During the first years of the Nazi occupation, Denmark protected its country’s Jews, but when that government resigned in August 1943, the Germans promptly prepared to deport them. Danish civil society, however, stood up and took over their protection. A sealift operation, unparalleled in history, brought more than 7,000 Jews to safety in Sweden. While some ended in the Theresienstadt ghetto, less than 100 of Denmark’s Jews died in the Holocaust—the lowest death toll in all of Nazi-occupied Europe.
This is one of the most miraculous and heroic acts of courage to emanate from what was the worst genocide ever perpetrated by human again human. Yet, for the most part, it is relatively unknown, obscured by the atrocities committed by the Nazis that resulted in the death of six million Jews and more than five million others deemed undesirable.
But it is worth telling, knowing, and remembering because it is a sterling manifestation of how ordinary people, determined to do the right thing, can do extraordinary things even when confronted by the harshest adversity. In fact, the Danish October 1943 rescue stands out in the tragic history of the Holocaust.
So what happened in those crucial days, why, and what can be learned from this unique case, where the Holocaust was thwarted by the resistance of ordinary people?
When Nazi Germany occupied Denmark in 1940, the Danish government protested but quickly laid down arms. A “policy of cooperation” started with the aims of maintaining the country’s sovereignty and neutrality in the war, protecting high and low, and keeping the invaders out of local affairs. However, keeping up business and maintaining jobs meant cooperating with the enemy and contributing to the Nazi war effort. Bowing to the great power, the unheroic “policy of cooperation” focused on preserving the national interest. It protected the population and the Jews—but at the cost of aligning with Nazi Germany.
Denmark got through World War II with little destruction and few casualties, its democratic and civil institutions intact. To the Danish government everything was negotiable except for three issues: introduction of capital punishment, participation of the Danish military on the Axis side, and introduction of racial laws. All major political parties supported the “policy of cooperation,” as did most Danes.
Slowly, though, a resistance movement emerged, and 1943 changed the popular mood. The “August Uprising”—a wave of general strikes, street demonstrations, and acts of sabotage—caused the Germans to present an ultimatum that included death penalty for resistance. The Danish government rejected it and resigned. By then, most Danes supported the resistance.
Christian and socialist values informed most rescuers. Widespread training in democratic grass-root work made their activism efficient.
The Germans’ No. 1 in Denmark, Werner Best, decided to punish the Danes, and ordered the Jews to be deported. However, before the Oct. 1, 1943 “Judenaktion,” he realized the manhunt for Jews would make it difficult to calm the Danes and return to some sort of cooperation again. Thus, he let a warning slip out that gave the Jews three days to prepare.
An SS general and ardent Nazi, Best wanted all Jews killed, but pragmatism made him prioritize cooperation with the Danes over the annihilation of the Jews. The Danes were “racially valuable Aryans,” according to Nazi theory, and their agricultural and industrial supplies were important to Germany. The Jews—a tiny segment—could wait until after Germany’s victory.
Most Danish Jews reacted with admirable presence of mind, went “underground” and immediately started to organize the flight to Sweden. And scores of non-Jewish Danes joined in organizing help activities within hours: circles of friends, students, citizen initiatives, some resistance fighters. Fishermen played a crucial role—and some took spicy prices for the illegal crossings.
Mostly, helpers were “ordinary people” from high and low in Danish society. Most involved themselves without thoughts of personal gain. Labor activists and Lutheran ministers spearheaded rescue activities, while health professionals turned hospitals into clandestine hubs of rescue. Large sums were collected from Jews, non-Jews and—clandestinely—even government funds to pay for transportation. Christian and socialist values informed most rescuers. Widespread training in democratic grass-root work made their activism efficient.
Danish SS volunteers assisted the German police in hunting down Jews—but few were caught. Cases of denunciation occurred only rarely. In the 19th-century antisemitism in Denmark had been mainstream, but it weakened over the years. Thus, most Danes who got in touch with fleeing Jews, chose to help—and made no difference between Jews of long-time Danish residency and recent immigrants and refugees from other parts of Nazi-occupied Europe.
By helping Jews, most Danes felt that they were protecting their civil society, defending a set of common Danish values. To protect a powerless minority was required to uphold the Danish sense of community. Action required courage—even if later knowledge of the split motives of the German leadership indicates that the rescue operation was not as dangerous as helpers believed in the dark and stormy nights of October 1943.
The ideas of (socialist) solidarity and (Christian) mercy were important to Danes who volunteered as rescuers of Jews. On their minds were, above all, the protection of their common values. Bo Lidegaard (the author a book on the operation, Countrymen) credits Denmark’s democratic leaders for educating their populace to a sense of community by integrating all layers of society into the emerging welfare state. Leni Yahil (author Test of a Democracy) emphasizes the spirit of grass root democracy trained in 19th and early 20th century peasants’ cooperatives. And I would add that organized labor—and union shops covered most of Denmark by 1943—made workers internalize the same basic ideas and helped create a democratic consensus that encompassed most Danes and informed their decisions to help when confronted with Jewish families on the run.
The events in Denmark in 1943 are worth telling, knowing, and remembering because they represent a sterling manifestation of how ordinary people, determined to do the right thing, can do extraordinary things even when confronted by the harshest adversity. In fact, the Danish 1943 rescue with its moments of solidarity, care, and luck, stands out in the tragic history of the Holocaust. It should serve as a way for young people to approach the darker sides of Holocaust with its destruction and despair and learn that there was—and always is—a choice: to join forces with the oppressor, stand by and watch, or stand up for human values.
For 28 years, the Wall stood as both a physical and ideological barrier, separating not just family and friends but an entire country. The west of Berlin prospered economically, fuelled by investment from the US and Western Europe, while the east of the city struggled, plagued by shortages and repressively monitored by the secret police, the Stasi. The Wall became a potent symbol of the Cold War, a physical manifestation of the divide between the Communist East and the Capitalist West.
