I came across the views of Marta Havryshko in a YouTube video on June 15th, in a lengthy audio essay.
What struck me about this speech, was that it comes from a Jewish Ukrainian woman, who is describing her own observations, living in Ukraine today. I also found the title of her speech very interesting – The tragedy of Memory Politics in Ukraine, Israel & the West. That’s because I cannot help noticing that in the prevailing commentaries on Ukraine, the commentators seem to have forgotten the complexity in Ukraine’s recent modern history.
Marta Havryshko is aware of this complex history. She has been living through the most recent part of it. She sees it from a Jewish perspective, and she is no fan of Putin’s Russia. But – she also brings her awareness of history to current affairs in Ukraine, and she is no fan of Volodymyr Zelensky either.
I tried to transcribe the entire 95 minutes of her speech. It is too long for an article, but I will include excerpts here, to illustrate her themes. She discusses Ukraine’s troubled history of anti-semitism, and the Nazi period in Ukraine. She focusses on Zelensky and the current accepted views on Ukraine’s history – the apparent forgetting of the facts in that history, as Ukrainian extreme nationalism now flourishes.
Marta describes her childhood, and education in Ukraine. She learned at school the history of Soviet Russia’s oppression of Ukrainians, and of the heroic freedom fighters who resisted the Russians:
“I was was raised on this nationalistic myth about glorious fighters, members of the Ukraine underground movement the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the organisation of Ukraine nationalists. We learned all these patriotic songs. Our family gatherings involved histories about Soviet repressions and actually, the house that my parents built was on the territory on the land that was seized by Soviets in 1939. Some of my family were involved on the ground in the Ukrainian nationalist movement and they were oppressed. Some of them were booted in prison and some of them were sent to Siberia. So I was raised in this highly nationalistic environment.
When I became a student at Lviv National University actually I met almost the same atmosphere. Lviv is a very nationalistic city with the biggest monument to Stepan Bandera (leader of the UPA). My home was close to Bandera street, and many streets had these partisan names.”
Marta explains how the memories of wartime events have now become confused, enmeshed into present day views and anti-Russian fervour.
“After 2014 this very western Ukraine nationalistic historical myth started to move eastward. After 2022 it became really the national myth promoted on the very national level. That’s why for example under President Zelensky we nowadays have streets named Bandera and Shukhevych (another UPA leader) in Kirik, home town of our president Zelensky.
This myth is cultivated in Ukraine in war time. Another dimension of this very troubling development in is that Nazi apologism is flourishing because many members of the Ukraine nationalists on the ground during the second world war were members of auxiliary police under German occupation and some of them occupied chief positions, so they were not just ordinary rank and file policemen – they were chiefs of police. Vasyl Levkovych, for example, is a very glorious figure in this nationalist pantheon. Those people nowadays are celebrated as freedom fighters and their direct participation in the holocaust is obscured, is marginalised and silenced and even denied.
At the holocaust memorial I was really shocked. I saw these fancy souvenir magazines with Daddy Bandera socks and Daddy Bandera bags. In one day I spent almost three hours in the city center and I saw an amount of different hate symbols like SS bolts, like black sun like Nazi eagles, like swastikas. I never saw in my life. in Western Europe, this concentration of these Nazi hate symbols. and the amount of different hate symbols – SS bolts, black sun, Nazi eagle, different combinations of swastikas. In Ukraine it’s so normalised – why? Because it’s a part of military culture nowadays. Those symbols are adopted primarily by military actors and by soldiers. The trust in Ukraine military is so high in Ukraine society – approximately more than 90% of Ukrainians nowadays trust Ukraine military. That’s why they just accept this.
Ukraine military nowadays is full of different far right groups. They are sponsored and they are celebrated as freedom fighters. In the Ukraine military we have overt Nazi apologists. For example we have the Niga named after the Nachtigall Battalion formed by the Germans and this battalion participated in the Nazi Barbarossa plan against Russia in 1941. From the documents of some participants of this unit we know that they participated in anti-Jewish pogroms.
Especially after 2022 so many neo-Nazis and far right groups neo-Nazis and far right groups were empowered and they openly promote their agenda. They openly celebrate Nazi units. Why? Because their ideology is.” Those guys are lesser evil because they fought our eternal enemy, meaning Russia. And they compare themselves with Nazis.So it’s not only Putin who compares them with Nazis, but that they themselves compare themselves with Nazis, and it’s ridiculous, it’s just crazy.”
Marta explains “memory politics” as a strategy, a weapon of war:
Those who are against military mobilisation are not a minority any more, Those who want to have peace with Russia, those who want to build a relationship with Russia on good terms, who don’t want to be engaged in eternal war with Russia, they are “bad Ukrainians” – you need to view Russia as the eternal enemy. For our children, this means only permanent war. With the anti-Russian project and narrative we will be in constant war with the superior angry and very powerful aggressor., in constant destruction.
We don’t want to spend our lives, sacrificing our life for what? – for our political elites. Ukraine is now a colonial client of the West, The West is deciding what money will go where, what laws will be adopted. In our fight against the Russian imperial state we are becoming a colony of Western imperialism. No-one is talking about this, because it’s a “good” empire.
We still have enormous casualties, and those casualties are hidden.
Memory politics is the main issue. They make movies etc about Russian atrocities but never about Ukrainian atrocities. Ukraine killed Ukrainian students in occupied Donbass, in Spring 2022. It was painful to see how many people denied it, and then justified it, blaming those students for “collaboration with Russia,” some were trying to present this as collateral damage.
The state is pouring so much money into commemorating this war. It’s about producing, inflicting emotions. First of all it’s always in both Ukrainian and English language, It’s for Western audiences, to inflict emotion, to inflict empathy, to present Ukraine as poor victim, to present a black and white picture when Ukraine is of course presented as the forces of good, and Russia as the forces of evil. Nothing of course about what happened to the people of Donbass in 2014, 2015, 2016 – always about guilt of Russia, bad Russia, crazy Putin, imperialism in Russian blood, and angels Ukraine.
So memory politics is a part of Ukraine war propaganda. Many intellectuals are engaged in this propaganda, and many receive grants from abroad. And it supports the Western agenda: Many many Western people – who discovered Ukraine only in February 2022 – see Ukraine as this angel, who was unjustifiably attacked, and is bleeding, and needs support to continue resistance. Nobody is asking those people kidnapped in the vans. Nobody asking those women, their sisters, their mothers, their wives – “Do they want to fight, to be sent to the meat-grinder against their will?” This myth of resilience, of this nation, who would rather die than live under Russian occupation. But this myth is produced by Zelensky propaganda. I must admit they’re doing a very good job in this, because Zelensky is very good at entertainment – it’s his profession.
It’s so pathetic watching Elon Musk’s groveling bootlickers fall all over themselves on social media to defend their favorite oligarch from criticism as he becomes the world’s first trillionaire.
They’re like “Don’t be mean to the trillionaire, just become a trillionaire yourself! All you need is luck, connections, wealthy parents, the ruthlessness to step on anyone who gets in your way, and a willingness to cooperate with murderous imperial institutions like the Pentagon and the CIA!”
It’s so gross how many fawning admirers this freak still has. The trillionaire is not your friend.
People who say “Zionism is just the belief that Jews should have a homeland” are hilarious. Zionism isn’t some abstraction; we can all see its material manifestations with our own eyes. We can all see that Zionism means genocide, apartheid, and nonstop wars and abuse.
This isn’t some kind of theoretical debate where we all get to have our own opinions about what Zionism is and what it entails. It’s 2026, not 1890. The facts are in and the case is closed, kids. This is what Zionism is. This is the only Zionism in existence. What you see is what you get. And what you see is quantifiably one of the most evil things happening on our planet.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Hasbara is so gross because it’s just Zionists throwing walls of language at you to convince you you’re not seeing what you’re seeing.
You see raw video footage of the most horrifying thing imaginable in Gaza, and then you see them in the replies going “This is actually fine and normal because words words words words words words words.”
You see a news report about Israel doing something astonishingly evil in Lebanon, and there they are underneath it going “There’s actually a lot more to the story because words words words words words words words.”
You see some far right Israeli minister spouting nakedly genocidal rhetoric, and they’re swarming all over it saying “Well this isn’t actually what it looks like because words words words words words words words.”
You see every major human rights group on earth saying Israel is guilty of genocide and apartheid, and they’re running around frantically telling you it’s a giant conspiracy to frame Israel and the truth is that words words words words words words words.
You see more and more mainstream news institutions reporting on the mountains of evidence of widespread rape and torture in Israeli prisons, and they saturate the airwaves claiming it’s an antisemitic blood libel because words words words words words words words.
You see some far right Israeli minister spouting nakedly genocidal rhetoric, and they’re swarming all over it saying “Well this isn’t actually what it looks like because words words words words words words words.”
You see every major human rights group on earth saying Israel is guilty of genocide and apartheid, and they’re running around frantically telling you it’s a giant conspiracy to frame Israel and the truth is that words words words words words words words.
