💡 SPOTLIGHT
The looming Rafah offensive is pushing Egypt-Israel relations to the brink
Rafah has become the new focus of Israel’s war. It is pressing to invade the city on the border with Egypt, where 1.4 million people — more than half of Gaza’s population — are now sheltering, reports Hussein Attia in Arabic-language independent digital media Daraj.
An Israeli ground offensive on Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, would be a clear violation of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. The city is experiencing is consistent with Israel’s aim, which has been clear since the war began, to push the Palestinians to a new “transfer” to Egypt.
This aim, stated by senior Israeli officials, has raised widespread concerns in Egypt. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi expressed these concerns when he rejected the displacement of Gaza's populations to Sinai, calling it “the liquidation of the Palestinian cause.”
Israel has achieved its most important political goals by almost completely destroying the Gaza Strip, sabotaging its infrastructure and creating enormous suffering for its residents, forcing them to flee.
One of Israel's top goals is to control the Philadelphi Corridor, with the city of Rafah at its heart, and then attack the Strip from all sides. Between the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, this 14 km (8.7 mile) buffer zone includes the Rafah crossing, which is Gaza’s main exit to the outside world. Israel wants to control the corridor to encircle the strip
Israel has likely sought to create this disastrous situation in Gaza. The aim is to turn the lives of more than 2 million Palestinians into hell, forcing them to accept anything given to them, whether it is a local administration established by Israel, or pushing them to voluntary and forced displacement toward Egypt.
Targeting the narrow area that is crowded with Palestinians from Gaza may lead to an influx of displaced people across the border into Egypt.
Concerned, Egypt has strengthened security along its border with Gaza, sending tanks and building a concrete wall topped with barbed wire and surveillance devices.
For Ayman al-Raqab, a political science professor at Al-Quds University, the Rafah offensive would cause a “forced exodus” to the Egyptian border, raising tensions between Egypt and Israel and pushing Egypt to “suspend the peace agreement and allow the Palestinians to carry out operations against Israel from its territory.”
Israeli Army Radio recently reported that Egyptian officials informed Israel that they would not prevent any military operation in Rafah as long as it was conducted without harming Palestinian civilians there.
Responding to the report, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry warned in a statement against “the dire consequences of the Battle of Rafah” and the risk of exacerbating the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip.
This media tug-of-war has caused confusion between those who see Israel's statements as a means of pressure under the pretext that it has received Egypt's green light to invade the city, and those who believe that Egypt does not have the necessary tools to dissuade Israel from invading Rafah. [...]
— Read the full article by Hussein Attia for Daraj, translated into English by Worldcrunch.
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• U.S. strikes Houthi anti-ship cruise missiles in Yemen: The U.S. military says it has carried out four “self-defense” strikes against seven anti-ship cruise missiles located in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen. The military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) said the missiles were “prepared to launch towards the Red Sea” and presented an “imminent threat to merchant vessels and to the US Navy ships in the region.” Follow Worldcrunch’s coverage of the situation in the Red Sea region here.
• Palestinian gunmen open fire near West Bank settlement: Three Palestinian gunmen opened fire at motorists near an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, killing one and wounding seven. Police killed two attackers while the third was injured and arrested. In the UK, the House of Commons descended into chaos when dozens of lawmakers from the Scottish National Party and the governing Conservative Party stormed out of parliament to protest against Speaker Lindsay Hoyle’s handling of a key vote on support for a ceasefire in Gaza.
• Russia's top court upholds ban on anti-war presidential candidate Nadezhdin: Russia's Supreme Court upheld a ruling by electoral authorities that bans anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin from the country’s presidential election scheduled in March, leaving President Vladimir Putin without any significant challengers. The Central Election Commission had barred Nadezhdin after it said it had found irregularities in the list of supporters' signatures he had presented in support of his candidacy. Read our English edition of Vazhnyye istorii’s piece about how Alexei Navalny’s death could affect the popular movement to protest the Russian election.
• Soccer star Dani Alves found guilty of nightclub rape: Former Barcelona and Brazil soccer player Dani Alves was found guilty of raping a woman in a Barcelona nightclub in 2022 and was sentenced to four and a half years in prison. The 40-year-old, who is one of the most decorated footballers in history, was also ordered to pay 150,000 euros ($162,000) in compensation to the victim.
• Japan's main stock index closes at all-time high: Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 2.19% on Thursday to close at 39,098.68, breaking its previous record set in December 1989. Despite recent news that the country has fallen into a recession, global investors are returning to the benchmark index thanks to strong company earnings and the boost of Asian technology shares.