But by the late 1980s, the whole of the Eastern bloc was coming under pressure. The Soviet Union was bogged down in an intractable war in Afghanistan and facing acute economic problems and major food shortages.
In the face of this, Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader who took power in 1985, had already initiated a series of political reforms, glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), but events were spiralling beyond his control.
Strikes in the Polish shipyards had sparked mass demonstrations in Hungary and calls from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, then part of the Soviet Union, for their independence. East Germany was still firmly under the grip of the Socialist Unity Party but momentum was building and by 4 November 1989, half a million citizens had gathered in East Berlin’s public square Alexanderplatz, calling for change.
In the early 1900s, New York City witnessed the introduction of the Sullivan Act, a law that targeted women smoking in public. Named after its proponent, Alderman Timothy Sullivan, this act reflected the era’s societal norms and gender biases. It specifically aimed to regulate women’s behavior, drawing clear lines between acceptable and unacceptable public conduct.
Rise of Women’s Resistance
The Sullivan Act ignited immediate resistance from women across various social strata. Activists and everyday women saw this law as an affront to their personal freedoms. The movement it spurred went beyond the act of smoking; it symbolized a fight against gender-specific restrictions and a quest for equal rights. Women’s response was not just about asserting their right to smoke but challenging the deeper societal norms that the law represented.
The Tobacco Industry’s Role
During this tumultuous period, tobacco companies played a significant role. They saw an opportunity in the controversy and began marketing cigarettes to women as symbols of independence and modernity. This move not only increased their sales but also influenced the ongoing debate about women’s rights. Smoking became a symbol of rebellion against traditional gender roles, thanks to these strategic marketing campaigns.
Overturning the Sullivan Act
The Sullivan Act’s repeal marked a significant milestone in the women’s rights movement. It underscored the importance of standing against discriminatory legislation and reshaped societal attitudes towards gender and freedom. The act’s failure also highlighted the growing power and influence of women’s voices in societal and political realms.
The repeal had implications far beyond smoking rights. It acted as a catalyst, inspiring further challenges to gender-biased laws. The movement contributed significantly to broader women’s rights issues, including the suffrage movement, signaling a shift in societal views on gender equality.
The Sullivan Act’s history offers insights into how laws can reflect and reinforce societal norms, especially regarding gender roles. It reminds us of the constant need to scrutinize laws that discriminate or seek to control personal choices based on gender.
The Legacy of the Sullivan Act
The legacy of the Sullivan Act is profound. It stands as a testament to the power of collective action against discrimination and has become a crucial chapter in women’s rights history. The act represents a pivotal moment in the journey toward gender equality, emphasizing the importance of challenging restrictive societal norms and advocating for personal freedom.
Today, the Sullivan Act’s story holds enduring relevance. It serves as a reminder of past struggles for gender equality and the ongoing need to challenge restrictive societal norms. The act’s history is not just a tale of a legislative battle but a narrative of resilience, resistance, and the relentless pursuit of equality.
When Vivian Folkenflik was a professor and lecturer at UC Irvine, she walked into classrooms with pieces of multicolored chalk. She believed that the various hues on the chalkboard would help engage her undergraduate students in complicated ideas.
“If you have multicolored chalk, you could teach students anything,” John H. Smith, emeritus professor at UC Irvine, recalled her often saying, half in jest.
For more than 30 years, Folkenflik taught thousands of UC Irvine students a core humanities course that weaved together history, literature and philosophy. She also mentored hundreds more graduate students, lecturers and early-career professors.
Folkenflik’s life ended suddenly on Oct. 28. She was struck by a pickup truck while she was crossing a street in Montclair, N.J., according to her son, David Folkenflik. She was 83. While confirming his mother’s sudden, tragic death, he spoke of her accomplishments and the legacy she left in academia.
“She played a truly important role in the growth of the humanities at the campus, and she did it not just through the buildings and the institutions, but the people,” said her son, National Public Radio’s media correspondent. “So many generations of cohorts of undergraduates and graduate students and aspiring professors, and even the full faculty members, were influenced by her insights, coaching and encouragement.
“Universities can seem like impersonal places at times, but it’s people like Vivian who make them a breathing organism with a beating heart,” he added.
Vivian Folkenflik was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1940 to a cardiologist and a school librarian who instilled in her a love of museums, music, literature, history, travel and Jackie Robinson.
After graduating from high school at 16, she attended Radcliffe College in Massachusetts before earning her master’s degree at Cornell University, concentrating on French literature.
That’s where she met Robert Folkenflik, whom she would marry two years later. They had two children and, in 1975, moved to California, where they made Laguna Beach their home for 45 years.
In the 1980s, Folkenflik began teaching UC Irvine’s humanities’ core course to undergraduate students. Smith, who was director of the course for some time, said that — in addition to the impact she had on students — Folkenflik helped other instructors who were struggling to teach the complicated curriculum.
“Vivian was dedicated, absolutely dedicated, to teaching critical thinking,” Smith said.
But her relationship to her students and the humanities took on a new meaning following the death of her daughter. Nora, 28, was riding her bike in Seattle one night in 1995 when she was struck and killed by a drunk driver, Smith said.
“She used the material and her students in many ways to get through it … and she showed students that this was not just stuff that they were learning for an exam, but that the humanities offered us the kind of materials that we could use to get us through the difficulties in life,” Smith recalled. For Folkenflik, Homer’s epic poem “The Odyssey” helped her navigate the profound loss.
When she wasn’t teaching, Folkenflik and her husband loved to travel, watch films, go to concerts, and walk along Reef Point Beach. “But she really loved, loved intellectual pursuits,” said her son, David. “She had a ferocious intellect … and she liked to find ways to connect with people. … To be in a conversation with Vivian is almost to invariably come away amused, made to think, and also affirmed in oneself, and she certainly sought to do that.”