Musk had become this unfortunate planet’s first trillionaire due to a tax system that offered a shield for the ultra-wealthy while requiring the toiling workers to “pay taxes on every paycheck.”
Social responsibility tended to be hard to find in the cultic coverage of Musk’s attainments. Here was indulgence and market distortion aplenty, which should bother anyone whose fund managers wish to ride the wave. Musk is not just a threat to such simple notions as civic duty but an arid, unforgivable bore who tries so hard to be, well, liked.
The fourth estate has taken leave of its senses again, not that much is left for the exercise of those frail faculties. But commentary on Elon Musk’s transformation from multibillionaire tech prat into a trillionaire tosser because of magical accounting and the bubble of company valuation was reverenced rather than critiqued. Starry-eyed commentary from financial analysts swooned over the prospect of further investments after SpaceX made its public offering on June 12; the rhetoric of intergalactic travel and extra-terrestrial based data centres was lapped up. (Easy to revel in what is yet to be created.)
Publications such as Forbes“declared” – as if they have such priestly authority to do so – the change of financial status of the cocksure mogul. Better reporting would at least have pointed out that these assessments lie in the world of the fictive, a trillionaire status tied up in stockholdings in Tesla and the monster that is now SpaceX. The stock in SpaceX will be unsellable for at least a year. But let us see how that supposed scrutineer of wealth described it: “Forbes estimates that the IPO has boosted Musk’s fortune to $1.1 trillion, as of Friday morning. His net worth rose by $188 billion to an estimated $982 billion on Thursday evening, when SpaceX priced the IPO at $135 per share.” Matt Durott, Deputy Editor of the Wealth section of Forbes valiantly bored readers with the observation that Musk’s “ascent to a $1 trillion fortune represents a milestone once considered unimaginable, highlighting how rapidly wealth can be created in an increasingly interconnected and technology-driven world.”
Renaissance Capital’s Matthew Kennedy was appropriately banal to observe that such public offerings do tend to involve fluff, bluster and show. “No question that there is a ton of hype about it. Nothing captures the imagination like space.” Such expansive imagination becomes borderless with the realisation that SpaceX is a loss-making exercise, a warning that is being beaten back by the financial tribes. In 2025 and 2026, it lost $9 billion, according to the company’s own financial filings. Much of that bleeding has taken place in the artificial intelligence portfolio, where artificial means what it says. Nancy Tengler of Laffer Tengler Investments, a firm that has put in an order to net SpaceX shares, had to admit that the AI arm of the company was proving to be a “cash incinerator.” Proving to be a gambler, as many in this bubble industry are proving to be, Tengler is focusing on an “investment horizon” lasting anywhere from three to ten years.
Unless you subscribe to Cult Musk, another facet of this monstrous growth of counterfeit wealth lies in its origins, which are very much of a government and administrative making. The tech brat complex has tended to draw a generous share of public monies through government subsidies and research propped by the public sector. Government contracts have sought to fill the coffers of SpaceX, dispelling notions of rugged, self-sufficient innovation.
Even as Musk went about his vigilante task of trimming US federal spending through his DOGE (Department for Government Efficiency) team, it was hard to ignore the looming shadow that his business empire had received, according to an estimate arrived at by the Washington Post, $38 billion in government padding and stretching, be it through contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits. “Nearly a tenth of government money that has benefited Musk’s companies comes from agencies in eight states, including California. Since 2007, state and local governments have given Musk companies at least $1.5 billion in tax credits, grants and reimbursements, while various government agencies at multiple levels contributed another $2.1 billion, much of it to drive the development of Tesla and the batteries it relies upon
Those sufficiently alert can at least make the obvious point that a risibly generous tax system, which should be described as a system that negates tax for the wealthy, has turned the clownishly well-heeled into caricatures of gilded wealth, a bird species ornamented beyond conscience and saved from any hunting season. Igor Volsky, director of the Tax the Greedy Billionaires Campaign, offered few surprises in expressing the view that Musk had become this unfortunate planet’s first trillionaire due to a tax system that offered a shield for the ultra-wealthy while requiring the toiling workers to “pay taxes on every paycheck.” Volsky then mourns the horse long bolted from the stable. “Unless we plan to cede control and agency over our future to a handful of ultra-wealthy individuals, lawmakers must pursue bold tax policies that actually meet this moment – not just slowing the accumulation of extreme wealth, but reversing it.” Volsky then mourns the horse long bolted from the stable. “Unless we plan to cede control and agency over our future to a handful of ultra-wealthy individuals, lawmakers must pursue bold tax policies that actually meet this moment – not just slowing the accumulation of extreme wealth, but reversing it.”
Social responsibility tended to be hard to find in the cultic coverage of Musk’s attainments. Here was indulgence and market distortion aplenty, which should bother anyone whose fund managers wish to ride the wave. Musk is not just a threat to such simple notions as civic duty but an arid, unforgivable bore who tries so hard to be, well, liked. Were a novelist to ever try to do justice to his repulsive case, not much would present itself. At least Evelyn Waugh, when trying to elevate the nobs he worshipped in Brideshead Revisited, proved lush in his representation of a dying era he should have left to the tombs. No amount of cash, or space, will do it for Musk on that score.
Pete Hegseth is The American Secretary of War. His job title was formerly Secretary Of Defence, before the idea of defending yourself was deemed too ‘woke’ and America decided it was best to give the impression it was happy to throw the first punch in case people on social media thought the entire country was gay.
At a Normandy D-Day commemoration, Pete Hegseth, the American Secretary of War, noted that beaches were stormed in 1944 and are being stormed by ideologies now. The two events share precisely one feature, and that is sand
Pete Hegseth is The American Secretary of War. His job title was formerly Secretary Of Defence, before the idea of defending yourself was deemed too ‘woke’ and America decided it was best to give the impression it was happy to throw the first punch in case people on social media thought the entire country was gay.
Last week Hegseth stood with his actual Christian nationalist tattoos concealed beneath his actual clothes on an actual Normandy beach to commemorate the start of the liberation of Europe from the Nazis on D Day in 1944. And he stated “sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies.”
Whatever comparison Hegseth was trying to make, it was a bit creaky. The Normandy beaches were stormed by the allies, which was a good thing, yes? But Hegseth is saying that today some different things are storming some different beaches, which is bad. Ideally at least one thing in the comparison should be the same as at least one thing in the original example, otherwise it isn’t really a point of comparison. It’s just a whole new idea.
Oh hang on! It’s beaches, isn’t it. There are beaches in both examples. It sort of works. But Hegseth dislikes so many ideologies – including feminism, environmentalism, secularism, gay rights and general ‘wokeness’ – as well as Islam, it was difficult to be certain at first which ideologies he was concerned about. If all the ideologies Hegseth fears arrive on the metaphorical beach at the same time it’s going to get very crowded. Hopefully the Germans will have staked out a few sun-loungers with their towels before breakfast in case feminism and environmentalism try to get all the best spots.
Then Hegseth clarifies it. “Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion, or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not.” Well UK net migration is at its lowest level for five years, but clearly it wasn’t appropriate for Hegseth to break off from his Christian Nationalist trajectory to congratulate the Starmer government on making basketcase UK a less attractive destination for the world’s hopeful.
Some of the crosses scribbled on Hegseth’s body look dangerously like the ones you’re still not allowed to display in Germany. But I’m sure that’s just a coincidence
Uncharacteristically, Hegseth, who relishes the idea that his failed operation in Islamic Iran is a ‘Holy War’, stops short of explicitly saying it is Islam that is the ideology that is arriving. The whole thing is such a mess. If he wanted to tie his comments into the beaches thing it would have been better if he just said “Whenever I am on a beach I like to lie on a sun-lounger and think about how much I hate European liberal democracies.”
Ironically, Hegseth’s ideology isn’t that different to the one we fought back at on the beaches, on the landing grounds, in the fields and in the streets, and in the hills, eighty-two years ago. And some of the crosses scribbled on Hegseth’s body look dangerously like the ones you’re still not allowed to display in Germany since those other Nazis got ousted. But I’m sure that’s just a coincidence. It’s all so confusing.
Meanwhile, the vice president JD Vance claimed the young white British boy Henry Nowak’s death was caused by the “mass invasion of migrants” and that our “only response” should be “righteous anger”, which presumably is the high-minded American Christian manifestation of Nigel Farage’s rather more brutal “pure cold rage.”
I think the ideal version of what we are supposed to feel would have been a combination of both men’s ideas, perhaps a “pure cold righteous anger.” Maybe in future Hegseth and Farage need to coordinate their speeches so people aren’t confused about what feelings they are supposed to have. After all, you don’t want to be exorcising yourself feeling exhausting “pure cold rage” when you should be exhibiting the steely calm of “righteous anger.” Life’s too short.
The only surprising thing about the American government’s attempts to exploit the tragedy of Nowak’s death, against the express wishes of his grieving parents, is that anyone is still naive enough to be surprised by it. Since retaking office the Trump administration has explicitly stated it intends to destabilise Western European liberal governments and work towards replacing them with systems more amenable to its essentially white supremacist vision. And the helpful social media algorithms of the loyal tech lords who support it, either out of ideological belief or self-interested avarice or both, push its propaganda perfectly. Yet people still act like Trump’s stated positions are just postures designed to provoke, instead of statements of actual policy. He has told European Liberal Democracies he wants them gone. And yet we still talk about a special relationship, like a whipped dog that comes back daily for its usual kicking.
