cannot bomb its way out of a public health crisis. Militarized responses without transparency or proof do not save lives—they erase them.

Left to Drown: Gaza in Winter - 12.16.2025

The winter storm tearing through Gaza has exposed a brutal truth the world keeps avoiding: Palestinians are not just victims of weather, they are victims of policy. Flooded tents, collapsing buildings, and families submerged in mud are the direct consequences of systematic destruction and forced displacement.

This is what happens when homes are flattened, infrastructure erased, and over a million people are pushed into open land with nothing but plastic sheets for shelter. Rain turns tents into traps. Cold turns displacement into a slow execution. Children shiver where bedrooms once stood. The sick suffocate beneath rubble weakened by bombs, not storms.

To call this a natural disaster is a lie. Nature did not blockade Gaza. Nature did not deny fuel, building materials, or emergency aid. Nature did not make civilians homeless in the dead of winter. These conditions were engineered, enforced, and sustained.

International law is unambiguous: civilians must be protected. Yet Gaza’s people are abandoned to floodwaters while powerful nations issue statements instead of action.

When rain becomes lethal, responsibility is clear. Gaza was not overwhelmed by a storm. It was left to drown.

LEGALIZING LAND THEFT WILL NEVER CREATE PEACE - 12.15.2025

The Israeli Security Cabinet’s decision to formally recognize 19 settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank is not a step toward security or stability—it is a deliberate escalation of injustice. These outposts, long considered illegal even under Israeli law, were built on seized Palestinian land through force, intimidation, and displacement. Granting them official status does not change that truth; it only attempts to normalize it.

This move further shatters any remaining credibility of claims that Israel seeks a just or negotiated peace. By expanding and legalizing settlements, the government is entrenching occupation, fragmenting Palestinian communities, and making a viable Palestinian state increasingly impossible. No amount of bureaucratic approval can erase the daily reality of land confiscation, restricted movement, home demolitions, and settler violence faced by Palestinians.

Security built on dispossession is not security—it is domination. History has shown again and again that peace cannot be achieved through unilateral acts that violate international law and deny an entire people their rights and dignity. Recognizing illegal outposts rewards lawlessness and deepens resentment, ensuring more instability, not less.
If peace is truly the goal, the path forward lies in ending occupation, halting settlement expansion, and upholding equal rights under international law—not in legalizing injustice.

A Hanukkah Gathering Turned Into a Crime Against Conscience in Australia - 12.15.2025

The mass shooting at a Hanukkah event in Australia, which claimed at least 15 innocent lives, is a wound not only to one community or one nation, but to the conscience of the world. A celebration of light, faith, and survival was turned into a scene of terror, grief, and irreversible loss.

This was not random violence. It was an attack on identity, on worship, on the simple right to gather without fear. When a house of joy becomes a target, silence becomes complicity. Antisemitism, like all forms of hatred, does not remain contained—it spreads when tolerated and mutates when excused.

We must reject the lie that such atrocities are inevitable. They are not acts of fate; they are failures of moral courage, political will, and collective responsibility. Condolences alone are hollow if they are not matched by action—stronger protections for vulnerable communities, accountability for those who incite hatred, and an uncompromising stand against extremism in all its forms.

The candles of Hanukkah symbolize resilience against darkness. Let us honor the victims not only with mourning, but with resolve: that no faith, no people, no gathering will be left to face terror alone. 

Israeli terror strikes the Gaza strip again and again - 12.15.2025

WHEN EVEN STORMS SHOW MORE MERCY THAN ARMIES

Twelve people—children, parents, elders—died in the Gaza Strip this week as a brutal winter storm collided with yet another round of Israeli ceasefire violations. When families already struggling to survive freezing winds must also endure renewed gunfire, it is no longer a conflict—it is the deliberate grinding down of a people’s will to live.

In moments like this, we are reminded of the moral truths found in Jewish scripture itself: “Do not oppress the stranger, for you know the heart of the stranger” (Exodus 23:9). These are not abstract words; they are the ethical foundations of a tradition that has commanded compassion in the face of suffering for thousands of years. Yet today, those principles are being trampled under tanks, drones, and policies that treat Palestinian lives as expendable.

The world cannot look away as storms do less harm than the weapons of a modern state. Israel must be held to the standards it claims to uphold—human decency, international law, and the sacred values of its own teachings.

Accountability is not optional. It is the only path to ending this cycle of cruelty and restoring even a semblance of justice.

THEFT OF A NATION’S LIFEBLOOD MUST END NOW - 12.12.2025

The United States’ escalating campaign to seize Venezuelan oil tankers is nothing less than the pirating of a sovereign nation’s most critical resource. These actions—now intensified under new sanctions and open threats of war—represent a dangerous abuse of power and a blatant violation of international law. No nation, no matter how powerful, has the right to hijack another country’s economic lifeline.

Each barrel of oil taken is a theft not only from Venezuela’s economy, but from its people—resources that should fund hospitals, schools, and rebuilding efforts, not be siphoned off under the guise of geopolitical pressure. The question is simple: Who gets to keep the oil? The answer is even simpler: It must be returned to Venezuela immediately.

By tightening sanctions while threatening military escalation, the U.S. is destabilizing an already vulnerable region and eroding any credibility it claims to hold as a defender of sovereignty. This path leads only to further suffering and needless confrontation.

The world must speak clearly: Venezuela’s resources belong to Venezuela. Anything less is legalized theft disguised as foreign policy.