She retired in 2012 but continued to substitute teach. Following her husband’s death in 2019 after a battle with lymphoma, she moved to New Jersey, where she was closer to family. She passed the time at her grandchildren’s soccer games, dance recitals and drama performances. She wrote poetry and studied the Talmud.
Folkenflik is survived by son David; daughter-in-law Jesse; sister Judith; and grandchildren Viola, Zella and Eliza.
“American democracy itself was under attack from enemies within and without,” Rachel Maddow writes in Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism. If you’re not sure whether she is speaking of the past or the present, that’s because she wants to conflate the two.
Prequel is a deeply flawed and deceptively framed history of right-wing radicalism in the United States on the eve of American entry into World War II. Maddow’s treatment of this well-worn topic draws principally from primary sources generated from the protagonists of her story, a collection of private spies and anti-fascist activists, as well as contemporary press reporting, sundry government documents, and a narrow base of secondary sources, one that noticeably omits prominent works in the field. Deficiencies in her sources, methods, and analyses make for a book that recapitulates past passions at the expense of sober reflection and reality.
Maddow opens with her strongest case study, covering the German-born Nazi agent George Sylvester Viereck, who tried to push Americans toward neutrality by using personal connections with Congress to spread noninterventionist literature. She then switches focus to her weakest case study, that of populist Democratic governor and senator Huey “Kingfish” Long and his influence on the Nazi sympathizers Philip Johnson and Gerald L.K. Smith. Maddow does not clarify why Long, who died in 1935, is discussed here. But her tone and source selection imply that she agrees with the Kingfish’s contemporary critics that his populism and demagoguery made him a proto-fascist and a political gateway drug for more radical figures, like Johnson and Smith.
Maddow then abruptly changes focus to the dark history of American segregation and its influence on Nazi racial science, following the German lawyer Heinrich Krieger’s travels through the American South. Then she circles back to more-prominent characters, such as the American fascist Lawrence Dennis, the antisemitic preacher Charles Coughlin, and the abstruse spiritualist (and leader of the fascist Silver Shirts) William Dudley Pelley, among others.
The book’s first half is occasionally productive. The chapter on Pelley does a good job of exploring the roots of his ideology: his conflation of anti-communism with antisemitism, his eclectic spiritualism, his millenarian Christianity. And the chapter on American race law is a haunting look at how American legislatures maintained racial hierarchy and what the Nazis learned from their practices.
But what narrative value she creates is relinquished by her analytical leaps, which conflate fascism with phenomena that were already well-grounded in American life well before the 1920s. And Maddow never directly states the size and scope of the groups she covers, such as the German American Bund and the Silver Shirts; instead we get such vague phrases as “many,” “a lot,” and “an insane number.” This makes it easier to confuse the breadth of Maddow’s cast of characters for the depth of their influence. (According to historian Francis MacDonnell’s Insidious Foes, the German American Bund never attracted more than 25,000 members and the Silver Shirts maxed out at 15,000.)
The book’s meandering journey narrows in later chapters, as Maddow argues that German propaganda had a pervasive influence on “isolationist” congressmen. She presents the propagandists’ efforts as far more effective than they were, giving the impression that they were the root of Americans’ general desire to stay out of World War II. She pays only lip service to the deeper roots of “isolationism,” with a mere passing reference to the fallout from World War I. She does not mention the post-WWI revelations of Allied and American propaganda, the widespread alarm at the armaments industry’s intimate relationship with the government, or the Great War’s domestic abuses of civil liberties. (When Sen. Ernest Lundeen (R–Minn.) denounces a draft bill as “nothing short of slavery,” she dismisses him as “shrill.”) Instead, she writes as though the desire to remain neutral simply stemmed from abroad, stripping noninterventionism of its historical context and arguing that the “threads of isolationism, antisemitism, and fascism were becoming an ominously tight weave.”
To make her case, Maddow retells a well-worn story about Viereck’s use of the congressional frank, a taxpayer-funded mailing service, to distribute what Maddow calls “pro-German mailings.” In fact, it was predominately literature that advocated neutrality. As historian Douglas M. Charles argued in J. Edgar Hoover and the Anti-interventionists, “All Viereck managed to accomplish was a wider distribution of anti-interventionist literature that, in any event, did not lead Americans to reassess their views on the Allies.”
Her book culminates in the 1944 sedition trial, in which the United States federal government charged a heterogeneous and largely unaffiliated assortment of 30 defendants, which included far-right figures like George Sylvester Viereck, Lawrence Dennis, and William Dudley Pelley, for sedition under the 1940 Smith Act. She presents the episode as a missed opportunity to uproot homegrown fascism. In fact, the Justice Department filed its flimsy charges on politically motivated grounds—a clear threat to constitutionally protected speech and association, no matter how unsympathetic the defendants could be.
Throughout Prequel, Maddow displays a systemically uncritical use of her source material, frequently presenting the self-gratifying hyperbole of fascist propagandists and the motivated reasoning of anti-fascist reporters as gospel.
Whether she knows it or not, Maddow is dredging up a thesis from the past, written in the wake of World War II when passions were high and perspectives blinkered. This view does have some academic adherents, and she cites their work: Bradley W. Hart’s Hitler’s American Friends, James Q. Whitman’s Hitler’s American Model, Sarah Churchwell’s Behold, America, Steven J. Ross’s Hitler in Los Angeles, and others. But she drives her thesis beyond the confines of her evidence in a manner that these scholars do not. Hart, for example, hedges where Maddow does not, acknowledging that the “United States was not at risk of an imminent fascist takeover in the late 1930s” when he argues that there was “fertile terrain in which dictatorship might be able to take root.” Yet Maddow leaves the impression that there was a risk of an imminent fascist takeover in the 1930s, with German propaganda fertilizing that fertile terrain.
