Lowitja O’Donoghue, one of the most respected and influential Aboriginal activists in Australian history, has died at age 91.

O’Donoghue, who passed away surrounded by her family on Sunday in Adelaide, dedicated her life to fighting for the health and rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

She received numerous honors in recognition of her trailblazing advocacy, including becoming the first Aboriginal woman to gain Membership of the Order of Australia in 1976. Other titles included Australian of the Year in 1984, Australian National Living Treasure in 1998 and many others.

Away from home she was also appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire and awarded a papal honor from Pope John Paul II.

Born in 1932, O’Donoghue was the fifth of six children born to an Irish father, whom she never knew, and a Yankunytjatjara mother in Indulkana, a remote Aboriginal community in South Australia.

When she was just 2 years old, she and two of her sisters—like thousands of other mixed-race children at the time—were removed from their family and taken into the care of missionaries. She would not see her mother again for more than 30 years.

Nevertheless, O’Donoghue’s difficult start in life did not stop her from forging a promising career for herself. She became the first indigenous Australian to train as a nurse at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in 1954, going on to become a charge sister despite enduring much racism along the way.

After several years in the profession, she went into public service. She successfully campaigned for the recognition of Aboriginal peoples in a 1967 referendum and went on to head up numerous indigenous bodies, both at state and national level, while in 1992 she became the first Aboriginal person to address the United Nations General Assembly.

In 2010, the Lowitja Institute was established in her honor, to promote the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, described O’Donoghue as “one of the most remarkable leaders this country has ever known.”

In a lengthy tribute posted on X, Albanese said: “Dr O’Donoghue had an abiding faith in the possibility of a more united and reconciled Australia. It was a faith she embodied with her own unceasing efforts to improve the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and to bring about meaningful and lasting reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia.”

Her death was announced by her family online. They said: “Our Aunty and Nana was the Matriarch of our family, whom we have loved and looked up to our entire lives. We adored and admired her when we were young and have grown up full of never-ending pride as she became one of the most respected and influential Aboriginal leaders this country has ever known.

“Aunty Lowitja dedicated her entire lifetime of work to the rights, health, and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. We thank and honour her for all that she has done – for all the pathways she created, for all the doors she opened, for all the issues she tackled head-on, for all the tables she sat at and for all the arguments she fought and won.”

Parisians voted in favor of tripling the parking costs for SUVs on Sunday, following a proposal by the Paris mayor’s office, as the city aims to cut air pollution and tackle the climate crisis.

Citizens were asked to decide whether there should be a specific parking rate for “heavy” and “polluting” vehicles. The proposal was supported by 54.55% of voters, although turnout was low. Of the more than 1 million residents eligible to vote, just over 78,000 took part.

Under the proposal — predominantly aimed at those who drive their cars into the city from outside — combustion or hybrid vehicles weighing 1.6 metric tons or more, and electric cars weighing 2 tons or more, will be charged €18 ($19) per hour in central Paris versus €6 ($6.40) for other cars.

In a press release, the Paris municipality said the average size and weight of vehicles in the city had expanded “due to the exponential development of SUVs,” which it said now represent 40% of vehicle sales. The municipality also singled out the “numerous” issues that SUVs create for the environment, safety and the equitable sharing of public space.

SUV sales globally are booming. They made up nearly half the cars sold in 2022, according to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), with particularly strong growth in the US, India and Europe.

This increase in big vehicles comes at a climate cost: Not only do they take more resources to manufacture but they use more fuel.

The amount of planet-heating carbon pollution produced by the 330 million SUVs on the world’s roads rose to around 1 billion tons in 2022. If SUVs were a country, they would easily be in the world’s top 10 highest carbon-polluters.

While sales of electric vehicles have been growing over the past few years, they are not happening fast enough to offset the increased fossil fuel consumption and planet-heating pollution produced by non-electric cars, according to the IEA.

The results of the Paris vote are expected to be verified on Monday by the electoral commission. The measure would take effect on September 1, if also approved by local authorities.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo thanked those who cast their vote on Sunday, stressing that it was a question about ecology, road safety and public health. “Here in Paris we ensure that generations can live in a healthy environment,” she said.

For years, Hidalgo has implemented policies aimed at reducing traffic and making the city more pedestrian-friendly, including banning cars from the banks of the River Seine and expanding cycle lines through the city.

