Omnipresent on our screens, the redoubtable Shabi is one of the few Corbyn supporting commentators to be taken seriously by the media. Thoughtful and… - Rachel Shabi

[Following Boris Johnson's three days in intensive care with Covid-19 in spring 2020] A national leader in critical condition is an unsettling jolt, especially in the midst of an anxiety-drenched pandemic. But in Britain’s news media, the prime minister’s condition seemed to crowd out concern for others, and the exaltations of Mr. Johnson dampened scrutiny of his government’s failures.

For decades, Israeli and Western leaders have dehumanised Palestinians, but the response cannot now be to dehumanise Israelis. Explaining the political context of the Hamas attacks and the principles of strategic armed struggle is a world away from endorsing an indiscriminate massacre. For if you think that war crimes from Hamas last Saturday are acceptable, how are you going to argue that war crimes from Israel today are not?
To lose moral consistency weakens the moral core of the Palestinian cause. To see these indiscriminate Hamas attacks as an acceptable outcome of Palestinian suffering is not a sign of solidarity; it is a form of moral relativism. To cast oppressed Palestinians as having special clearance for brutality is not a liberation struggle; it is specifically intertwining the cause with violence against civilians. And to say that all Israeli citizens are fair game (as I have seen repeatedly online) is a level of permissibility that is extraordinary. It is the same logic applied now to Palestinians in Gaza by the extremist Israeli government and its cheerleaders.

[Noam] Shuster worked with a women's health organisation in Rwanda before becoming a co-director of the Israel programme at Interpeace, a peacebuilding organisation set up by the UN. Shuster concentrated on a project working with Jewish settlers, the ultra-Orthodox and other groups either resistant to or excluded from standard peace camp initiatives. For Shuster, reaching out to such communities was a key part of conflict resolution, but the UN disbanded the project in 2017.