Meanwhile, there is a sizeable body of work that challenges Maddow’s thesis and that of her source material. Such works include established scholarship such as Leo Ribuffo’s TheOld Christian Right, Deborah Lipstadt’s Beyond Belief,and Bruce Kuklick’s recent Fascism Comes to America, to name a few. While these works do not downplay the pernicious ideologies of the far right nor their presence in American life, they do not sensationalize or dehistoricize them nor assign them more influence than they deserve. Lipstadt, who has devoted much of her career to combating the radical right’s penchant for Holocaust denial, dedicated an entire chapter of Beyond Belief to challenging American anxieties about a Nazi “fifth column”—the very fears that Maddow is trying to resurrect. While Nazi Germany did have spies and propagandists in the U.S., Lipstadt cautioned that “they never constituted a network with the scope and power the press attributed them.”
In Insidious Foes, MacDonnell argues that while odious and illiberal, right-wing extremists “never posed any real danger to the republic”; instead, a media echo chamber constructed the perception of a vast and powerful far right. He also makes a good case that Germany’s propaganda effort was “spectacularly unsuccessful” and ultimately did more damage to the noninterventionist cause than it aided it. Ribuffo‘s classic The Old Christian Right (a work that Maddow mentions in her author’s note but does not cite) similarly argued that the fear of these groups was a “brown scare” that often “exaggerated both [the far right’s] power and its Axis connections.”
How does Maddow square her findings with those of these earlier works? We do not know, because she does not tell us.
In closing the book, Maddow invites the reader to take inspiration from the work of Americans who sought to stop homegrown fascists by “any means at hand,” assessing their legacies as worth remembering and emulating. Yet Maddow omits the pernicious legacy that followed from using “any means at hand” and violating the very norms her heroes sought to protect. They created the destructive and restrictive myth of isolationism, which held that it was an absence of American power from the world’s stage that directly led to the rise of fascism abroad. They actively colluded with a foreign power—Great Britain—to interfere in American elections and manipulate American media. And they helped stoke the panic that led to Japanese internment and spurred the growth of the domestic security state. The latter, ironically, soon boomeranged against the left.
Those legacies are also worth remembering if we are to preserve liberty from an ever-present threat—not from enemies within our ranks or outside our walls, but within ourselves.
Israel’s Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu was suspended indefinitely after he said in an interview that dropping a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip was “one of the possibilities,” the government announced on Sunday.
“Eliyahu’s statements are not based in reality,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement on X.
Israel and its military “are operating in accordance with the highest standards of international law to avoid harming innocents,” the prime minister added.
A member of the ultra-nationalist Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, Eliyahu earlier on Sunday claimed in a radio interview that since there were “no non-combatants in Gaza,” using an atomic weapon on the Palestinian enclave was “one of the possibilities.”
Eliyahu later sought to rectify his statement, saying it was “clear to all sensible people” that his reference to nuclear weapons had been “metaphorical.”
Israel, which has one of the most powerful armies in the Middle East, is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons, although it has never publicly conducted nuclear tests.
Netanyahu’s government has been under fire for the failures of Israeli intelligence in preventing the surprise attacks from the Palestinian militant group Hamas that killed more than 1,400 people on Israeli soil on October 7. The government has also been criticized for a lack of support provided to survivors of the attacks.
In retaliation, Israel’s government has ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip, limiting all access to food, water and fuel in the Palestinian enclave — which is controlled by the Hamas militant group and home to 2.3 million people — for the past month.
It has also launched a ground assault into Gaza and thousands of airstrikes on the enclave, killing more than 9,400 people, according to the Hamas-run heath authorities in Gaza. Israel’s offensive has also led to strikes on several non-military targets, including nearby refugee camps and an ambulance convoy which Israel says was being used by Hamas.
TEL AVIV — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may be digging in for a “long and difficult war” but former leader Ehud Barak fears Israel has only weeks left to eliminate Hamas, as public opinion — most significantly in the U.S. — rapidly swings against its attacks on Gaza.
In an exclusive interview with POLITICO, the former prime minister and chief of the Israel Defense Forces also suggested a multinational Arab force could have to take control of Gaza after the military campaign, to help usher in a return of Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority to take over from Hamas. Even with that change of the political order in Gaza, however, Barak stressed the return to diplomacy aimed at the creation of a Palestinian state was a very remote prospect.
Barak, who led Israel between 1999 and 2001, observed the rhetoric of U.S. officials had shifted in recent days with a mounting chorus of calls for a humanitarian pause in the fighting. The sympathy generated toward Israel in the immediate wake of October 7, when Hamas launched the deadliest terrorist attack on Israel in the Jewish state’s 75-year history, was now diminishing, he worried.
“You can see the window is closing. It’s clear we are heading towards friction with the Americans about the offensive. America cannot dictate to Israel what to do. But we cannot ignore them,” he said, in reference to Washington’s role as the main guarantor of Israel’s security. “We will have to come to terms with the American demands within the next two or three weeks, probably less.”
As he was speaking, Israeli military officials told reporters the ground campaign was reaching a new dangerous phase with troops penetrating deep inside Gaza City, further than in previous operations in 2009 and 2014.
Barak spoke with POLITICO in his book-lined office in a high-rise apartment building in downtown Tel Aviv.
On the walls are photographs recording different stages of his storied career as a special forces soldier and statesman. One was snapped in May 1972 when he led an elite commando unit, which included Netanyahu, to rescue passengers from Sabena Flight 571, which was hijacked by Black September gunmen.
Under the photograph, there’s a piano. A trained classical pianist, Barak says he has recently been playing Chopin Ballade No. 1. A performance of that piece is central to the plot of the 2002 film The Pianist, which moves a German Nazi officer to hide Władysław Szpilman.
Barak added it would take months or even a year to extirpate the Islamist militant group Hamas — the main war aim set by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his war cabinet – but noted Western support was weakening because of the civilian death toll in Gaza and fears of Israel’s campaign sparking a much broader and even more catastrophic war in the region.
