Norman Solomon

If we condemn Hamas for its October 7 attacks in Israel, we’re not accused of anti-Arab bigotry. Nor should we be. Nothing could possibly justify the atrocities that Hamas committed against hundreds of civilians, who were the majority of the 1,200 people killed as a result of the attacks by Hamas forces. And nothing can … Continue reading “Apologists for Israel’s Mass Murder in Gaza Fall Back on ‘Antisemitism’ Claims”

Consider this strange: Seventy-eight years after the first and only nuclear weapons were used on Planet Earth, anyone with half a brain knows that a nuclear war would be an incomparable disaster for this planet and everyone living on it. So, remind me, why the endless nuclear pantomime? Why, as last year wound down, for … Continue reading “Full Speed Ahead on the Global Titanic”

Sometimes there’s a thin line between vile demagoguery and pure idiocy. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi straddled both during a Sunday appearance on CNN, when she smeared protesters who’ve been demanding a ceasefire to end Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian people in Gaza. “The former House speaker said, without offering evidence, that she believed some protesters are connected … Continue reading “Smearing Ceasefire Protesters, Pelosi Combines Devotion to Israel With Cold-War Mania”

Zen wisdom tells us that the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. Yet it’s easy to fall into the illusion that when we see news about the Gaza war, we’re really seeing the war. We are not. What we do routinely see is reporting that’s as different from the actual war as … Continue reading “How the Gaza War Can Be Big News and Invisible at the Same Time”

In my childhood, we at least acknowledged the ominous existence of nuclear weapons, no matter how weirdly. I’m thinking about those times we kids spent at school “ducking and covering” under our desks, practicing for… yes, the atomic annihilation of New York City by the Soviet Union. Even at 12, I was certainly aware that … Continue reading “What Daniel Ellsberg Knew About Doomsday”

This article was originally published by The Nation. Forty years ago, across a dozen pages of The Nation magazine, I was in a debate with the English historian E. P. Thompson about the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms race, the relative culpability of both governments, and how activists should approach it all. At the time, Cold War hostility was rampant. … Continue reading “How the US Has Darkened the Nuclear Cloud Over Humanity”

For U.S. mass media, Henry Kissinger’s quip that “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac” rang true. Influential reporters and pundits often expressed their love for him. The media establishment kept swooning over one of the worst war criminals in modern history. After news of his death broke on Wednesday night, prominent coverage echoed the kind that … Continue reading “For Media Elites, War Criminal Henry Kissinger Was a Great Man”

The governments of Israel and the United States are now in disagreement over how many Palestinian civilians it’s okay to kill. Last week – as the death toll from massive Israeli bombardment of Gaza neared 10,000 people, including several thousand children – top U.S. officials began to worry about the rising horrified outcry at home and … Continue reading “Israel’s Military Is Part of the US War Machine”

For three weeks, President Biden has played a key role in backing Israel’s war crimes while touting himself as a compassionate advocate of restraint. That pretense is lethal nonsense as Israel persists with mass killing of civilians in Gaza. The same crucial standards that fully condemned Hamas’s murders of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7 should … Continue reading “Biden Is a Genocide Denier and the ‘Enabler in Chief’ for Israel’s Ongoing War Crimes”

Labels are central to the politics of media. And no label has been more powerful than “terrorist.” A single standard of language should accompany a consistent standard of human rights, which the world desperately needs. “If thought corrupts language,” George Orwell wrote, “language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and … Continue reading “Hamas Is a Terrorist Organization. So Is the Israeli Government.”