Last year, Parisian residents voted in favor of banning rental electric scooters from the French capital over congestion concerns and safety fears, in a referendum also organized by the Paris mayor’s office.

Some car associations have come out strongly against the SUV proposal, however, including the group 40 Millions d’Automobilistes (40 Million Motorists).

“We must firmly oppose these obstructions to freedom carried out under false pretexts, which here are based on a single ridiculous factor: the shape of a vehicle,” the group posted on X.

Green policies are becoming increasingly controversial across Europe, as climate change becomes a flashpoint in the region’s culture wars.

Senegalese police on Sunday cracked down on protests against the postponement of the presidential election, as parliament prepared to debate a bill that would reschedule the vote for August and extend President Macky Sall’s mandate.

Sall announced on Saturday the Feb. 25 vote would be delayed to an unspecified date due to a dispute over the candidate list and alleged corruption within the constitutional body that handled the list. Some opposition and civil society groups have denounced the move as an “institutional coup”.

Lawmakers will on Monday debate a proposal to hold the vote on Aug. 25 and keep Sall in power until his successor is installed, according to the text of the bill seen by Reuters.

African Union Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat said in a statement late on Sunday that Senegal should “organize the elections as soon as possible, in transparency, peace and national harmony”.

“It (AU) strongly encourages all political and social forces to resolve any political dispute through civilized consultation, understanding and dialogue..,” the statement added.

Senegal has never delayed a presidential vote and uncertainty about what happens next threatens to fuel further unrest like the deadly protests of recent years that have tarnished its reputation as one of West Africa’s most stable democracies.

In an early sign of pushback, groups of protesters on Sunday blocked traffic at various points along a main thoroughfare in Dakar with makeshift barricades of burning tires.

In one area, around 200 people retreated into side streets after police in riot gear fired tear gas and started detaining protesters.

At least two opposition presidential candidates were swept up in the melee. In an online post, candidate Daouda Ndiaye said he was attacked by police, and the campaign manager of Anta Babacar Ngom told Reuters she had been detained by security forces and was being held into the evening.

Former prime minister Aminata Toure also said she had been detained and taken to a police station in Dakar as soon as she got out of her vehicle.

“President Macky’s exit slip is now marked with the seal of this unprecedented democratic regression,” Toure posted on Saturday in response to the postponement.

The police did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Further protests are planned outside parliament on Monday.

After Sall’s televised announcement, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) expressed concern about the circumstances that led to the postponement and called for a new election date to be set quickly.

The French foreign ministry on Sunday also urged the authorities “to remove the uncertainty surrounding the electoral timetable, so that the elections can be held as soon as possible and in compliance with the rules of Senegalese democracy”.

A Chinese-Australian writer has received a suspended death penalty in China, five years after he was detained on espionage charges, according to Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong.

Yang Hengjun, an Australian citizen and democracy activist born in China, was sentenced Monday by a court in Beijing, Wong said in a statement, adding that the Australian government was “appalled” by the sentence.

“We understand this can be commuted to life imprisonment after two years if the individual does not commit any serious crimes in the two-year period,” Wong said.

“This is harrowing news for Dr Yang, his family and all who have supported him. Our thoughts are with them.”

Yang, 58, was detained in 2019 at the airport when he arrived in the southern city of Guangzhou with his wife from New York to see family in China.

He was later charged with espionage – accusations he has denied.

Yang’s case has been shrouded in secrecy. Chinese authorities have offered no details on his charges – including which country he was accused of spying for.

In 2021, his trial was held behind closed doors in a heavily guarded court in Beijing, to which Australian diplomats were denied entry. The verdict and sentence were repeatedly delayed.

China’s court system is notoriously opaque – especially on cases involving national security – and has a conviction rate of above 99%, according to legal observers.

Yang has suffered from poor health in detention. Last year, Yang said he feared he might die in prison, after a large cyst was found on his kidney.

Australia has advocated for Yang with China “at every opportunity, and at the highest levels,” said Wong, the Australian foreign minister, in her statement.

She vowed to continue to press for Yang’s interests and wellbeing, including appropriate medical treatment, and provide consular assistance to him and his family.