Western nations are also anxious about their nationals among the 242 hostages Hamas is holding captive in Gaza, he continued.
“Listen to the public tone — and behind doors it is a little bit more explicit. We are losing public opinion in Europe and in a week or two we’ll start to lose governments in Europe. And after another week the friction with the Americans will emerge to the surface,” Barak said.
Handing over Gaza for a period to a multinational Arab force to police has been mooted before | Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images
Last week, President Joe Biden raised the need for a “humanitarian pause” in the campaign.
And this week on his fourth trip to Israel, and his third to the region since October 7, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken pressed the case with Netanyahu and the Israeli war cabinet telling them they should now prioritize the protection of civilians in Gaza and minimize civilian casualties.
Blinken’s efforts so far have been spurned by Netanyahu but Barak didn’t think the Israeli war cabinet would be able to fend off the Biden administration and Europeans for much longer.
Political and military veteran
Barak has plenty of experience of dealing with Israel’s allies and adversaries alike.
As prime minister he negotiated with Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat at Camp David, in a 2000 summit hosted by President Bill Clinton, where they came close to striking a deal. A former defense minister and chief of staff, Barak was an elite commando and one of the key planners of Operation Thunderbolt, the rescue from Entebbe, Uganda, of the passengers and crew of an Air France jet hijacked by terrorists.
Barak said Israel rightly set the bar high in its Gaza war aim. “The shock of the attack was huge. This was an unprecedented event in our history, and it was immediately clear that there had to be a tough response. Not in order to take revenge, but to make sure that it cannot happen ever again.”
And even if the military campaign falls short of its maximum goal of the full eradication of Hamas, severe damage will have been inflicted on the Iran-backed Palestinian group, he explained. It will then be important to constrain Hamas from pulling off a resurgence, he continued.
Barak poses with members of the LGBTQ+ community in Tel Aviv in 2019 | Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images
To change the political landscape, he believed a multinational Arab force could take over Gaza after the Israeli military campaign.
“It is far from being inconceivable that backed by the Arab League and United Nations Security Council, a multinational Arab force could be mustered, with some symbolic units from non-Arab countries included. They could stay there for three to six months to help the Palestinian Authority to take over properly,” he said.
Handing over Gaza for a period to a multinational Arab force to police has been mooted before.
Back in 2008-2009, when Israel and Hamas fought a three week-war, Barak, then Israeli defense minister, discussed with the Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak the possibility of Egypt and other Arab nations stepping in to administer the Gaza Strip. “I remember his gesture,” says Barak. “He displayed his hands and said, ‘I will never ever put my hands back in the Gaza.’”
Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president and head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, was equally dismissive.
Abbas told Barak he could never return to Gaza supported by Israeli bayonets. “I didn’t like the answer. But you can understand his logic. Fifteen years ago, it was impossible because there was no one who would do it but a lot has changed since then,” Barak said.
Displaced Palestinians wait at a food distribution at a U.N.-run center | Mohammed Abed/AFP via Getty Images
Hamas battled the PLO-affiliated Fatah party for control of Gaza in 2007 in a clash that effectively split Palestinian political structures in two, with Hamas controling Gaza and Fatah predominating in the West Bank.
Barak noted Israel, Egypt and Jordan had deepened their anti-terrorism cooperation and Israel had signed “normalization” accords with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, a process that he thought Arab states would not want to row back from.
“Arab leaders also need to be able to tell their own peoples that something is changing, and a new chapter is opening, one where there is a sincere effort on all sides to calm down conflict. But they need to hear that Israel is capable of thinking in terms of changing the direction it has been on in recent years,” he adds.
That doesn’t mean Israel should or can rush into revived negotiations over a two-state solution, he cautioned. Getting back to the era of when he was negotiating with Arafat might not be possible, for a very long time.
“History does not repeat itself. So I do not think that something exactly like that can be repeated. But as Mark Twain used to say, history can rhyme.”
He added: “It won’t happen quickly, and it will take time. Trust on all sides has gone – the distrust has only deepened.”
SARCELLES, France — In the usually lively “Little Jerusalem” neighborhood of Sarcelles, the only people loitering are gun-toting French soldiers on patrol.
Since Hamas’ deadly assault against Israel on October 7, this largely Jewish enclave in the northern suburbs of Paris has gone eerily quiet, with locals keeping their movements to a minimum, and with restaurants and cafés bereft of their regular clientele — fearing an increasing number of antisemitic attacks across France.
“People are afraid, in a state of shock, they’ve lost their love for life” said Alexis Timsit, manager of a kosher pizzeria. “My business is down 50 percent, there’s no bustle in the street, nobody taking a stroll,” he said in front of a large screen broadcasting round-the-clock coverage of the war.
France has seen more antisemitic incidents in the last three weeks than over the past year: 501 offenses ranging from verbal abuse and antisemitic graffiti, to death threats and physical assaults have been reported. Antisemitic acts under investigation include groups gathering in front of synagogues shouting threats and graffiti such as the words “killing Jews is a duty” sprayed outside a stadium in Carcassonne in the southwest. The interior minister has deployed extra police and soldiers at Jewish schools, places of worship and community centers since the attacks, and in Sarcelles that means soldiers guard school pick-ups and drop-offs.
“I try not to show my daughter that I’m afraid,” said Suedu Avner, who hopes the conflict won’t last too long. But a certain panic has taken hold in the community in the wake of the Hamas attacks, in some cases spreading like wildfire on WhatsApp groups. On one particularly tense day, parents even pulled their children out of school.
France is home to the largest Jewish community outside Israel and the U.S., estimated at about 500,000, and one of the largest Muslim communities in Europe. Safety concerns aren’t new to France’s Jewish community, as to some degree, it has remained on alert amid a string of terror attacks on French soil by Islamists over the last decade.