It may as well be Trump, Hegseth and Vance rioting on the Southampton streets and throwing punches at the police, as their views, funnelled and amplified by social media like Elon Musk’s Twitter (currently X), are deliberately driving destabilising unrest. Politicians prevaricate about whether the government should have a presence on Musk’s network when in fact they should be working out how to stop it even having access to our citizens. If people want to see pictures of a female Labour MP being chloroformed before being raped can’t they draw their own, instead of getting Musk’s app to do it for them? At the very least Musk is killing creativity.
The final word goes to Chantal Richard, a member of the Langrune en Commun Association, in the area of Normandy Hegseth visited last week. “This individual promotes values that go against democracy, human rights and peace. The fact that Pete Hegseth is challenging all the international organisations that emerged from the second world war isn’t business as usual. He must be called out for who he is, for the values he represents: colonial, warmongering, racist, far-right values. Silence seems to us to be the worst thing we can do on these issues.”
David Lammy, on the other hand, remains ‘friends’ with JD Vance. Idiot.
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL, 29 May 26
Donald Trump is the classic schoolyard bully. Alas, instead of hurting, indeed terrorizing weaker school mates, he’s terrorizing the weaker on a global scale, both at home and abroad.
On the domestic front he’s demonizing the ‘other’ by abusing, sometimes killing decent, hardworking undocumented. He uses the Bully Pulpit, not in the rhetorical sense to uplift society promoting wise polices, but to dismantle most sensible domestic policies and institutions, and demonize anyone who crosses him. Nearly every critic of Trump within the Republican Party has been bullied from public office. Every Democrat is slimed as a terrible, horrible person. Classic bullying.
But it’s on the world stage where his bullying is relentlessly murderous. Over 60 bombings of imagined bad guys in Somalia without a hint of justification, much less even a mention. Swooping down into pitifully powerless Venezuela to snatch its president on trumped up charges, slaughtering hundreds in the process. Blowing up small, unarmed boats in the Caribbean then bragging his sick, murderous rampage saved a million US lives.
But on February 28th bully Trump met match. He attacked large, powerful Iran believing the lies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and own war cabinet that Iran would collapse within days once Netanyahu assassinated Iran’s ruler. A few days turned into 39 days of bombing before Trump realized that Iran was not only surviving but winning. How? By unleashing a massive missile barrage on every US Gulf States base, Gulf States oil infrastructure, Israel, and closing the Strait of Hormuz to a fifth of the world’s oil supply.
What to do? After 91 days of humiliating defeat, bully Trump turned his bullying on tiny Oman which shares the Strait of Hormuz with Iran. Oman will be Iran’s partner in controlling traffic thru the Strait which consists of Iran and Oman territorial waters.
When asked if he’d accept a short-term deal that involved Iran and Oman jointly controlling the Strait of Hormuz, bully Trump unloaded on Oman. “No, the Strait’s got to be opened to everybody. It’s international waters. Nobody’s going to control it. We’ll watch over it, but nobody’s going to control it. Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow them up. They understand that they’ll be fine,
Sorry bully Trump. Knowing Trump can no longer ‘blow up’ anybody in the region after squandering much US firepower on his lost Iran war, Oman will stand up to bully Trump just like Strait partner Iran.
Now that bully Trump has been exposed as the powerless bully he is, it’s all over for him to strut the world stage like he owns it. He’s alienated friend and foe alike with his murderous bullying, duplicitous negotiating and utter lack of credibility.
Trump’s bullying served him well in both his business career and his takeover of the r Republican Party for two presidential terms. But Karma eventually comes to bullies who believe they can bully their way thru life. It’s going to take months, years, possibly a decade to undo the damage of Trump’s bullying at home and abroad. But as Bob Dylan sang long ago…”Even the President of the United States must sometimes have to stand naked.”
Razan al‑Najjar’s life and death expose something the world is still struggling to confront: in Palestine, even the act of saving a life is treated as a crime. A young woman in a white medic’s vest, running toward the wounded with her hands raised, was met with a sniper’s bullet — and then a smear campaign designed to kill her a second time in the public imagination.
“They called her dangerous because she carried no weapon at all — only a medical vest, courage, and the belief that Palestinian lives mattered.”
In a world drowning in propaganda, war crimes, and the routine dehumanization of Palestinians, the story of Rozan al-Najjar cuts through the noise with devastating clarity. She wasn’t armed. She wasn’t a politician. She was a 21-year-old volunteer medic running toward gunfire to save the wounded during Gaza’s Great March of Return — and for that, she was killed by an Israeli sniper.
Ahmed Abu Artema’s powerful piece is more than a memorial. It’s an indictment of a world that watches medics, journalists, and children become targets while calling it “security.” Rozan’s haunting words — “Without weapons, we can do anything” — remain a direct challenge to systems built on violence, occupation, and fear.
Her bloodstained medic vest became evidence of a deeper truth: even compassion itself is treated as a threat under apartheid and siege.
At a time when governments spend billions fueling war while criminalizing solidarity and silencing dissent, Rozan’s story reminds us that humanity can still exist inside unimaginable brutality. That may be exactly why her memory remains so dangerous.
Read and share this extraordinary piece by Ahmed Abu Artema.
“Without weapons, we can do anything”: The story of Rozan al-Najjar
Through her courage, sacrifice, and deep humanity, this special Palestinian woman showed that even without weapons, one person can resist oppression and defend life.
In some research about this remarkable young women Honoring Razan al‑Najjar: When Truth Itself Becomes a Battlefield
According to witness accounts and reporting from human rights and medical organizations, 21-year-old Palestinian paramedic Razan al-Najjar was killed by Israeli sniper fire on June 1, 2018, while volunteering as a medic during Gaza’s Great March of Return protests. Witnesses said Razan was wearing a clearly marked white medical vest and had her arms raised while attempting to assist wounded demonstrators when she was shot. No Israeli official has been criminally held accountable in connection with her killing.
Razan was one of three medical workers reported killed by Israeli forces while treating injured protesters during the first year of the Great March of Return. Medical Aid for Palestinians reported that between March and August 2018, more than 400 Palestinian medical personnel were injured during the demonstrations, while 61 medical vehicles and two health clinics were damaged. Human rights groups and medical organizations have repeatedly criticized the lack of accountability surrounding those incidents.
On June 1, 2018, 21‑year‑old paramedic Razan al‑Najjar walked toward Gaza’s perimeter fence wearing a white medical vest, hands raised, responding to the wounded. Moments later, she was shot in the chest by an Israeli sniper. As one article notes, she was killed “while working as a volunteer paramedic… providing care and assistance to people injured during protests” and “had her arms raised above her head when she was killed.”
Here was a young Palestinian woman risking her life to treat the wounded in the middle of what many around the world have described as a continuing genocide, and her life was taken doing exactly that. We must remember the healthcare heroes of Palestine, who deserve far more than our gratitude.
Her death was not an aberration. It was part of a pattern.
Between March and August 2018 alone, over 400 Palestinian medical workers were injured, three were killed, and 61 ambulances and two clinics were damaged by Israeli fire. No one has been held accountable.
The Times undermine their own reporting with a misleading headline. If you actually read the article (which many obviously won’t), it’s clear that there’s no such ambiguity:“The bullet that killed her, The Times found, was fired by an Israeli sniper into a crowd that included white-coated medics in plain view. A detailed reconstruction, stitched together from hundreds of crowd-sourced videos and photographs, shows that neither the medics nor anyone around them posed any apparent threat of violence to Israeli personnel. Though Israel later admitted her killing was unintentional, the shooting appears to have been reckless at best, and possibly a war crime, for which no one has yet been punished.”
A Smear Campaign Against a Medic
The killing of a young woman in a white vest was a public‑relations disaster for Israel. The response was swift: a coordinated attempt to tarnish her image.
As The Intercept reported, the Israeli army released a “deceptively edited video” designed to portray Razan as a rioter and “no angel.” The clip spliced unrelated footage, stripped context from her interviews, and attempted to recast a medic as a militant shield.
This was not just a smear of Razan. It was an assault on the very idea of truth — a warning that even the dead are not safe from narrative warfare.
The Broader Pattern: Attacking Health Care Under Occupation
Long before Razan’s killing, Palestinian medical workers faced systematic violence and obstruction.
One account describes how, during the 2002 Ramallah curfew, an ambulance was surrounded at gunpoint by Israeli soldiers — a routine occurrence at the time. Another recounts hospitals invaded, clinics destroyed, and patients denied care.
In Gaza today, doctors often see 40–100 patients a day, while over 40% of essential medicines are out of stock due to the blockade. Mobile clinics in the West Bank are routinely prevented from reaching isolated communities.
These are not isolated incidents. They are the infrastructure of a system that treats Palestinian health care as expendable — and sometimes as a target.