At a news conference Monday, Wong said she had summoned China’s ambassador, Xiao Qian, to explain the sentence, while acknowledging it was a “decision of the Chinese legal system.”

“All Australians want to see Dr Yang reunited with his family,” Wong said, adding that Yang has “options” to appeal the sentence.

Feng Chongyi, Yang’s friend and former PhD supervisor in Australia, called his sentence a “barbarous act by the Chinese Communist regime.”

“Yang is punished by the Chinese government for his criticism of human rights abuses in China and his advocacy for universal values such as human rights, democracy and the rule of law,” he said.

“This is outraging political persecution and an unacceptable arbitrary imprisonment of an innocent Australian citizen.”

Feng also expressed concern for Yang’s health, saying he is now “critically ill” and calling on the Australian government to arrange medical parole for Yang and bring him back to Australia as soon as possible.

‘Alarming’ sentence

Yang worked as an official with the Chinese Foreign Ministry before emigrating to Australia.

Before his detention, he routinely posted satirical commentaries critical of the Chinese government to his nearly 130,000 followers on X, previously known as Twitter. He also wrote a series of spy novels.

Though he holds Australian citizenship, Yang is known to spend most of his time in the United States, where he was a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York.

Yang’s sentence was also condemned by human rights groups.

Daniela Gavshon, Australia director at Human Rights Watch, said the sentence was “catastrophic” for Yang and his family and called for “stronger action” from Canberra to increase pressure on Beijing.

“After years of arbitrary detention, allegations of torture, a closed and unfair trial without access to his own choice of lawyers – a sentence as severe as this is alarming,” she said.

“It shines a light on Beijing’s opaque criminal justice system, which the Chinese Communist Party controls.”

It is not the first time the fate of Australians caught up in national security cases have sparked tensions between Beijing and Canberra.

Last October, Australian TV anchor Cheng Lei was released by China and returned home to her family more than three years after she was detained on opaque espionage charges.

Cheng, a former business anchor for China’s state broadcaster CGTN and mother of two, was accused of illegally supplying state secrets overseas.

Beijing did not reveal details of the allegations against Cheng throughout her three years of detention, and the Chinese court delayed handing down verdict multiple times.

A state of emergency has been declared as coastal cities like Viña del Mar and Valparaiso are choked in smoke and people living in central regions are forced to leave their homes.

Rodrigo Mundaca, the governor of the Valparaiso region, said Sunday that authorities were upholding a curfew in the towns of Viña del Mar, Quilpué, Villa Alemana and Limache to allow authorities to focus on battling the blazes.

Pope Francis in a post on ‘X’ called upon people to “pray for the deceased and injured victims of the devastating fires that have affected central Chile.”

In a televised statement on Saturday, Boric said that the defense ministry would deploy more military units to affected areas, with all necessary resources made available.

Earlier, Chile’s Finance Minister Mario Marcel told reporters that a preliminary estimate for damages in the Valaparaíso region would reach the “hundreds of millions of dollars.”

The fires come as the country is hit by a summer heatwave, with Chile’s capital Santiago sweltering through consecutive days of hot, dry temperatures climbing above 33 degrees Celsius (91.4°F).

Scientists say climate change and the El Nino weather phenomenon are driving forces behind an increasingly warm planet, making events such as heatwaves and fires more likely.

Emergency crews are prioritizing the fires in the port city of Valparaíso on Chile’s coast because of their proximity to urban areas and around 372 residents have been reported missing, according to its mayor.

When wildfire ripped through Hawaii’s Maui last August, the impact was devastating: a whole town reduced to ashes, more than 100 lives lost. The inferno was described as the “largest natural disaster in state history.”

But some on Instagram suggested, without evidence, there was something much more nefarious at play.

Wellness influencer @truth_crunchy_mama told her 37,000 followers to “stop blaming things on nature that were actually caused by the government.” They’re “going to keep setting wildfires until we all submit to their climate change agenda,” she said in another post.

Health influencer @drmercola suggested to his 504,000 followers whether, while the media focused on climate change, the fires might have been deliberately set to “to facilitate a land grab” to make the area a “smart city” — referring to a technology-focused urban design idea.

A natural parenting influencer, whose Instagram page is filled with soft-focus pictures of herself against pretty pastel backgrounds, inferred to her 76,000-strong community that Hawaii’s wildfires were started by “directed energy weapons” — systems which use energy such as laser beams.

