By Global News Service

Credit Line: from the Peoples Dispatch / Globetrotter News Service

Iran Launches Retaliatory Strikes Against Israel

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) announced on April 13 that it launched “extensive” missile and drone strikes against Israel in response to the Israeli bombing of the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, Syria on April 1. The announcement came nearly two weeks after the attack which killed 13 people, including senior Iranian commander Mohammad Reza Zahedi as well as his deputy Mohammad Hadi Haji-Rahimi.

Iran, as well as several other key players in the Axis of Resistance, had repeatedly warned that retaliation would come after the Damascus attack. “We will give a decisive response to this action,” said Iran’s Ambassador to Damascus Hossein Akbari at the time. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah saidduring his Quds International Day Address, “Be certain that Iran’s response to the targeting of its Damascus consulate is inevitable.”

Following Iran’s strikes against Israel, the IRGC released a statement, declaring that “in response to the Zionist regime’s numerous crimes, including the attack on the consular section of Iran’s Embassy in Damascus and the martyrdom of a number of our country’s commanders and military advisors in Syria, the IRGC’s Aerospace Division launched tens of missiles and drones against certain targets inside the occupied territories.”

The first official response from the U.S. government came from White House National Security Council Spokesperson Adrienne Watson. She wrote, “President Biden has been clear: our support for Israel’s security is ironclad. The United States will stand with the people of Israel and support their defense against these threats from Iran.”

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German Police Shut Down Pro-Palestine Conference

On April 12, in another round of repression against Palestine solidarity organizers, German police shut down the Palestine Congress in Berlin. They arrested several attendees and ordered delegates to leave immediately. German officials also prohibited scheduled speaker Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a Palestinian-British surgeon and the rector of Glasgow University, from even entering the country. The Congress aimed to raise awareness about chargesof Germany’s complicity in Israel’s genocide in the International Court of Justice, which have been raised by Nicaragua.

German police dramatically stormed the stage of the conference and proceeded to shut down speakers after the Congress had already begun, interrupted and stopped the conference livestream, and broke into the control room to shut off the power. Red Media reported that “900 police are deployed to the congress, whose start they held up for hours. They demanded that organizers allow all German media into the congress, ironically to ‘safeguard free speech’ and then denied entry to most of the registered delegates.”

German police have arrested several activists participating in the Congress, including Jewish activists. Anti-Zionist Jewish activists are heavily targeted in Germany, despite Germany’s attempt to justify its support to Israel as “collective guilt” over the Holocaust and repenting for its infamous antisemitism. Yet, according to researcher Emily Dische-Becker, almost a third of those deplatformed, arrested, or otherwise sanctioned for alleged antisemitism are themselves Jewish. Videos from the repression show a Jewish activist being arrested outside of the conference, with police seizing a banner that read “Jew Against Genocide.”

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U.S. Officials Brazenly Deny Genocide

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was pressed by Senator Tom Cotton during a recent Senate Armed Services Committee meeting, on whether Israeli actions in Gaza constitute a genocide.

“We don’t have any evidence of genocide being created,” Austin responded, who recently met with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (the same Israeli official who called Gazans “human animals”), as Gallant came knocking on the U.S.’s door to ask for more weapons. The United States has sent tens of thousands of weapons to Israel since October, with Israel being the largest recipient of U.S. military aid for decades. This puts the blame for the over 33,000 dead in Gaza (including over 13,000 children) squarely on the shoulders of the larger country.

The United States continues to stubbornly deny the reality of Israeli genocide in Gaza, despite the International Court of Justice (ICJ) partially upholdingSouth Africa’s case against Israel and ordering Israel to take “all measures” to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza, including by its military.

Austin’s home was visited by pro-Palestine protesters early Christmas morning back in December 2023, who picketed outside in protest of genocide.

As the death toll and atrocities only compound in Gaza, the U.S. government continues to double down on its military aid to Israel. As a result, the Palestine solidarity movement has only ramped up public pressure on U.S. officials. At a recent public appearance, an anti-war activist publicly disrupted former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, accusing her of war crimes.

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Milei Celebrates Violent Repression of Thousands Protesting Hunger in Argentina

On April 10, the Federal Police and the Police of the city of Buenos Aires violently evicted and repressed a peaceful demonstration. The mobilization, organized by the Union of Workers of the Popular Economy (UTEP) was one of many that took place in cities across the country to raise awareness of the critical situation faced by workers in the informal economy.

Organizations that are part of UTEP claim that the national government has suspended programs providing food to community kitchens, and has also refused to dialogue with organizations who have repeatedly denounced the suspension and now are unable to provide food to the thousands of families that they previously worked with. Many poor families across the country have also suffered from a freeze of and reduction to their “Social Complementary Salary,” a government program that provided supplementary economic aid to workers of the informal economy.

In Buenos Aires, thousands of protesters attempted to march to the Ministry of Human Capital when they were violently attacked by police with gas and water cannons. Over 10 were arrested and several were injured, including one protester who was dragged down the street and hit against the asphalt.

The Ministry of Human Capital is a creation of the Milei government as a part of his promise to cut the majority of ministries and secretaries and create “super ministries”. This move, in addition to massively reducing the number of people working for the ministry, also entailed severe cuts to dozens of social programs.