Why Razan’s Story Still Matters
Razan al‑Najjar became a symbol not because she sought it, but because her killing revealed the brutal asymmetry of power in Gaza. As one analysis put it, the protests she served were met with “Israeli bullets and Palestinian bodies,” not clashes.
Her death forces uncomfortable questions:
Why are medics shot while tending the wounded?
Why are smear campaigns deployed against the dead?
Why is there no accountability — not for Razan, not for the hundreds injured, not for the clinics destroyed?
The answer lies in the structure of occupation itself. As one article bluntly states: “It’s the occupation, stupid.”
A Call to Honor the Health Workers of Palestine
Razan al‑Najjar’s legacy is not only her death. It is the courage she embodied: a young woman running toward danger to save others, in a place where even medics are targets.
As one article urges, “We must all remember the health care heroes of Palestine… They deserve protection, accountability, and access to needed resources.”
Honoring Razan means demanding accountability. Honoring Razan means defending truth against distortion. Honoring Razan means refusing to let propaganda bury the reality of occupation.
Her story is a reminder: When power tries to rewrite the truth, telling it becomes an act of resistance.
Video released by Gaza’s Health Ministry, reportedly showing Razan al-Najjar and other medics moments before Israeli forces opened fire, appeared to show them moving forward with their hands raised as they tried to reach the wounded.
As outrage over Razan al-Najjar’s killing spread internationally, Israeli officials reportedly first claimed she had been accidentally shot by a soldier aiming at someone else. But critics and human rights observers say that explanation was quickly followed by what appeared to be a coordinated effort to discredit her publicly, with Israeli military social media accounts circulating claims suggesting the young medic had been involved in rioting or used to shield militants during the protests — accusations supporters and rights advocates strongly rejected.
One post shared widely after her death described Razan as an “angel of mercy” killed while trying to save lives at the Gaza border protests, a reflection of how many Palestinians and supporters around the world
In the end, we return to Razan’s own words. The killing of the young medic — who had spoken powerfully in interviews with international media about her mission to save lives in Gaza — sparked global outrage and intensified criticism of Israel’s actions during the Great March of Return protests.
Razan al‑Najjar’s life and death expose something the world is still struggling to confront: in Palestine, even the act of saving a life is treated as a crime. A young woman in a white medic’s vest, running toward the wounded with her hands raised, was met with a sniper’s bullet — and then a smear campaign designed to kill her a second time in the public imagination. That sequence alone tells us everything about the power imbalance, the impunity, and the machinery of dehumanization that defines life under occupation.
But Razan’s story endures precisely because it refuses to be buried. It forces us to look directly at the violence inflicted on Palestinian health workers, the systematic targeting of those who heal, and the global silence that allows it to continue. It reminds us that truth itself becomes a battlefield when states attempt to rewrite reality and erase the humanity of the people they oppress.
To honor Razan is not simply to mourn her. It is to insist on accountability where none has been allowed. It is to defend the right of medics, journalists, and civilians to exist without being shot, smeared, or silenced. And it is to recognize that her courage — the belief that “without weapons, we can do anything” — remains a radical act of resistance in a world that punishes compassion.
Razan al‑Najjar should have lived. Her patients should have lived. The medics who followed her should not have to choose between saving lives and losing their own. Remembering her is not an act of sentiment; it is a demand for justice, for truth, and for a future in which Palestinian life is no longer treated as expendable.
Rudyard Kipling, a modern classic of the Western literary canon, was both a champion of British imperialism and too honest not to know its very sordid underpinnings of greed, lies, and sheer selfishness.
That’s why the same man who extolled the “white man’s burden” also wrote ‘The Man Who Would Be King,’ a story of two lowlife, ambitious adventurers who manage to swindle their way to becoming kings as well as rich in a remote country on the fringes of the empire, then at its late-nineteenth-century zenith of global primacy. Until, that is, one of them makes the mistake of messing with the wrong woman, who ends up biting him in public. Seeing him bleed, his subjects realize he is a mere mortal and mercilessly dispense with the two imposters.
Ukraine’s ruler – and de facto king (of the old-fashioned, non-constitutional kind) – Vladimir Zelensky is a social climber, too. In his formative years, his native Krivoy Rog was a provincial post-Soviet rustbelt town with a lively gangster scene, a “bandit city” in his own words. Zelensky is also an expert in make-believe by profession, a cynically profane showman of the ‘give-them-whatever-they-want-as-long-as-it-pays’ variety, the cruder and smuttier the better.
Indeed, Zelensky even has a sidekick, who, as in Kipling’s dark story, has shared in the scheme of power-grabbing and plunder: Andrey Yermak, his former chief of staff and very intimate friend, making headlines (again) for being so corrupt and sinister that he stands out, even in Kiev.
And now Zelensky, the man who, it seems, would be Ukraine’s president forever, has just been bitten in public by a woman. Judging by the fierce, clearly orchestrated reaction of his media propagandists in Ukraine and the fact that the Western mainstream media are largely pretending not to have noticed, he must be bleeding, too.
The woman is his former press secretary Yulia Mendel. And she has been able to draw (metaphorical) blood because Tucker Carlson, American alternative-media heavyweight and conservative dissident from Trumpism, has interviewed her for his show.
That has made it a very public bloodletting indeed. What Mendel has had to say is one thing, her ability to reach breathtaking numbers of Americans and other inhabitants of the West is at least as important and, from Kiev’s point of view, frustrating: Across various platforms, shows of the Tucker Carlson Network (TCN) are watched by, on average, over 55 million viewers, dwarfing, for instance, Fox News (Carlson’s former employer) with its prime time rating of 3.2 million.
Recently, the Israeli-US war against Iran has further undermined public confidence in the mainstream media and boosted TCN. “Explosive growth” in the two first months of the war has produced over 1.5 billion “views across social media and podcast platforms.” Indeed, TCN is on such a roll that Carlson is now rumored to be a contender for the presidency, and he has not ruled out a run.
This is the amplifier for Mendel’s harsh memo to the US and the West. It is hard to think of a bigger one. And what a message she had to deliver.
Consider a few highlights: Speaking, she underlined, as “an insider,” from her own close experience with Zelensky and the inner circle of his regime, Mendel has told us all that she believes Zelensky personally “stands behind many schemes of money laundering” and that he has always remained an “amazing actor” whose image “on camera” is “very different” from his real self.
For instance, while he is posturing as not merely some democrat but a shining epitome of democracy as well as everything else that is good and beautiful, such as rule of law, freedom of speech, civil society, and national unity, his real view, relentlessly repeated behind closed doors, is, as we learn from Mendel, that “Ukraine is not ready for democracy” and “dictatorship is an order,” too.
So much, by the way, for those Zelensky propagandists in Ukraine and the West who habitually smear every critic of his devastating regime as diminishing Ukraine or not trusting ordinary Ukrainians with “agency.” The one really despising his compatriots as too backward to rule themselves and in need of a strong – namely, his – hand, is, it turns out, Vladimir Zelensky. And as Mendel rightly points out, that also means that he does not symbolize or provide unity; he abuses it.
Zelensky’s profound hypocrisy permeates his private life and politics. Mendel reveals, for instance, that he was still going on trips to Crimea – to have fun with friends and drugs – while it was already under Russian control. In December 2019, he privately told Russian President Vladimir Putin that Ukraine would never join NATO. While Zelensky’s public poll ratings are steadily declining, the polls produced for internal use are so bad that even some of his fixers privately admit that he is “unelectable.”
With no respect for the truth, Zelensky’s attitude to reality itself seems broken, even deranged. From her own conversations with him, Mendel reports that Ukraine’s leader believes that “it doesn’t matter what is [actually] happening.” Things, he has argued behind closed doors, become real when they are said often enough by enough propagandists or, as she quotes him, by “thousands of talking heads.” Considering this bizarre outlook, it is revealing and revolting but also somehow, sadly consistent that Zelensky, who is Jewish, has literally demanded “Goebbels”-type “propaganda” from his communications team.
Beyond a ruthless and deliberate regime of lying and manipulation, there also is pressure and compulsion. Again, Mendel’s catalogue of Zelensky’s dictatorial strong-arm methods is depressing and plausible: from threats to perfectly illegal “sanctions” imposed via Zelensky’s personal fiat, to lawfare and process-as-punishment to long and open-ended jail terms to sending critics to the frontline as a punishment to very odd lethal accidents – Zelensky and his regime have, as Mendel puts it, “no limits.” Their rule has established a situation that is “inhuman.”
Mendel is believable. Zelensky regime propagandists, in Ukraine and the West, have, unsurprisingly, smeared her as, in effect, a Russian asset, as reproducing “Russian narratives” and, worst sin of them all, sharing Kiev’s very dirty secrets with the West. Because – this seems to be the underlying logic – the West must share hundreds of billions with Zelensky and his ultra-corrupt cronies, but no one has a right to share the truth about them with the West.