These posters are all wellness influencers — a loosely-defined umbrella term for a wide range of accounts including yoga, lifestyle, fitness, alternative health and new age spirituality.

While conspiracy theories about the Hawaii wildfires spread across the internet last year, it may seem surprising they were also seized upon by part of the wellness community.

But for years there has been a merging of wellness, disinformation and conspiracy, as a subset of influencers use the backdrop of aesthetically pleasing, pastel-colored posts to spread much darker messages, weaving together alarming conspiracy theories with calls for users to buy their supplements or services.

This phenomenon exploded during the pandemic, when anti-vax sentiment took hold in large parts of the wellness community. As interest in the pandemic waned, experts say some wellness influencers have latched on to climate change to galvanize followers.

Their concern: Those influencers — some with hundreds of thousands of followers — are exposing new, and younger, audiences to a slew of misinformation and undermining efforts to tackle the climate crisis.

Simmons, also a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a UK-based think tank focused on disinformation, started digging. She pored over more than 150 wellness accounts, most of which had between 10,000 to 100,000 followers. All offered wellness advice, sold related products and promoted some form of misinformation.

The claims Simmons found were sweeping and varied, ranging from outright climate denial to attempts to undermine climate solutions by portraying them as part of a global plot for control.

Some focused on deadly extreme weather events, saying they were orchestrated by the government, or that malign global forces were modifying the weather. Others claimed climate policies were a plot to control people’s lives, bodies and diets. A small section of new age accounts asserted that climate change was the result of a disconnection with forces in the universe.

Rejecting climate action may seem counterintuitive for wellness influencers, who often focus on nature or evoke bucolic visions of the past. But when you have insight into this world, it tracks, Simmons said.

A strong thread of individualism runs through wellness accounts, alongside a deep distrust of authorities. “They emphasize individual solutions to collective problems, and they sell wellness as a response to climate anxiety,” she said.

Some even say they accept the human-caused climate crisis.

His climate posts are often framed in this way, not making definitive claims but rather asking questions like: Is the idea of eating insects “part of globalists’ ‘green agenda?’” Or advertising guest posts suggesting the “war on climate change” follows “the same playbook used by nefarious individuals who lust for complete power over the citizens.”

‘Dangerous rhetoric’

The wellness industry, depending on how its defined, is worth anything from many billions to trillions of dollars — $5.6 trillion, according to a recent report from industry group The Global Wellness Institute.

And it’s been decades in the making. Its modern incarnation goes back to the late 1950s, said Stephanie Alice Baker, who researches health and wellness cultures at City University in the UK. American doctor Halbert L. Dunn started to popularize the idea that health was more than simply the absence of disease; instead “peak wellness” meant also finding purpose and meaning.

The movement gained traction around the 1970s, then with the internet, came the entrepreneurs and influencers. Wellness has now come to mean almost anything, said Baker, but at its core it revolves around ideas of individualism, self-enlightenment and distrust of institutions — a near-perfect breeding ground for conspiracy theories to flourish.

“I don’t think the culture understood how dangerous the rhetoric in wellness spaces was until the pandemic,” said Derek Beres, co-host of the podcast Conspirituality, which explores the collision between wellness and conspiracy theories. One researcher, Marc-André Argentino, coined the term “pastel QAnon,” to describe the soft, pleasing aesthetic used by some influencers to spread their conspiratorial worldview.

Influencers crave relevance, said Callum Hood, head of research at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, and “climate change is a big relevant issue that’s in the news all the time.”

Misinformation expert Tim Caulfield, a professor of health law and policy at the University of Alberta, said many wellness influencers are now expected to present a basket of beliefs that the community wants to hear. “Being anti-climate change becomes part of being on that team” and a way to “turbocharge your audience,” he added.

It may seem easy to dismiss this subsection of wellness influencers, but the bonds they create with followers are strong.

They are particularly good at creating intimacy, because they focus on people’s bodies and direct experience of the world, said Baker. It forges a strong parasocial — or one-sided — connection, where followers believe they have a personal relationship with the influencer. Many project authenticity and present themselves as outside the system, able to speak truth to power, she added.

