People take part in a march organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, from Russell Square to Whitehall in central London, June 21, 2025
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We live in a country now where the police round up hundreds at peaceful sit-ins for the slogans on their placards, where they inspect the books and flyers on political stalls, where peace movement leaders get convicted of public order offences for leading a march to lay flowers on the road in memory of dead children.
Suppressing these movements does nothing to address their grievances and Labour’s support is in freefall. Arrests such as those at Lakenheath air base, protesting at the US using British territory as a launchpad to bomb Iran, are not even made to shield our government but a Donald Trump regime that humiliates and undermines it at every turn, while dragging our country into illegal wars.
Wales First Minister Eluned Morgan, demanding an end to military co-operation with the United States on a military radar project in Pembrokeshire, sees how toxic and dangerous the US alliance has become.
There is little Labour can do to turn things around by May: doing so at all will require a complete overhaul of government policy, and the ejection of Starmer himself.
But Morgan’s intervention does point to an immediate step needed to show Labour intends to change: dump Trump, and Netanyahu. Stop arresting people to shield them.
Palestine Action joke that appeared in the UK satirical magazine ‘Private Eye’.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer departs 10 Downing Street, London, to attend Prime Minister’s Questions at the Houses of Parliament, April 15, 2026
Polls show Labour facing meltdown in May elections for devolved parliaments and local authorities
LABOUR is facing a May meltdown in elections for devolved parliaments and local authorities, latest polling confirms.
The party is on course for wipeout in Wales, a setback in Scotland and evisceration across England, particularly in “red wall” districts in the Midlands and north.
The Greens and hard-right Reform are set to be the beneficiaries in England, with nationalist parties winning in Scotland and Wales.
If the results on May 7 bear out these predictions it will revive pressure on Labour MPs to act to end Sir Keir Starmer’s disastrous leadership of their party and the government.
James Johnson, of JL Partners, which conducted the detailed survey for the Telegraph, said the research pointed to “a major political earthquake” across Britain.
“It could be the worst local election ever for Labour in England, a collapse for the Conservatives in their historic Blue Wall heartlands, and a brutal third place for Starmer’s party in Wales,” he said.
Original article by republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Protesters in opposition to the US war on Iran gather outside of Lafayette Park across from the White House on April 7, 2026. (Photo by Andrew Leyden/Getty Images)
“We recognize the gravity of what we are asking. We ask it because the gravity of the situation demands it.”
A group of four psychiatrists warned congressional leaders on Monday that US President Donald Trump has recently exhibited “every behavioral sign of a personality in acute crisis,” presenting a “constitutional emergency” that demands immediate action from lawmakers and members of the administration.
In a letter to the top Republican and Democratic lawmakers in both chambers of Congress, the psychiatrists and Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs—who helped organize the letter—pointed to Trump’s recent genocidal threats to wipe out Iran’s “whole civilization” and bomb the country “back to the stone ages” as examples of rhetoric that has “crossed a threshold.”
“President Trump exhibits what forensic mental health experts have, across dozens of independent assessments, identified as the ‘Dark Triad’ of personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy,” the letter states. “Rather than constituting a clinical diagnosis, this trait-based assessment is grounded in behavioral observation and is particularly useful for assessing the level of danger an individual poses in a political leadership position. We do not offer this as a clinical verdict. We offer it as the considered judgment of a substantial body of professional opinion, based on well-researched evidence that is consistent, accumulating, and impossible to dismiss.”
The psychiatrists who signed the letter are James Gilligan, clinical professor of psychiatry at New York University; Prudence Gourguechon, former president of the American Psychoanalytic Association and former vice president of the World Mental Health Coalition; Bandy Lee, president of the World Mental Health Coalition and former professor at Yale School of Medicine; and James Merikangas, clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at George Washington University.
The experts’ letter came amid growing calls from congressional Democrats for Trump’s removal from office, whether through the impeachment process or the pathways offered by the 25th Amendment.
The psychiatrists stop short of demanding Trump’s immediate removal. Rather, they urge Congress to reestablish its constitutional authority over war in response to the president’s unauthorized assault on Iran; convene “urgent consultations” with top administration officials to prevent Trump from escalating “toward catastrophe”; and “formally initiate consultation” with Vice President JD Vance and Cabinet members “regarding the president’s fitness for office under Section 4 of the 25th Amendment.”
“We recognize the gravity of what we are asking. We ask it because the gravity of the situation demands it,” the letter states. “A president who publicly threatens to destroy a foreign civilization, who launches a bombing campaign and then imposes a naval blockade without congressional authorization, and who shows every behavioral sign of a personality in acute crisis is not merely a political problem. He is a constitutional emergency. The mechanisms for addressing such an emergency exist. They were placed in the Constitution and its amendments for moments precisely like this one.”
The letter was released days after Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote to White House physician Sean Barbabella requesting an “immediate and comprehensive cognitive and neurological evaluation of President Donald Trump, along with full public disclosure of the findings,” in response to his “increasingly volatile, incoherent, and alarming public statements,” specifically regarding the war on Iran.
“This is plainly out of the realm of normal politics,” Raskin wrote. “When the president of the United States threatens to extinguish a civilization on social media, rants about combat missions with children at the Easter Egg Roll, and drops profane tirades on Easter morning, we have indisputably entered the realm of profound medical difficulty and concern.”
Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Special police units on the roof to remove the demonstrators from Peacefully Against Genocide staging a protest at the Berlin premises of Rheinmetall, a major German defense and automotive technology company specializing in military vehicles, weapons systems, and ammunition on March 25, 2026. [İlkin Eskipehlivan – Anadolu Agency]
Spain was recently targeted by Israel’s antisemitism narrative after an effigy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was blown up in El Burgo, during the Burning of Judas festival. “The appalling antisemitic hatred on display here is a direct result of the @sanchezcastejon government’s systematic incitement,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry stated on X, while noting that the Spanish ambassador to Israel was summoned for a reprimand.
However, the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s statement illustrates that the problem is not the burning of Netanyahu’s effigy, but rather the Spanish government’s current stance against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its wars in Lebanon and Iran.
After decades of European blind adherence to Israel’s ethnic cleansing and colonial expansion, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has illustrated that stepping away from diplomatic normalisation of colonialism and genocide is possible. At least temporarily, Israel’s European safety net has been fractured.
The seven metre effigy of Netanyahu was filled with 14 kilogrammes of gunpowder. Burning it represented opposition to war and genocide, El Burgo’s Mayor Maria Dolores Narvaez stated.
There is nothing antisemitic about opposition to war and genocide. The truth is that Israel exploits the Holocaust narrative to justify Zionist colonial expansion and genocide, but it can no longer do so completely unchallenged. Netanyahu represents genocide and is wanted by the International Criminal Court. That is not an antisemitic narrative; it is based on facts.
Politically, Spain’s stance is also impacting the prior cohesion over Israel’s colonial violence and genocide, to the point that Netanyahu barred the country from participating in the Civil Military Coordination Centre in Kiryat Gat that oversees the ceasefire. Spain, according to Netanyahu, has defamed Israel and the IDF. Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar described Spain as having an “obsessive anti-Israel bias under Sanchez’s leadership”.
An anti-Israel stance, however, is not an obsession. It is a reality that opposes colonialism and genocide. At the very least, it opposes military occupation and genocide. What Spain has achieved so far in its stance sets an example for the rest of Europe to emulate. It is politically viable to take a stance against Israeli colonialism, military occupation and genocide.
In other unexpected turns, less powerful that Spain but nonetheless worth noting, Germany criticised Israel’s death penalty bill for Palestinians. “The government is also concerned that such a law would likely apply exclusively to Palestinians in the Palestinian territories,” Stefan Kornelius, spokesperson to the German government, declared. “It therefore regrets the Knesset’s decision and cannot endorse it.”
Also, following German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s criticism over Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich reverted to Holocaust history to obfuscate the present colonial settlement expansion, warning that Germany cannot dictate where Jews should live. The comments prompted Israel’s ambassador to Germany Ron Prosor to oppose Smotrich, reminding that Germany is “our number one friend” in Europe.
Spain has certainly ignited an alternative way, and one that is exposing rifts even within Israeli politics. Whining about antisemitism over the burning of Netanyahu’s effigy may be temporarily amplified, but Spain’s stance is not about a symbolic effigy. A single, constant opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza had the power to expose the instability of Israel’s political reasoning, as well as the threats directed at any country opposing its actions.
If Spain can manage that stance on its own, and if Germany can coherently oppose the death penalty for Palestinians, a political stance towards decolonisation as Israel escalates its aggression against anyone opposing it is more than possible. It is imperative.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Straight of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Israeli settlers who have seized Palestinian land are carrying out attacks in the village of Teyasir, in the Tubas governorate in the northern West Bank, forcing Palestinian farmers to leave their lands in Ramallah, Palestine on April 07, 2026. [Hisham K. K. Abu Shaqra – Anadolu Agency]
Palestinian residents confronted Israeli occupiers Tuesday who attempted to seize a home in the town of Shuyukh in the southern occupied West Bank, according to sources, Anadolu reports.
A group of armed occupiers stormed the town in northeastern Hebron and raided a Palestinian home, trying to take it by force, but residents intervened and prevented the confiscation, sources told Anadolu.
Fadi al-Ayaydeh, executive director of Shuyukh municipality, said residents were surprised early Tuesday to find occupiers had set up a tent on land belonging to Palestinians.
“We went to the site and found a large number of residents there. During that time, armed settlers confronted us and fired shots in the air to intimidate people,” al-Ayaydeh told Anadolu.
Israeli forces later arrived and fired stun grenades and tear gas to disperse the crowd, he added.
Al-Ayaydeh said erecting the tent was “an attempt to impose a fait accompli,” explaining that occupiers often set up tents and informal outposts, then monitor reactions and expand if there is no resistance.
He noted that residents would remain at the site to ensure the tent is removed and that people can access their land.
The official Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission said occupiers carried out 497 attacks against Palestinians and their property in the West Bank in March, killing nine.
Violence by Israeli forces and occupiers in the West Bank has intensified since the genocide in the Gaza Strip began in October 2023, killing more than 1,148 Palestinians, wounding 11,750 and leading to 22,000 arrests.
Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Straight of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.
People take part in a march organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, from Russell Square to Whitehall in central London, June 21, 2025
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer departs 10 Downing Street, London, to attend Prime Minister’s Questions at the Houses of Parliament, April 15, 2026