In reality, Mendel’s biography proves that she is what she claims to be: an insider who has had enough. She has had an exemplary “national” career and if she had not broken with Zelensky a few years ago, she would still be part of the eager cadre who once caused scandals for physically shoving away journalists to protect her former boss.
Even in the interview with Tucker Carlson, Mendel has made a point of carefully distinguishing between what she has seen herself and what she knows from – extremely strong – circumstantial evidence, for instance, that Zelensky has a long-standing cocaine habit.
And yet, by now Mendel – who displays no favor at all to Russia – considers Zelensky an evil and the key obstacle to peace for Ukraine. This peace, she warns, is the only alternative to what she calls being “on the verge of extinction.” She means it quite literally: There are far fewer Ukrainians left in the country than official statistics admit, perhaps 25 million, including 11 million impoverished pensioners. The only way to really support Ukraine, Mendel insists, is to “push for peace.”
Yet this is where, unfortunately, Ukraine’s would-be king is different from Kipling’s adventurers. They at least had no support from the empire on the fringe of which they ran their scheme of mass manipulation and self-enrichment. When their subjects lost their illusions, they fell.
Zelensky and his crew, however, still enjoy massive, cynical support from the West, even if it is now Germany and no longer the US that is in the lead. Perhaps Zelensky’s rule and its mistreatment of Ukraine and ordinary Ukrainians can only end when he loses his last Western backers. Until then, Mendel can make them bleed, but Ukrainians alone, it seems, will find it hard to shake them off.
It was the end of 2023 when images from Gaza began to fill our television screens. I found myself returning to them again and again: the ruins, the sirens, the unbearable stillness of small bodies wrapped in white.
The scale of destruction was immense. But what lingered were the faces of children — some gone, others injured, many too young to understand why their world had collapsed overnight. News reports spoke in numbers — casualties, statistics — but behind those numbers were stories that refused to leave the room even after the television was switched off.
This is no longer a reality confined to conflict zones. In an age of constant connectivity, children across the world are being exposed to war in real time, through screens, conversations and the ambient anxiety of the adults around them. This article argues that such exposure is quietly reshaping childhood, even for those far removed from the battlefield.
I would often sit with my wife, discussing what we had just seen, trying to process a grief that did not belong to us, yet somehow did.
And in all of this, I missed something important.
I have two daughters. My elder one is nearly 15, old enough to understand the language of conflict. My younger one, just six, still lives in a world where questions are simple, and answers are expected to reassure. They were in the room more often than I realized — watching, listening, absorbing.
At first, their reactions were subtle. A question here, a glance there. “Why are they crying?” my younger one once asked, pointing at the screen. I offered an answer that felt safe, something incomplete, something designed to protect. But children do not just hear words; they read faces, tones and silences. What I thought I had softened, they had already understood in their own way.
Then, more recently, the distance between “there” and “here” began to collapse.
As tensions involving the United States, Israel and Iran intensified, the tone of the news shifted. It was no longer just about another place. Reports mentioned the Gulf. Alerts flashed across screens. Words like “missiles” and “drones” entered everyday conversation, not as distant vocabulary, but as possibilities.
Schools closed. The rhythm of daily life paused.
And then came the moment that altered everything: the realization that Qatar, where we live, along with other Gulf countries, could itself be at risk. The headlines I had once consumed with a degree of separation were now unfolding uncomfortably close to home.
I saw the fear before it was spoken.
My elder daughter tried to remain composed, but her questions returned, faster this time, sharper. “Will it happen here?” “Are we safe?” There was no easy way to answer without confronting a truth I myself did not fully know.
My younger one did not ask. She held on.
A sudden sound made her flinch. A notification drew her attention instantly. The sky, once just an open expanse, had become something to watch carefully as if it could change without warning.
It was then I understood what I had failed to see all along.
War does not need to reach your doorstep to enter your home. It arrives quietly, through a screen, through a headline, through conversations not meant for young ears. And by the time it feels real, it has already settled into the minds of children, shaping fears they do not yet have the words to explain.
Research in child psychology has long shown that repeated exposure to violence, whether direct or mediated, can influence how children perceive safety and stability. In today’s 24-hour media environment, where graphic images and breaking alerts are constant, the boundary between distant conflict and personal reality is increasingly blurred. What was once filtered now arrives unmediated, often without the emotional tools needed to process it.
We often measure war in terms of territory, power and political outcomes. But there is another cost, less visible and far more enduring. It is carried in the questions children begin to ask, in the silences they grow into and in the way they start to see the world, not as a place of possibility, but as something uncertain.
Childhood is meant to be a time of discovery — when the sky is just the sky, not something to fear. When loud sounds are moments of excitement, not signals of danger. When the world feels large, but safe.
For many children today, that sense of safety is being quietly eroded.
Some lose it in the direct shadow of conflict. Others lose parts of it from a distance, through repeated exposure, through unanswered questions, through a growing awareness that the world is not as secure as it once seemed.
This raises difficult questions for parents, educators and media institutions alike. How much exposure is necessary for awareness, and when does it become overwhelming? Are we equipping children to understand what they see, or simply expecting them to absorb it? In trying to stay informed, we may be underestimating how deeply these moments settle in young minds.
We cannot shield children from reality forever. Nor should we pretend that the world is untouched by conflict. But somewhere between awareness and exposure, there is a line we are failing to draw, a line between informing and overwhelming, between preparing and frightening.
Because when a child begins to fear the sky, something fundamental has already been lost.
The sky was never meant to be a source of anxiety. It was meant for clouds that change shape, for birds that cross without borders, for stars that arrive quietly at night.
Not for missiles. Not for drones.
And yet, for many children today, the sky is no longer a place of wonder, but a question mark, something they look at not with curiosity, but with caution.
And perhaps that is the most lasting damage of all — not what war destroys in the moment, but what it quietly rewrites for the future.
Because long after the noise fades, these children will remember one thing:
They learned to be afraid of the sky before they ever learned to fully understand the world beneath it.
On Monday night, President Donald Trump made a series of baseless and erratic accusations against his perceived political enemies, including expressing a desire to charge former President Barack Obama with sedition and treason over a conspiracy theory regarding the 2016 election.
For comparison, the average person spends about two and a half hours on social media daily. On average, brands selling products post around once per day, while news media companies make around 12 posts daily.
As president of the United States of America, Trump could make the case that his posting more often than most people is due to the importance of his position — indeed, during his first term in office, the Trump administration indicated that his posts were meant to be seen as official statements from the president.
But the subject matter of Trump’s recent posts — and his tendency to peddle outlandish, unverified claims — has sparked questions from observers on both the left and the right over whether the president is mentally fit to remain in office.
An alarming number of posts from Trump on Monday night, for example, featured attacks on Obama, including accusing the former president of plotting a coup against him by using the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. Trump also posted half-baked and baseless conspiracy theories alleging that voting machines were altered in the 2020 presidential race, resulting in his loss that year to former President Joe Biden.
In one of his posts, Trump shared a screenshot of a post from a right-wing user. “STRAIGHT-UP SEDITION AGAINST THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT,” the writer said, alleging that Obama had spied on Trump during the 2016 presidential race and had ordered other allied countries to do so, too.
“Arrest them all. Prosecute them all. Incarcerate them all at once for treachery, treason, and seditious conspiracy to overthrow the United States government,” the post continued. “But first, Barack Obama.”
Notably, the federal punishment for treason can include the death penalty.
While Trump went on a multi-post crusade against his political opposition in the evening and into the next day, earlier on Monday, he accused his critics of having “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” making a wild claim that it is a real, diagnosable condition.
“They’ve got serious Trump Derangement, which actually is a disease. I’m hearing it is actually a disease,” Trump told reporters.
Trump’s bizarre posting spree against his opponents comes just a day after he spent a similar amount of time posting praise for himself. In several missives he made on Sunday night, Trump posted or shared content describing him as the “greatest” president of all time, including AI-created imagery suggesting that he might carve his face into the side of Mount Rushmore.
These posts, along with his public feud with Pope Leo XIV, his calls for genocide of Iranians in the US’s ongoing war with that country, and other examples of erratic behavior, have reignited the debate on the president’s mental health status. What’s different now than in the past, however, is that more Republicans (including former MAGA allies of Trump) are joining the conversation.
“Trump’s golden statue. Trump’s triumphal arch. Trump’s ‘magnificent’ ballroom. They’re all about him. His narcissism is out of control,” read an analysis at The Bulwark.
“I think we have to truly question the mental stability of any president that threatens to wipe out an entire civilization,” former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, once a staunch Trump supporter, said last month.
Earlier this week, more than 30 professional medical experts signed on to a letter calling for Trump’s immediate removal from office, describing him as “unfit” to remain president.
“It is our professional opinion that the behaviors of Donald Trump, tragically, are neither momentary lapses nor political theater…that they reflect a rapidly worsening, reality-untethered, increasingly dangerous decline,” the letter-writers said.
In a Substack post last month, Bandy X. Lee, a forensic and social psychiatrist who has called for more open questioning of Trump’s mental fitness since 2017, described the situation in more alarming terms.