The appeal of their conspiracy messages is clear, especially with a complex issue like climate change. It is a salve to anxiety and a chance to reclaim agency. “Once you find the conspiracy theory, it all collapses, it all becomes simplified. ‘There’s a bad guy who’s lying to you,’” CCDH’s Hood said.

The anger fuels engagement, but how this translates to real-world impact is notoriously hard to pin down.

Still, many experts think there is a significant effect. Climate misinformation is having “a profound impact” both on people’s beliefs and on the normalization of fringe perspectives, Caulfield said. Not only does it undermine climate solutions, it also depoliticizes people, sowing distrust in climate policies.

It’s particularly worrying as it allows climate misinformation to reach new audiences, experts say, including young people that might otherwise be supportive of climate change action.

Studies suggest younger generations are getting the majority of their news from platforms like Instagram, said Mariah Wellman, an assistant professor and wellness expert at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Countering misinformation

Extreme views can give influencers higher clicks, more audience and a more lucrative brand, Caulfield said, so the incentive is clear to steer towards those ideologies. “And the sad thing is that, the more it becomes about ideology, the harder it is to change people’s minds, because it is about belonging to a community.”

There are strategies to counter the misinformation, though. It’s important to do it in a respectful and constructive way, even when it comes from influencers some may dismiss as “frivolous,” Caulfield said. “Pre-bunking” can also help, he added — getting out ahead of the misinformation, and making people aware of the tactics used to push it.

For others, the focus is much more on the other platforms hosting these influencers. Hood is pushing for more clarity on climate policies, and for measures including bans on amplifying and monetizing content that clearly contradicts climate science.

He also called on regulators to take a hard look at the products and services being sold on Instagram and other platforms. “It is the Wild West,” he said.

Meta, which owns Instagram, declined to comment. The company has policies to counter misinformation, including international teams of fact checkers which evaluate climate science content. When they rate posts as false, they can reduce distribution and add warning labels, and accounts that repeatedly offend can lose the ability to advertise or monetize.

But for experts like Hood, there is simply not enough being done to tackle a problem with such alarming implications.

As the climate crisis continues to fuel more frequent and more severe extreme weather events, it is creating perfect conditions for climate denial and misinformation to flourish across these parts of the wellness community.

“The dark side of wellness has always been there. It’s just now we see it,” Simmons said.

Amos Shani Atzmon says he doesn’t blame Palestinians in Gaza for hating Israel right now.

“They have really good reasons. When you see cities on fire and are getting bombed … I had one close friend killed in Gaza and I am thinking about the people whose entire families died in bombing,” he said.

An Israel Defence Forces (IDF) reservist, Atzmon, 26, was called up just hours after Hamas launched its brutal terror attack on Israel, murdering around 1,200 people and kidnapping 253 others.

Israel swiftly retaliated to the October 7 assault with a massive aerial bombardment campaign, followed by a ground operation. More than 27,000 people have been killed in Gaza since, according to the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in the enclave. According to UN agencies, 400,000 Gazans are at risk of starving

The international community, including some of Israel’s closest allies, are increasingly horrified at the scale of the violence inflicted on civilians in Gaza.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that it was “plausible” that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza and ordered Israel to “take all measures” to limit the death and destruction caused by its military campaign, prevent and punish incitement to genocide, and ensure access to humanitarian aid. The decision by ICJ is not a ruling on whether Israel’s actions constitute genocide.

Regardless, little has changed on the ground.

Atzmon said he is the “left-wing guy” in his unit. Like tens of thousands of others, he had spent most of last spring and summer protesting against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his plans to overhaul Israel’s judiciary.

Netanyahu’s government is the most right-wing in Israel’s history, rejecting the idea of a Palestinian state and supporting Jewish settlements inside the West Bank.

Atzmon, meanwhile, wants Israel to work towards a two-state solution. “The Palestinian people will never stop fighting us until they have their own autonomy. And I think the end goal needs to be that,” he said.

His political views are sometimes difficult to square with the realities of being a soldier, fighting on behalf of a government he doesn’t support. He says he’s been grappling with this since he started forming his political opinions around the age of 15, anticipating his military service – something almost everyone in Israel must complete.