Israel’s war against Hamas is now threatening the fragile peace in places like Sarcelles, one of the poorest cities in France, where thousands of Jews live alongside mostly Muslim neighbors of North African origin, from immigrant backgrounds, and in low-income housing estates.
Authorities meanwhile are often torn by conflicting imperatives — between the Jews, who are fearful for their safety, and the Muslims, who feel an affinity for the Palestinian cause. During his visit to Israel and the Palestinian Territories, French President Emmanuel Macron himself struggled to strike a difficult balance between supporting Israel in its fight against Hamas, and calling for the preservation of Palestinian lives.
A community under threat
For Timsit, the threat is very real. His pizzeria was ransacked by rioters a couple of months ago, when the fatal shooting of a teenager by a police officer in a Paris suburb caused unrest in poor housing estates across France.
The attack was not antisemitic, he said, but was a violent reminder. In 2014, a pro-Palestinian demonstration protesting Israel’s ground offensive against Gaza degenerated into an antisemitic riot against Jewish shops. “All you need is a spark to set it off again,” said Timsit.
France’s Jews have seen an increase in antisemitic attacks since the early 2000s, a reality that cuts deep into the national psyche given the memories of France’s collaboration with Nazi Germany in the Second World War.
“The fear of violence [in France] appeared with the Second Intifada,” said Marc Hecker, a specialist on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with IFRI think tank, with reference to the uprising against Israeli occupation in Palestinian Territories.
Patrick Haddad, the mayor of Sarcelles, is working to keep the communities together | Clea Caulcutt/POLITICO
“Every time the situation in the Near East flares up, there’s an increase in antisemitic offenses in France,” he added. The threat of antisemitic attacks has led to increased security at Jewish schools and synagogues, and has discouraged many French Jews from wearing their kippahs in some areas, according to Jewish organizations.
In addition to low-level attacks, French Jews are also a prime target for Islamists as France battles a wave of terrorist attacks that have hit schools, bars and public buildings, among other targets, in the last decade. In 2012, three children and a rabbi were shot dead at a Jewish school in Toulouse at point-blank range by Mohamed Merah, a gunman who had claimed allegiance to al-Qaida. In 2015, four people were killed at a kosher supermarket near Paris.
While Hamas, al-Qaida and ISIS networks are separate, Hecker warned that the scale of Hamas’s attack against Israel has “galvanized” Islamists across the board, once again sparking deep fears among France’s Jews.
Delicate local balance
Many of Sarcelles’ Jews are Sephardic — that is, of Spanish descent — and ended up in North Africa when Spain expelled its Jewish population in the Middle Ages. Most came to France after having lived in the former French colonies of Algeria and Tunisia. Sarcelles’ Muslim population therefore shares a cultural and linguistic history with its Jewish community, and the two groups have lived together in relative harmony for decades.
In his office, the mayor of Sarcelles, Patrick Haddad, stands under the twin gazes of Nelson Mandela and Marianne, the symbol of French republicanism, with pictures of both adorning his wall, as he reflects on the thus-far peaceful coexistence among the local population.
“There’s been not a single antisemitic attack in Sarcelles since the attacks … It’s been over two weeks, and we are holding things together,” he said, smiling despite the noticeable strain. Relations between the city’s Muslims and Jews are amicable, said Haddad, and locals on the streets are proud of their friendship with people of a different religion.
Israel’s war on Hamas is testing relations in Sarcelles, one of France’s poorest cities | Clea Caulcutt/POLITICO and Bertrand Guay/AFP via Getty Images
“Relations are easy, we share a similar culture, a lot of the Jews are originally from Tunisia, Algeria, they even speak some Arabic,” said Naima, a Muslim retiree who did not want to give her surname to protect her privacy. “My family, my husband and my children respect the Jews, but I know many who are angry with Israel,” said Naima, who moved to France from Algeria as a young adult.
“I’ve got Muslim friends, we get along fine, we don’t go around punching each other,” said Avner.
But for many, politics — and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — is off-limits, and communities live relatively separate lives, with most Jewish pupils enrolled in religious schools. Many Jews from Sarcelles have also chosen to emigrate to Israel in recent years.
But Israel’s image as the ultimate, secure sanctuary for Jews has been shattered after Hamas killed more than 1,400 Israelis in horrific attacks, said Haddad.
“Where are [Jews] going to go if they are not safe in Israel? People’s fears have been magnified, they fear what is happening here, and they are anguished about what is happening in the ‘sanctuary state’ for Jews,” he said.
In a twist of the many tragic reversals of Jewish history, several French families have returned from Israel since the Hamas attacks to find temporary shelter in the relative peace of Sarcelles.
Newswise — It’s said that a dog is a man’s best friend, but the wild dingo is much maligned in Australia. This may not always have been the case though, with new research led by experts at The Australian National University and The University of Western Australia suggesting that dingoes were buried – and even domesticated – by First Nations people prior to European colonisation.
The researchers examined remains at the Curracurrang archaeological site, south of Sydney, where radiocarbon dating of dingo bones revealed the animals were buried alongside humans as far back as 2,000 years ago.
The care taken to bury the animals suggests a closer relationship between humans and dingoes than many previously realised, according to lead researcher Dr Loukas Koungoulos.
“Not all camp dingoes were given burial rites, but in all areas in which the burials are recorded, the process and methods of disposal are identical or almost identical to those associated with human rites in the same area,” Dr Koungoulos said.
“This reflects the close bond between people and dingoes and their almost-human status.”
The burials weren’t the only sign that Australia’s First Peoples domesticated wild dingoes, however, with severely worn teeth found at the site suggesting a diet heavy in large bones, likely from scraps from human meals.
The researchers also identified remains of dingoes of varying ages at the site – from pups to animals aged six to eight years. This shows that First Nations people didn’t just care for young dingoes before they returned to the wild, but that they built much more substantial relationships, the researchers argued.