• Former Australian bishop charged with rape after police re-open probe: Australian bishop Christopher Saunders was arrested in Western Australia on Wednesday and charged with historical sex offenses, becoming one of the most senior Catholics in the country to be charged with sex crimes. The 74-year-old clergyman is expected to face court on Thursday. Saunders had stepped down in 2020 when allegations of sexual abuse first surfaced, before the Vatican launched its own probe in 2022 and later shared its findings with police. Here’s a Die Welt story (translated from German by Worldcrunch) about the Protestant Church in Germany facing its own sex abuse crisis.
• Scientists solve mystery of how whales sing underwater: Scientists have figured out the mechanics behind the baleen whales’ underwater haunting and complex songs: a specialized voice box. A large U-shaped structure with a cushion of fat at the top of the larynx allows the animals to sing by recycling air.
🗞️ FRONT PAGE
Warsaw-based daily Fakt, and several other Polish newspapers today, is dedicating its front page to Tomasz Komenda, a man wrongly accused of rape and murder, who has died at the age of 47 of lung cancer. After spending 18 years in prison, new evidence was revealed that led to Komenda’s acquittal by Poland’s Supreme Court in 2018, and drew national attention to major flaws in the country’s justice system. Komenda was awarded compensation in 2021.
📰 STORY OF THE DAY
Why German scholars waited 80 years to truly confront Hitler's speeches
Hitler wielded much of his power through his public discourses, yet a serious academic edition of his speeches has never been published. An unprecedented project led by Germany’s Institute of Contemporary History and the National Broadcasting Archive aims to better understand how he wielded power through rhetoric, reports Sven Felix Kellerhoff in Berlin-based daily Die Welt.
💬 Hitler’s influence was due to two qualities: his charisma (a term that has no moral value and should certainly not be viewed as positive) and his rhetorical skill. From Konrad Heiden in 1936 to Wolfgang Schieder in 2023, more than 100 journalists and historians have sought, in biographies, to unlock the mystery of Hitler’s effect on people, but mostly without success. The role of Hitler’s rhetoric has been consistently underestimated.
📕 One of the reasons for this is there is still no scholarly collection of Hitler’s speeches from the period between his rise to power, on Jan. 30, 1933 and his suicide on April 30, 1945. Despite the vast array of literature available that covers almost all aspects of the Third Reich, and the periods before and after it, academics rely on copies of these speeches in contemporary newspapers or a notoriously unreliable collection of excerpts from Hitler’s speeches, Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations 1932–1945 by the Würzburg archivist Max Domarus.
🔍 Now the Institute of Contemporary History Munich-Berlin, the German National Broadcasting Archive and other research institutes have launched a joint project to replace Domarus’s work. First, the researchers want to identify, analyze and compile a critical collection of all Hitler’s speeches from 1933 to 1945. They plan to release a printed edition, mainly for libraries, as well as an online version. The approach is similar to that taken for Mein Kampf in 2016, which was published in two volumes.
➡️ Read more on Worldcrunch.com
#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
546
A study conducted by two German linguists reveals that the English language has 546 synonyms for the word “drunk,” or “drunkonyms.” British people use a wide range of creative expressions, adding “-ed” to words like “hammered”, “bladdered” or “steampigged.” Despite the negative consequences of excessive drinking and the risks of binge drinking culture, the British often describe it with humor. The love of wordplay, absurdism and the deep-seated drinking culture in the UK contribute to this linguistic diversity. The research also explores similar expressions in other European languages, such as French and Spanish, highlighting their cultural and linguistic nuances showcasing unique and poetic ways of expressing drunkenness in these languages.
📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO
➡️ Watch the video: THIS HAPPENED
📣 VERBATIM
“We have a crazy SOB like that guy Putin.”
— U.S. President Joe Biden called his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin a “crazy SOB” during a San Francisco fundraiser. “We always have to worry about nuclear conflict,” he added, “but the existential threat to humanity is climate.” Biden has intensified his verbal attacks on Putin, blaming him for the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded by telling Reuters that the comment “debases those who use such vocabulary” and reflects a failed “Hollywood cowboy” act. Putin ally Dmitry Medvedev labeled Biden a “useless old geezer,” accusing him of being “senile” and ready for war with Russia.
📸 PHOTO DU JOUR
(see top) Russia’s Sergei Lavrov makes a phone call during the G20 Foreign Ministers meeting that kicked off in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In the foreground (left to right), UK’s David Cameron is seen speaking with Germany’s Annalena Baerbock and U.S.’s Antony Blinken. The first day of the two-day gathering was reportedly marked by Western foreign ministers attacking Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. — Photo: Foreign Office/Kira Hofmann/dpa/ZUMA
👉 MORE FROM WORLDCRUNCH
• Was Navalny Poisoned? Novichok's Creator Casts Doubt On The Current Storyline — WORLDCRUNCH
• Sex Abuse Scandal In Germany's Protestant Church Breaks Myth Of Superiority Over Catholics — DIE WELT
• Truth, Lies And Suicide After An Online Restaurant Review— LUCY SULLA CULTURA
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