“I’m devastated about the death of people in Gaza, kids, the elderly. Just normal men (aged) 26, like me, we don’t want to die. But I have the right to defend myself and to defend my family, my friends, my loved ones,” he said, rejecting the notion that the Hamas terror attack was an act of “resistance” against the Israeli blockade. “I’m not saying this is not a complex situation. But I’m 100% sure that I’m on the right side of history, and that I’m trying to defend people.”

“What happened in the kibbutzim felt like the most inhuman thing I ever witnessed. So when I’m facing this kind of evil, I felt, and I still feel, that entering the war is the only way. Because these are not people I can speak with or comprehend,” he added.

Hundreds of people were murdered in Be’eri, Nir Oz, Kfar Azza and other kibbutzim near the Gaza perimeter.

Atzmon said he wants Netanyahu, who is on trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust, out of the office – the sooner the better. “He should have resigned on the 7th of October. I wanted to wake up on the 8th and watch him on TV telling people ‘I have failed you and I’m sorry. I’m stepping down,’ but that didn’t happen,” he said, adding that he would have welcomed nearly anyone else in the role.

Studying to become a social worker, Atzmon is passionate about his political beliefs. Yet as a soldier, he has fought shoulder to shoulder with people whose opinions couldn’t be further from his own.

Military service is mandatory for all Jewish citizens and for male Druze and Circassian citizens of Israel. Arab citizens and ultra-orthodox Jews are exempt from service, although they may choose to join.

The strict conscription laws mean the military is politically as diverse as Israeli society. People who wouldn’t cross paths otherwise are suddenly thrust together and forced to overcome their differences.

Emmanuel, a 35-year-old reservist currently serving in a combat unit in and around the Gaza Strip, is as passionately right-wing as Atzmon is left-wing.

He believes Israel will need to control Gaza for years to come, agreeing with Netanyuahu who said he wants Israel to have “overall security responsibility” in the strip for an “indefinite period” after the war ends.

Emmanuel said the West Bank could serve as a blueprint for the future of Gaza. The fact that he refers to the area by its biblical name and ancient Israelite kingdoms – “Judea and Samaria” – is just a small reminder that in this region of divisions and complexities, the words one chooses speak volumes of one’s convictions.

Using the biblical name of the ancient homeland of the Jewish people is one way the Israeli government tries to legitimize Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law.

Atzmon, on the other hand, calls it the West Bank and says he is “very sure” that it is under occupation.

Some of Netanyahu’s coalition partners are going a step further, proposing to build Jewish settlements in Gaza.

The issue of Jewish settlements in the West Bank is already a major fault line within Israeli society and in the country’s diplomatic relationships. The idea of building settlements in Gaza has alarmed Israel’s allies, with the United States’ top diplomat rebuking the plans.

Netanyahu himself has so far rejected the idea of new settlements in Gaza as “unrealistic,” saying in an English-language statement that “Israel has no intention of permanently occupying Gaza or displacing its civilian population.”

But Emmanuel supports that idea.

“We must establish new settlements. Not because we want to wipe out the Palestinians. No. We must have a real clear win over our enemies that everybody will understand. This is the price that you pay if you mess with us,” he said.  
 
Over 1.9 million people in Gaza, or nearly 85% of the population, are estimated to be internally displaced, according to the United Nations. Efforts to force them put of their homes permanently would be a breach of international law – and are among the arguments presented by South Africa in its ICJ case against Israel.  
 
“And the second reason is security. We know from Judea and Samaria that it’s easier to control the security in the area if you have settlements there,” he said.

The divisions and arguments within the Israeli society over the future of Gaza and the West Bank have become even deeper and more heated since the October 7 attacks.

Not everyone gets involved, however.

For 19-year-old combat soldier Mendel, the political disagreements seem a bit meaningless at this point.

An American from Long Island, Mendel decided to join the IDF after living in Israel for a few years.

He said that when being drafted, he didn’t think he would be involved in a war. But things have changed on October 7, he said.  
 
“They are still holding hostages there. What do you want us to do? If we back out and they still have our hostages? What would you do if that was you? What would you want your family doing if that was you?”

Difficult conversations

According to the IDF, 224 Israeli troops have been killed in Gaza since the ground operation began in late October.

Among them, Atzmon said, was his best friend, who was killed in a battle in southern Gaza in late December.