“Presently, there is the emergency situation of Donald Trump continuing to raise the stakes, as he faces multiple situations spinning out of control…What would be painful but tolerable for a healthy person is catastrophic for his limited emotional capacity, and he must be stopped before, in a fit of rage, he ignites the end of the world,” Lee said.
AS people around the world paused to reflect on the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster, one local woman’s thoughts turned to the two young girls who once enjoyed a few weeks’ respite in her home.
Five years after the meltdown, a desperate appeal, made by Belarusian and Ukrainian doctors, was sent by fax and received by Cork woman Adi Roche, then a volunteer with a nuclear disarmament group, in January 1991. The message was begging someone to take the children away from the highly toxic and radioactive environment, so that their bodies had some chance of recovery.
Even though time had passed, the dangers of intense radiation, mass displacement, poverty and lack of medical treatment continued to create intolerable conditions for the people of Belarus, Western Russia and the Ukraine.
Ms Roche founded Chernobyl Children International (CCI) and began a programme which brought children to Ireland for medical treatment and rest. It was a few years afterwards when similar charities were set up in Northern Ireland. The Chernobyl’s Children Appeal brought 3,400 children to Northern Ireland between 1994 and 2014.
Mairead Burke was born in Londonderry and grew up in England before moving back to Northern Ireland. She came to Antrim in 1975 to work at Muckamore Abbey Hospital and moved to Randalstown in 1992.
She was at home watching the Gerry Kelly Show on television and saw an appeal by a Newry man who was instrumental in bringing scores of children from the blighted region to Northern Ireland. He was appealing for host families. And Mairead knew she had to act. “I said to my daughter Emma, who was coming 12 at the time, that we could either have a holiday or take the children, and she didn’t hesitate and we went and put our names down.”
One host family dropped out, and with the room to spare, Mairead and her family took in two young girls, Marina, who was only ten, and the youngest of the group, and Galina, who was 15 and already frail and ill due to the radiation sickness and malnutrition she had suffered. But they did not want to sleep in the spare bedrooms – they wanted to sleep on the floor, in Emma’s room. “Everyone was so kind, and made donations and made sure that the children were taken somewhere nearly every day.” said Mairead
AS people around the world paused to reflect on the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster, one local woman’s thoughts turned to the two young girls who once enjoyed a few weeks’ respite in her home. Five years after the meltdown, a desperate appeal, made by Belarusian and Ukrainian doctors, was sent by fax and received by Cork woman Adi Roche, then a volunteer with a nuclear disarmament group, in January 1991. The message was begging someone to take the children away from the highly toxic and radioactive environment, so that their bodies had some chance of recovery. Even though time had passed, the dangers of intense radiation, mass displacement, poverty and lack of medical treatment continued to create intolerable conditions for the people of Belarus, Western Russia and the Ukraine. Ms Roche founded Chernobyl Children International (CCI) and began a programme which brought children to Ireland for medical treatment and rest. It was a few years afterwards when similar charities were set up in Northern Ireland. The Chernobyl’s Children Appeal brought 3,400 children to Northern Ireland between 1994 and 2014. Mairead Burke was born in Londonderry and grew up in England before moving back to Northern Ireland. She came to Antrim in 1975 to work at Muckamore Abbey Hospital and moved to Randalstown in 1992. She was at home watching the Gerry Kelly Show on television and saw an appeal by a Newry man who was instrumental in bringing scores of children from the blighted region to Northern Ireland. He was appealing for host families. And Mairead knew she had to act. “I said to my daughter Emma, who was coming 12 at the time, that we could either have a holiday or take the children, and she didn’t hesitate and we went and put our names down.” One host family dropped out, and with the room to spare, Mairead and her family took in two young girls, Marina, who was only ten, and the youngest of the group, and Galina, who was 15 and already frail and ill due to the radiation sickness and malnutrition she had suffered. But they did not want to sleep in the spare bedrooms – they wanted to sleep on the floor, in Emma’s room. “Everyone was so kind, and made donations and made sure that the children were taken somewhere nearly every day.” said Mairead “The Mayor of Antrim Paddy Marks came and met the children at Belfast International Airport. “The Mayor of Ballymena James Currie met them too at the town hall and they got a free pass to the Seven Towers Leisure Centre and tickets to see Boyzone. “McDonalds gave them free meals, and the police organised a big sports day out in Lisburn with a police dog display. All the chemists supplied free vitamins for three weeks.”
But she admitted: “It wasn’t easy, there was a language barrier, although wee Marina learned English very quickly. “They were not used to eating good food. Back then, people were warned not to eat some of the lamb farmed in Wales because of the fallout, and where they came from, they could not even eat any vegetables in case they had been poisoned. “So we made sure they ate lots of good food. We told them all the time they were welcome to help themselves to whatever they wanted but they felt they could not.
“It was a big culture shock, they couldn’t believe seeing my husband Peter cooking or doing the dishes, because men just didn’t do that sort of thing where they came from. “People were so good, there was a big collection in the chapel and everyone’s friends and family chipped in or helped out practically.
“I watched the drama about Chernobyl and all the documentaries, it was very frightening at the time, and I keep thinking about all those poor firemen who sacrificed themselves.” Mairead said she lost touch with both girls and thinks about them often. “When I see a programme coming on, I wonder will I see Marina talking on it.” she said. “Galina was quite sick when she was here and I do not know if she survived. Then there has been the conflict over in that part of the world, I really have no idea what happened to either of them.
“Emma has very fond memories of that time, she took the girls out and introduced them to her friends, and took them outside to play in the fresh air, next door hosted a wee boy and they all palled about together and went to Belfast City Hall.” She added: “The children who came here had nothing. But they still made sure to bring a gift to their host family. “I still have what they brought us, a brown tea pot and an embroidered table runner.
“A lot of the kids were very upset to go home. “I just imagined my Emma going over there, she wanted for nothing at the same age and these poor kids had very little. “When I saw the appeal on television I though, we don’t know if these kids are going to be living next year. “I am glad that they had three weeks of fresh air, medicine, and fun, with nothing to worry about. “It is really hard to believe it is 40 years since the disaster and nearly 30 since we welcomed those girls into our home. We will never forget them.”
As part of the Gaza Sumud Flotilla of 2026, our honorable little sailboat Nagual was one of the last intercepted in international waters west of Crete on April 30. Seven Israeli commandos with full military regalia and automatic weapons pointed at us boarded our boat, searched it and us, and forced us onto their large inflatable for a high speed, cold, and uncomfortable ride to a cargo ship that had been converted into a floating prison. From the moment we arrived, we were treated as if we were dangerous criminals: heads down, often forced to our knees with heads on the floor, barked at, and hit if we complained about anything. During an overly long pat down search, most of our few remaining possessions were confiscated. We were then walked into a concrete and steel deck surrounded by large shipping containers. Many of us have described our conditions and treatment in detail elsewhere, but here want to share a few images that popped unexpectedly into my head during my brief captivity.
Quite unexpectedly to my mind, scenes from past movies about German Nazi concentration camps seemed to appear out of nowhere almost in sequence as if building a narrative. The first few hours after being left to ourselves on board where not terribly unpleasant. We milled about, making sure each other were okay, and trying to figure out which boats were taken, who was here or not, and speculating on our fate.
At one point, I noticed a man sitting in a chair on the deck of the ship’s tower several stories above us, observing our caged behavior. Relaxed and unarmed, sometime drinking from a cup while other times looking through binoculars. I could not help but think about the commandant of the concentration camp in Schindler’s List, who would sit over his subhuman charges and occasionally decide who to kill for sport that day. He was there much of the day leaving me with a creepy feeling.
Next, I noticed that the large steel cargo containers, unventilated but for a single door, into which we were crammed, reminded me of the many scenes in various movies of people being stuffed into train cars for transport to concentration camps. Only later would we experience being crammed into them knee to knee and shoulder to shoulder under the heat of the sun for hours, not knowing how long we might be there.
I looked at the zip tie on my wrist held a tag with my number 154. Certainly not a tattoo, but then we were only imprisoned for two days. What might come later, I pondered? Our initial guess that our captors would release us in Greece rather than drag us to Israel faded after we had long sailed past Crete. Would some of us end up for weeks or months or years in Israeli prisons like over 9000 Palestinians?
A fourth image manifested when we were awakened one night by seawater flooding the prison yard where many of us were sleeping. Since 180 people were crammed into space for half that number, 45 people were required to sleep outside in the damp chill. Engineers among us cleverly arrange the sleeping pads as both beds and arched coverings. I shared a 7 x 5‘ space with two other men. After a few hours, I awakened to hear talking and notice people standing around. The small space near my mattress pad was wet. I crawled out of my space to see that the yard had been flooded with one to 2 inches of water, which was absorbed by many of the mattresses. People were milling about shivering some with very wet clothes. To stay warm, they began to walk in a small oval defined by the short circumference of the yard. The spotlights and armed guards stood above. Mostly silent, they circled at a slow pace, over and over. For my taste far too much like my movie memories of thin and exhausted prisoners, silently making such circles to deal with the endless boredom and hopelessness of the concentration camps.