“These findings mark an important development in our understanding of the relationship between Australia’s First Peoples and dingoes,” co-author Professor Susan O’Connor said.
“By the time Europeans settled in Australia, the bond between dingoes and Indigenous people was entrenched. This is well known by Indigenous people and has been documented by observers.
“Our work shows that they had long-lasting relationships prior to European colonisation, not just the transient, temporary associations recorded during the colonial era.”
Season 2 of Our Flag Means Death is exceeding all expectations. Created by David Jenkins, the Max series takes inspiration from historical pirates and casts them in a new light. Rhys Darby’s gentleman pirate Stede Bonnet and Taika Waititi’s Edward “Blackbeard” Teach (and their interesting relationship) are based on real people. So are Israel “Izzy” Hands (Con O’Neill) and season 1’s John “Calico Jack” Rackham (Will Arnett).
The depictions may not be 100 percent accurate, but they aren’t exactly inaccurate either. Historical records from this period are varied, skewed, and severely lacking. So we can’t say without a doubt who these people were or how they acted. Since pirates were considered by criminals by their contemporaries, depictions of them would not have been favorable. Also, many accounts may have been sensationalized to sell newspapers and books. Mentions of overt queerness or women not fitting prescribed social standards might have been left out of any recorded text. Pirates are also a group that didn’t leave much in the way of primary sources. Not many pirates kept journals or held extensive correspondence, so many of these accounts come from word-of-mouth from supposed witnesses.
Our Flag Means Death takes these figures in a direction that is fresh and adored by fans. The show became an unexpected hit for pirate lovers everywhere. It only makes sense that the hit queer pirate show would bring in more historical figures for season 2. Let’s look at all the infamous pirates that have been given a new lease on life in OFMD.
Zheng Yi Sao
(Max)
Zheng Yi Sao is considered to be one of the most (if not the most) prolific pirates in history. Although the real Zheng Yi Sao sailed long after the other pirates featured in the show, she’s a great addition to the cast. Introduced as “Susan the soup merchant” and played by Ruibo Qian, Zheng Yi Sao reveals herself to be a pirate queen early on in the season. As in real life, she commands a fleet of ships with a tight crew. During her reign over the seas near China, Zheng Yi Sao led over a thousand ships and personally commanded over 200 ships along with their crews. Her pirating days ended after negotiating her surrender to the Chinese government, and she lived the rest of her days as a free woman.
John Roberts / Bartholomew Roberts, a.k.a Black Bart
Although he wasn’t called Black Bart (the pirate, not the Western outlaw) in the show, this notorious pirate made an appearance. While Stede Bonnet and Oluwanda accompanied Zheng Yi Sao onto a ship, they were told the captain was called John Bartholomew. In real life, this captain was more well-known by his aliases Bartholomew Roberts and Black Bart. The real-life version is credited as one of history’s most successful pirates, and overtook more than 400 ships. Some sources also credit Black Bart with writing a pirate code that ensures democracy and equality on ships. He also served as inspiration for the Dread Pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride.
Captain Benjamin “Ben” Hornigold
(Max)
Captain Benjamin Hornigold was mentioned in season 1 of Our Flag Means Death, but we didn’t see him until the new season. Calico Jack and Blackbeard joked about how they met on the ship and mutinied against the captain. While in purgatory, Blackbeard sees Hornigold, who wants to go by Ben, as his guide in the unknown land. The real Hornigold was a pirate and may have had Blackbeard as his second in command when he sailed. He also was one of the pirates to establish a pirate settlement on the island of Nassau. When the King of England established a system for pardoning pirates, Hornigold saw the shift in the times and took the pardon and hunted his former pirates until his death.
Anne Bonny and Mary Read
(Max)
Anne Bonny and Mary Read have always been known as a duo; they sailed together and went to jail together. They were among the few women tried and convicted of piracy in their time. Some historians feel their story is very well documented via A General History of the Pyrates by Captain Charles Johnson. However, others—including myself—think the record falls apart under scrutiny. Luckily for those of us obsessed with this pair, OFMD featured them in episode 4 of season 2. They were a perfectly unhinged and chaotic couple of former pirates who open an antique shop.
Edward “Ned” Low
(Max)
Ned Low (played by Bronson Pinchot) showed up looking to settle a score with Blackbeard. After Blackbeard broke his record of ships taken, Low had to get revenge and torture the other pirate. The show frames Low as a sadistic man who gets joy out of hurting and murdering other people. From several sources, it seems like the real Ned Low had the same hobby. The historical New Low didn’t have the musical connection as he did in the show, but he still was one of the cruelest pirates around. One account claimed he cut off a man’s lips, cooked them, and then made the man eat his own lips. Another story said he made a ship’s crew eat their captain’s heart. This guy was twisted. Unlike many of the other pirates, stories of his death conflict. No one knows exactly what happened to him. He may have been hanged, murdered, imprisoned, or died of old age. He probably wasn’t killed by Stede Bonnet, but who knows?
Hell-Cat Maggie
When Ned Low’s crew arrived in OFMD, one of them said her name was Hell-Cat Maggie. There are no pirates in recorded history with the name Hell-Cat Maggie. However, in the mid-1800s, there was a member of the Irish gang of the Dead Rabbits that had that name. She was an outlaw and fought against other gangs. In another life, she could have perfectly blended in as a pirate. Cameron Diaz’s character in The Gangs of New York was partially inspired by her.
This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the work being covered here wouldn’t exist.
Podcasts are a terrific way to learn something new, whether you’re at home, in the car, or in the classroom. They cover a wide variety of topics, so there’s something to interest pretty much everyone. These podcasts for kids and teens are sure to engage young listeners and start interesting conversations. Plus, we’ve suggested enrichment activities to go along with each one!
Disclaimer: We’ve divided the list by grade level because some might be more intense or cover more mature topics than is appropriate for younger students. You are the best judge for your own kids or students, though, so we recommend vetting all material before sharing.