“It’s our obligation to think about it and discuss it because the distance between fighting for your loved ones and killing people for revenge is really, really small,” he said during an interview in Jerusalem on Wednesday, just a few days after returning from his deployment.

He said he believes that individual soldiers and the military in general must continually have conversations about what is proportionate force.

“Because if we’re not, if we’re entering Gaza and doing whatever we want out of pure revenge, then we’re going to be as bad as Hamas. And we’re not. I am not going to let them turn me into a murderer,” he said.

But many outside Israel argue the limits of proportionality have been crossed. In an unprecedented display of coordinated dissent, more than 800 officials from the United States and Europe signed a scathing criticism of Western policy towards Israel and Gaza, accusing their governments of possible complicity in war crimes.

Emmanuel said he too sympathizes with innocent civilians. But he said he believes fighting the war the way it is currently conducted is the only option.

He said that successive Israeli governments were wrong to believe that keeping Gaza sealed off and under blockade would “manage” the situation.

“I don’t believe that Churchill or Roosevelt thought they can manage Hitler. There’s no managing your enemies. Either we let them wipe out our country or we defeat them,” he said. “And to be clear, we are not at war with the Palestinian people in Gaza. Our war is with Hamas. Nobody wants to kill an innocent civilian, an innocent woman, an innocent child – but if we have to fight a war, there are casualties. ”

Mendel, by far the youngest of the trio, said he feels strongly about the “horrible” injustice of innocent people dying.

“Wars shouldn’t happen, (Hamas) should not have started this and none of this would have happened,” he said. “And I don’t think that starting it justifies any civilians dying, but it’s a war and war is a horrible, brutal thing, but it’s either that or they would have massacred the rest of us with smiles on their faces.”

Most of all, he said he just wants the war to end. He said he misses his family, his mom especially.

“She is the best of all,” he said. “And she makes the best challah in the world,” he added, referring to the traditional Jewish braided bread served on special occasions.

Mendel has some two years left of his military service. Whether the war will end by the time he finishes is anyone’s guess.

She described two young men crossing their path as they walked through the Old City. One of them, she said, approached them and spat at Schnabel. The assault was not captured on camera, but the sound of spitting is clearly audible.

The priest and journalist continued to walk through the Old City, and were again approached by the same two men as they walked through the Armenian Quarter. They approached Schnabel, proceeded to spit at him again, verbally insult him, and one of them kicked him, a video shows.

Another video filmed by Amiri after the initial spitting incident shows Father Schnabel attempting to take a photo of the young men’s faces to show police.

“You have no right to touch me and spit on me,” he tells one of the men in English as the other attempts to block Amiri’s camera with his hand. “The police are always asking. I need a picture of his face.”

One of the men walks up to Schnabel, yelling profanities. An older man intervenes and convinces him in Hebrew to back off, but the suspect tells the man to “watch out.”

“I did that to the priest because they are Christians, brother, and this is what I do to them,” one of them says to others watching the incident.

An armed Israeli man then intervenes and physically guides the men away from Schnabel, as one yells “f***ing Jesus” in English at Schnabel.

The men were later arrested by Israeli Police and are currently being held under house arrest as the incident is investigated.

“Last night, the police received a report regarding youths who traversed the Zion Gate area in the Old City of Jerusalem. These individuals engaged in verbal insults and spat towards a religious man passing by before hastily fleeing the scene,” the police statement said Sunday.

The suspects, one of whom is 17 years old, were brought in for questioning, according to police, and they were both subsequently placed under house arrest.

Christians in the Old City are regularly the target of spitting and verbal abuse by Orthodox Jews. Five people were arrested in October, accused of spitting at people or churches.

The Latin Patriarchy of Jerusalem said Sunday on X that it “condemns the unprovoked and shameful assault” on Schnabel.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz condemned the “ugly” act in a post on X.

As the President’s Office remained stum for another day over whether or not Ukraine’s commander-in-chief was out of a job, one of the men tipped possibly to replace him gave a short but clear-eyed assessment of the situation facing soldiers on the front line.

Visiting troops near the town of Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region, Oleksandr Syrskyi, wrote on his Telegram channel, “The operational situation remains tense. Heavy fighting is taking place along all sectors of the frontline.”

Syrskyi made no reference to reports that President Volodymyr Zelensky is set to announce the dismissal of army chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi over disagreements about what Ukraine should do to win the war following the failure of the counteroffensive.