Reviewing these superficial thoughts during my brief experience makes me want to apologize to those who have and are suffering real and ongoing brutality. It also reminds me of the thorough education I have had about the Nazi holocaust of Jews, and much less about the genocides of others at the time, not to mention that of the many other peoples in history and ongoing in Africa, Asia and the Americas. The cry “Never Again” was such a noble one after WW2 until it has become clear that most governments of the world mean it only for those aligned with Israel, and everyone else is fair game.
In a statement that caused historians to briefly consider early retirement, Donald Trump has declared himself “the most powerful person to ever live.”
The announcement was delivered with trademark confidence, minimal irony, and the quiet conviction that human history really got interesting around 2015.
Experts struggled to respond in suitable academic language. Many simply landed on “blatant delusion.”
Historians politely noted that the phrase “ever” is doing some extraordinarily heavy lifting. The competition has historically included emperors who ruled multiple continents, leaders who redrew the world map, and conquerors who didn’t feel the need to live-tweet their greatness every twelve minutes.
One academic summed it up neatly:
“It’s not that he isn’t powerful. It’s just that ‘ever’ is working overtime in that sentence.”
Trump elaborated helpfully: “Nobody’s ever been more powerful. Not even close. People are saying it.”
When pressed on who these “people” were, sources confirmed the list includes:
• A mirror
• A Truth Social account at 2:37am
• A very enthusiastic man named Gary from Florida
• And the entire population of Patagonia
Critics argue that real power tends to be quiet, strategic, and occasionally involves reading briefing papers that don’t feature your own face on every page. Supporters reject this as “elitist,” insisting that unshakeable self-belief is a legitimate governing philosophy.
As one supporter put it while wearing a shirt depicting the President riding a velociraptor through a thunderstorm: “If you believe you’re the most powerful, you are. That’s just science. Or spirit. Whatever doesn’t require a library card.”
In a surprising development, several historical figures declined to comment – mostly because they’re dead.
In related news, a house cat in Kenya has declared itself the apex predator of all time, and a bloke named Wozza at a Melbourne pub remains convinced he could’ve gone pro if not for that knee injury in ’09.
Here’s the thing: there’s something almost endearing about claims so spectacularly over-the-top they collapse under their own weight. It’s like watching someone try to high-jump the moon. You don’t get angry – you just pull up a chair and appreciate the sheer commitment to the bit.
And in its own strange way, that’s oddly comforting. Confidence and reality don’t always share a postcode – but at least the show is entertaining.
For 40 years, the residents of northern Ukraine and southern Belarus have grappled with the devastating effects of the world’s worst nuclear accident. They tell Alex Croft about the day that their lives were changed forever
lena Maruzhenko remembers her mother sobbing when Soviet police told them to evacuate their home in the village of Korogod in northern Ukraine.
Just 12km away, a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant had exploded, sending a shaft of blue light into the night sky and throwing clouds of radioactive material into the surrounding area.
Local authorities told Olena and their mother that they would only need to leave their home for three days. They had no idea that the worst nuclear disaster in history had unfolded.
“We believed we would definitely return,” Olena recalls to The Independent as the world marks the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.
“The 26 April, 1986, is a date that is forever etched in my memory with black sadness. We could not imagine leaving our homes without knowing where to go.”
Olena and her mother were among 350,000 people who were evacuated from the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Hundreds of buses were sent to ferry workers from Pripyat, an industrial city created to house workers from the nearby plant located around 100km north of Kyiv.
The disaster began when reactor number 4 at the power plant exploded at 1.23am, after a test went catastrophically wrong.
In the days that followed, a massive and uncontainable release of radioactive material spread across Europe. Firefighters and workers were exposed to lethal radiation as they attempted to contain the blaze. Thousands of animals were mercifully slaughtered as residents were evacuated from nearby towns.
The Soviet government sought to downplay the scale of the accident.
In the 40 years since Chernobyl, thousands of people have suffered devastating health consequences due to high radiation exposure, including thyroid cancer.
Vast areas were contaminated by the radiation, devastating the region’s environment. Luscious green forests turned a reddish brown, while vital soil for agriculture was polluted for decades.
Korogod was once a town surrounded by forests, rivers and lakes that provided rich sources of mushrooms, berries, fish and herbs sold in bustling local markets. After the disaster, it became a grey and decrepit ghost town in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, a 30km area restricted to human habitation.
The official Soviet death toll, given in 1987, was 31. But after including those who suffered lasting health effects, the toll is significantly higher.
The husband of Natalia Dykun, another resident of Korogod, was one such person. He was diagnosed with cancer after the disaster and eventually died from the disease.
“We became hostages of the Chernobyl disaster,” she says. “The treatment did not help and he died very young. In almost every house near us, someone from the family began to get sick, and later almost every family lost a relative to cancer.”
Natalia was 28 at the time of the explosion. She recalls the silence from the Soviet authorities causing “great harm”, with residents “completely unprotected, both morally and physically”.
Most residents from the towns near Chernobyl only truly understood the scale of what had happened when they discovered new towns were being built to house them.
Natalia says she was “devastated” to see a new village being built in an open field with “no forest or water nearby”. Her home used to be surrounded by nature.
Olga Mikhalova was only 15 when she learned she would never be returning home. “The accident and evacuation changed us forever,” she says.
“Family ties were broken, neighbourly ties. We would not wish this on anyone.”
Olena, who was living with strangers in the aftermath of the tragedy, watched the news in tears when she found out new homes were being built. “I still dream of my village, my native house. I miss our land. The Chernobyl accident broke us.”
Slavutych, a planned city on the western bank of the Dnieper River, still houses around 20,000 people. It was built for those evacuated from the abandoned city of Pripyat, perhaps the most famous of those evacuated after the explosion. Chilling images of Pripyat, including its haunting abandoned fairground, are an enduring symbol of the lives and communities lost in just a matter of hours.
“When we realised that we would not return home, it was very difficult for us, the young, to come to terms with this, and it was even more difficult for the older generation,” says Olga. “This is a tragedy for many generations.”
As war rages in Ukraine, with Russian forces playing fast and loose around Chernobyl and the southern Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, experts have told The Independent that we are closer than ever to another nuclear disaster.
For those who have suffered the most catastrophic effects of a nuclear accident, this is unthinkable.
“As a person who survived the evacuation, I feel especially acute anxiety when war touches nuclear facilities,” Olena says. “This causes fear and incomprehension, why humanity, having had such an experience, is taking risks again.”
Natalie fears for the future generations. “This irresponsibility of the enemy and the risks for the surrounding world of a repeat of the disaster are very frightening and we are in constant stress and fear. We are no longer afraid for ourselves, but for our children and grandchildren.
“Irresponsibility and insecurity in relation to nuclear energy and infrastructure is a crime before the whole world.”
In 2017, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a book edited by Dr Bandy X. Lee, presented the assessments of 27 psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals, argued that Trump’s mental condition constituted a “clear and present danger” to the nation.
However, it is important to acknowledge the ethical debate within the mental health community regarding the public diagnosis of political figures. On one side, proponents of speaking out argue that when a leader’s behaviour appears to threaten public safety or welfare, mental health professionals have a “duty to warn,” even if it means commenting without a direct evaluation.
They believe that their responsibility to the public outweighs traditional restrictions. On the other side, critics invoke the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Goldwater Rule, emphasising that publicly diagnosing a public figure without a face-to-face assessment and consent undermines professional ethics, risks personal bias, and can erode trust in the profession. This debate remains unresolved, with experts divided over what best serves ethical standards and public interest.
The APA’s Goldwater Rule cautions professionals against offering a diagnosis without a personal examination and proper authorisation. This ongoing controversy reflects broader concerns about professional ethics, public responsibility, and the challenges of analysing the mental health of high-profile leaders.
In 2021, some members of Trump’s own Cabinet, shocked by the violence at the Capitol on January 6 and his slow response, discussed whether to use the 25th Amendment to remove him from office because of concerns about his mental fitness.
During his 2024 campaign, he attacked Kamala Harris and then launched into a wild and confusing rant:
“She destroyed the city of San Francisco, it’s – and I own a big building there – it’s no – I shouldn’t talk about this, but that’s OK, I don’t give a damn because this is what I’m doing. I should say it’s the finest city in the world – sell and get the hell out of there, right? But I can’t do that. I don’t care, you know? I lost billions of dollars. You know, somebody said, ‘What do you think you lost?’ I said, ‘Probably two, three billion. That’s OK, I don’t care.’ They say, ‘You think you’d do it again?’ And that’s the least of it. Nobody. They always say, I don’t know if you know. Lincoln was horribly treated. Uh, Jefferson was pretty horrible. Andrew Jackson, they say, was the worst of all, and he was treated worse than any other president. I said, ‘Do that study again, because I think there’s nobody close to Trump.’ I even got shot! And who the hell knows where that came from, right?”
These persistent displays of paranoia, his continuing ICE raids, his use of the Justice Department to target his enemies, his shameless corruption rage, volatility, delusions, vengefulness, foul-mouthed posturing, his bottomless vengeance toward Iran and the Pope and increasing detachment from reality directly undermine the expectations of mental stability and sound judgment outlined in the thesis.
As such, they provide substantial evidence that calls into question the President’s capacity to fulfil the responsibilities and demands of the office.
Why did Trump and Vance pick a fight with Pope Leo? His exchange with the Pope was unsightly, unnecessary and regrettable.
Despite all these warning signs, his Cabinet members and aides keep their heads down. Republican members of Congress pretend not to notice, and his billionaire supporters dare not speak of his rapid decline. Media coverage of the President’s conduct remains contested.
Some critics argue that significant portions of the media engage in “sanewashing,” thereby downplaying or rationalising the President’s erratic behaviour. Others point out that both partisan and mainstream outlets have at times foregrounded his controversial statements and actions, which suggests a level of critical scrutiny.
This divergence highlights the unevenness of media responses: while certain outlets may frame the President’s behaviour as authentic or a populist connection, others interpret it as evidence of instability and potential danger.
These framing choices shape both public opinion and elite responses by influencing how the general population perceives these actions and how policymakers justify their stances. Ultimately, this complexity in media coverage reflects deeper debates over the press’s responsibilities and the challenges of interpreting signs of instability at the highest levels of government.
But some people on the political right, including longtime Trump supporters, have had enough.
The public is starting to notice. Sixty-one per cent of Americans think he’s become more unpredictable as he gets older, while only 45 per cent say he is “mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges.”
For the good of the country and the world, we need to face the truth. Based on his actions and words, the most powerful man in the world seems unfit for the job because of mental instability.
We are all endangered. What happens if, in a fit of rage, he presses the nuke button and “chucks a wobbly”? Is hewatching the “football” with the atomic codes in his lap? Who’s ready to stop him to save the world?
It is not as though Congress doesn’t have the power to dismiss this ratbag. They could “Impeach” him now.
In conclusion, the 25th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States explicitly provides a constitutional mechanism for removing a President deemed unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office. This provision underscores Congress’s responsibility to act decisively in the face of clear evidence of presidential incapacity.
However, in practice, there are significant political and procedural barriers to invoking the 25th Amendment. The process requires the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet to agree that the President is unfit, which can be difficult to achieve given political loyalties and fear of reprisals.
Even if this initial hurdle is cleared, the President can contest the decision, and ultimately, it falls to a supermajority in Congress to resolve the dispute. These requirements make the real-world use of the 25th Amendment extremely challenging, especially in a polarised political environment.
As such, while the 25th Amendment serves as a critical safeguard for the stability of American democracy and global security, its practical application remains fraught with obstacles.
Radiation is an odourless, invisible killer, with the potential to surge through the body and tear it apart on a cellular level, irreversibly damaging DNA.
When reactor number four at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded in April 1986, debris emanated radiation at a level of 10,000 roentgens per hour – enough to cause a fatal dose to anyone who stood nearby for a matter of minutes.
Firefighters made the ultimate sacrifice on April 26, absorbing unprecedented amounts of the poison as they battled to put out the enormous flames of history’s most devastating nuclear accident.
As a gigantic radioactive cloud began spreading over the world – infecting 40 per cent of Europe and even stretching into northern Africa and north America – one woman found herself in the eye of the storm.
Maria Protsenko, garbed in just a blouse, skirt and sandals, was personally responsible for orchestrating the mass evacuation of Pripyat’s 45,000 civilians, emptying the devastated Soviet city of any sign of life.
She was previously the chief architect of the city, having lovingly designed neighbourhoods for young families, but in a split second she became a kind of grim reaper, sweeping away all the civilisation she had helped to create.
Recounting the fateful day to the makers of the TV series ‘Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown’ on National Geographic, Protsenko transports herself back 40 years ago and tells of the wounds that haven’t left her.
‘For the first time in my life, I was not building a city, I was burying it forever,’ she said, reflecting on the scale of destruction. ‘This is not only a man-made disaster, it is a catastrophe that broke the lives of thousands of people.’
By 11am the day after the explosion, a mass evacuation was announced and scheduled for 2pm, but by that point it was too late.
Some of those living closest to the power plant had already received internal radiation doses in their thyroid glands of up to 3.9Gy – roughly 37,000 times the dose of a chest x-ray – after breathing radioactive material and eating contaminated food
Immediately after the accident, thyroid cancer was particularly rampant in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, with 5,000 cases diagnosed among those who were children and adolescents at the time of exposure.
Today, Pripyat is an eerie ghost town of cavernous kindergartens, abandoned houses and sports halls left to decay, having been declared too radioactively dangerous for human habitation for at least 24,000 years.
Protsenko wore no protective clothing as she led the vast evacuation operation, standing on a bridge overlooking the city while 1,500 buses picked up families district by district.
She stayed up all night designing intricate maps, allowing her to execute the mammoth task with tactical precision, not leaving anyone behind in the industrial wasteland.
‘At 2pm the first bus arrived… I was standing there in my blouse and my skirt, and I had sandals on my bare feet. I had no protective gear,’ she told the documentary.
Only thick sheets of lead or massive concrete blocks would have prevented her from being contaminated.
‘All that radioactive dust was rising and got on my bare feet and my legs. That’s why they were so itchy. Can you imagine how much radioactive dust was flying from that place, at that time?’
But at that point, no one could understood the scale of the tragedy – not yet.
Girls and boys played together in the street as they waited for their livesaving convoys, not yet grasping the fact that the evacuation wasn’t temporary and they may never see each other again.
Many didn’t have a chance to say goodbye before they vanished from each other’s lives forever, turning from neighbours to refugees in one simple journey.
‘We evacuated nearly 45,000 people. Without panicking and noise, we evacuated the entire city,’ Protsenko said.
She is still haunted by the memory of one woman, who watched her intensely from the bus window as she was torn away from her community.
‘She didn’t just look at me, she turned her head, following me with her stare.
‘There was something in her face, like she was screaming inside: “What is this?! Where am I going?!”‘
While she was helping the city’s inhabitants escape, Protsenko had no idea she was exposing herself to so much lethal radiation.
‘At that moment, I was not only not afraid, I did not even think about it,’ she said.
It was only after the disaster that the architect remembered how she had spent hours absorbing the toxic fallout near the Red Forest, breathing in countless particles of contaminated dust as convoys rolled past.
‘The thing is, radiation does not make noise like exploding bombs. It does not burn like a fire. It has no smell. You do not feel it immediately, it kills quietly, slowly. And there is no awareness at all that you are in danger,’ she said.
Following the evacuation, she developed a persistent cough, headaches, dryness in her mouth and intense itching in her legs – but still did not grasp that she had likely absorbed a significant dose of radiation.
Now aged 80, she’s still living with the long-term impact of the disaster.
‘I am no longer 40… my health is no longer what it used to be… all as a result of the radiation exposure I received long ago.’
She added: ‘No one would envy it.’
While some degree of exposure was inevitable to everybody in the vicinity of the accident, the Soviet authorities didn’t help matters by underplaying the tragedy in its immediate aftermath – ultimately slowing down the evacuation.
Despite the explosion in the early hours of April 26, life in the city initially continued as normal, with children outside playing and parents going about their errands, unaware that they were at the centre of a nuclear catastrophe.
‘The night was clear, warm, and quiet. The residents of the city were peacefully asleep and knew nothing yet about the disaster that had occurred,’ Protsenko said.
‘Information about the radiation situation was kept in strict secrecy.’
When she was tasked with leading the evacuation, even she hadn’t grasped the scale of the calamity, but she knew she had a job to do.
‘By 6pm… we had practically evacuated the entire population of the city,’ she said.
Within a few hours, it was done, and Pripyat would never be the same again.
By that time, she was one of the last people left in the uninhabitable wreckage of a town. ‘The city became empty… no lights were on… it felt a little eerie.’
The Chernobyl disaster isn’t contained to a single day, but went on to redefine the lives of hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.
Investigations ultimately concluded that faulty protocols in the plant’s design and poorly trained personnel were responsible for the explosion, which blew the 1,000-ton steel lid off the reactor – the same weight as three 747 passenger planes.
In the weeks and months that followed the accident, scores of firefighters, engineers, military troops, police, miners, cleaners and medical personnel – collectively known as ‘liquidators’ – were sent to the destroyed power plant in an effort to control the blaze and core meltdown.
In Belarus, 40,049 liquidators were registered to have cancers by 2008 along with a further 2,833 from Russia. In Ukraine, disability among the workers soared, with 68 per cent regarded healthy in 1988, compared to 26 years when only 5.5 per cent were still in good physical condition.
As well as coping with physical sickness, Protsenko is still grappling with the day to day consequences of Russian authoritarianism.
n 2022, she was forced to flee Ukraine in a wheelchair with her daughter and their kitten, following Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion.
And with Putin’s callous disregard for safety, having launched a major offensive to capture the area around Chernobyl just days into his invasion – only to abandon it weeks later – only time will tell how far the long shadow the nuclear plant casts will stretch.
Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown airs on National Geographic on Sunday 26th April from 4pm
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