But Syrskyi did nod to the highly charged issue of troop numbers, and Russia’s advantage in that area, when he wrote, “The enemy continues to conduct high-intensity assault operations and is constantly bringing in new reserves.”

Zelensky’s reluctance to get behind army chief Zaluzhnyi’s request for a mobilization drive of up to half a million people, made last December, is seen as a key reason for the spike in tensions between them.

The region visited by Syrskyi on Saturday has seen Ukrainian forces pushed back in several places over recent weeks, with Russian pressure bearing down in particular on a group of settlements clustered around the village of Tabaivka, which lies along the border of the Luhansk and Kharkiv regions.

A General Staff report Saturday evening reported further air strikes as well as artillery and mortar fire launched at more than 15 settlements in the area.

A senior army spokesman with responsibility for the same region drew attention to another Ukrainian deficit opposite Russia, in comments on Ukrainian television – namely, a lack of ammunition.

“The Russians are superior in both equipment and personnel,” Illia Yevlash said, adding: “We need a lot of ammunition to destroy such power and intensity.”

However, Yevlash said Russian soldiers were also experiencing possible ammunition shortages, albeit less severe than Ukraine. Where previously, Russian forces had been firing 60,000 rounds a day along the entire front line, the number currently was about half that, he said.

Yevlash also commented on the situation around the battered city of Bakhmut – which has been at the centre of fighting for over a year.

Russian forces were working hard to break through Ukraine’s defenses, the spokesman said, with the aim of advancing towards Chasiv Yar, a highly militarized town on higher ground a few kilometers west of Bakhmut.

An indication of the toll such relentless fighting has taken came from Oleksandr, a member of a sniper platoon working in the same area of operations.

“We are in deep defense mode and are holding back the enemy. Both our men and those of the enemy are exhausted.”

Further south, Russian attention has been focused for months on the town of Avdiivka, and its massive coke plant, both of which Russia has been attempting to encircle.

The Deep State mapping service, widely used by analysts for its careful reporting of frontline movements, has indicated Russian gains to the north of the town in recent days, though a spokesman for the 47th brigade, which is fighting to defend the town, was more upbeat.

Dmytro Lazutkin said his brigade was inflicting heavy losses on Russia, which had still been unable to break through and cut off Ukrainian logistics supplies to the town.

At least 51 people have been killed in Chile as forest fires rage throughout the country – and authorities warn the death toll is likely to rise.

A state of emergency has been declared as coastal cities are choked in smoke and people living in central regions are forced to leave their homes.

“Given the conditions of the tragedy, the number of victims will surely increase in the coming hours,” Chilean President Gabriel Boric said in a televised statement on Saturday.

He added that the defense ministry would deploy more military units to affected areas, with all necessary resources made available.

The declaration was made for the provinces of Marga Marga and Valparaíso, the presidential delegate of Valparaíso Sofía González Cortés said. A curfew was imposed in several communes between 8 a.m. and midday local time to facilitate the deployment of emergency and logistical support, she added.

About 92 active fires are burning in various parts of the country and have so far affected roughly 43,000 hectares, Interior Minister Carolina Tohá said. Firefighters have controlled 40 fires and are still battling 29, she added.

The fires come as the country is hit by a summer heatwave, with Chile’s capital Santiago sweltering through consecutive days of hot, dry temperatures climbing above 33 degrees Celsius (91.4°F).

Scientists say climate change and the El Nino weather phenomenon are driving forces behind an increasingly warm planet, making events such as heatwaves and fires more likely.

Emergency crews are prioritizing the fires in the port city of Valparaíso on Chile’s coast because of their proximity to urban areas and around 372 residents have been reported missing, according to its mayor.

One of those fires has consumed some 6,800 hectares, Tohá said.

The wildfires in Valparaíso have also damaged an estimated 1,100 homes, authorities said.

“The biggest concern is that some of the fires are in zones very close to urban areas, at the interface of urban areas, and therefore have a very high potential to affect people, homes and installations,” she added.

Toha told reporters that the death toll could rise in the coming hours as authorities try to confirm information from areas they haven’t been able to enter yet.

At least six of those who died did so while being treated in hospitals for burns, according to authorities.