Teachers can get free access to this podcast to share with their class. The episodes focus on subjects in STEAM and language arts, all geared toward kids in grades K-5.
On each episode, kids collaborate with famous, diverse authors to grow their story ideas. Then the author takes those seeds and writes an original story that you get to hear on the show!
Activity to try: Have students brainstorm a list of their own potential story ideas together. Then, ask each student to use one or more of those ideas to write a short story on their own.
Like Story Seeds, Story Pirates encourages kids to submit their own ideas. But instead of turning them into stories, the show transforms those ideas into songs and sketch comedy. So fun!
Activity to try: Take your students’ story ideas and challenge them to write their own funny sketches and songs. This will really encourage their creativity.
In this debate podcast, participants take two different items and argue it out to determine which is best. Topics include “Hot Sauce vs. Butter” and “Palm Trees vs. Pine Trees.”
This podcast adapts folktales from around the world into music-rich radio plays for kids. Each episode explores universal themes like friendship, persistence, creativity, and generosity, and ends with an activity that inspires a deeper conversation between children and grown-ups. This is one of those podcasts for kids that appeals to adults too!
Activity to try: Print the free coloring page that goes along with each episode and let kids use their crayons or markers while they listen.
Life on Earth can be awfully strange, don’t you think? The folks at Radiolab, creators of popular podcasts for adults and teens, produce this special series just for kids. Each episode has accompanying “shovels,” which are activities to help kids dig deeper. This one is perfect for the classroom.
Activity to try: The drawing prompts for each episode are really unique. Have kids complete them, then display them on a bulletin board or slideshow for others to see.
These original audio stories are filled with whimsy and wonder for young listeners and their families. This is one of the best podcasts for kindergartners.
Activity to try: Let kids write, illustrate, and make a recording of their own original story.
Kids have all kinds of curious questions—it’s one of the things we love most about them! This educational podcast for kids from Vermont Public Radio tackles such topics as Why Do People Have Nightmares?, Do Animals Get Married?, and Why Do Lions Roar?
Activity to try: Have kids start a log, using a special notepad, of all the crazy questions they can think of. They should take the notebook with them everywhere they go.
In an era of fake news, kids need to be able to determine what’s true and what’s false. And what better way to do that than a game show that puts kids in the driver’s seat, adults on the hot seat, and a sound-effects robot strapped to the roof? Each week, a kid interviews two experts on a particular topic, one of whom is a genuine, credentialed expert, the other a liar. Hilarious and fast-paced, the show teaches kids to ask insightful questions, weigh the evidence before them, and trust their gut.
Activity to try: Play an in-class or at-home version of Two Truths and a Lie to polish truth-telling skills.
There’s a whole lot going on in the world these days, and not all of the news is kid-friendly. KidNuz informs in a way that explains but doesn’t overwhelm kids. Their mission statement says it all: “To engage the next generation with news that will inform without fear and educate without opinion.”
Activity to try: Pick an issue and do a “deep dive.” Specifically, look for the upside of a situation—people helping people, people bonding together, etc.
A fun-filled podcast for kids all about ethical questions that get kids and adults thinking. “Do you have to love your sibling?” “Are some lies actually OK?” “Is it ever OK to fight back against a bully?”
Activity to try: Have your students write down questions to which they don’t know the answers and discuss them (after vetting them, of course).
If you’re looking for science podcasts for kids, this one tells stories about science discoveries with help from actual scientists. They explore things like why cats always seem to land on their feet and what a journey to the center of the Earth would look like.
Activity to try: Discuss the topic of any given episode as a class, opening it up to questions and encouraging further research.
Follow the ongoing battle between Dr. Floyd and the evil mastermind Dr. Steve (along with his sock-shaped assistant, Fidgert). During all their fighting, Dr. Floyd learns about history. With more than 400 episodes, there are plenty to choose from.
Activity to try: Have students write their own episodes, including a historical event that they love or that you have covered in class.
The host of Brains On! and her kid co-host talk with food scientists and snake handlers, put on plays, write songs, and so much more. It’s a science lesson for your ears!
This is an online treasure trove of free audio stories. You can listen to a mixture of original stories, fairy tales, and specially adapted myths and histories. Storynory has published an episode every week since 2005, so there is plenty to love and something for everyone.
Activity to try: Have students write an original short story and then present it to the class.
In search of podcasts for curious kids? Every two weeks, the creative host of this podcast takes questions from kids and spins them into an entertaining tale. Check out What If Clouds Were Made of Cotton Candy? or What If Magic Didn’t Exist?
Activity to try: Make a top-10 list of your own what-ifs. Write a story, create a comic strip, or make a drawing to go with your favorites.
In a distant future that’s either really bad or really good (depending on whose side you’re on), two strange and unlikely champions embark on a series of adventures to stop a wicked A.I., and in the process must struggle to understand “old-fashioned” ideas like “kindness” and “just hanging out not doing much.”
Activity to try: Start a discussion on how devices such as smartphones impact students’ interactions with the people around them. Discuss the pros and cons of technology and the things we can do to be more connected with one another.
James Hawkins helps his mom run a motel in modern-day Montauk, Long Island. When a mysterious man washes up on the beach with a treasure map tattooed on his chest, James discovers that Billy Bones is, in fact, a time-traveling pirate from the 18th century. James and his new friends, Morgan and Max, follow the map right into a magical portal that leads them back nearly 300 years and into a swashbuckling adventure.
Activity to try: Have students write the story of what they would do if they discovered someone was a time-traveler. Would they want to enter the portal and go back in time?
In the spirit of Mayan folklore, an 11-year-old Belizean girl accidentally invokes an evil spirit that threatens to consume the rainforest. She goes on a thrilling journey to save her home and her people.
Activity to try: Ask students to write their own story of what they would do to protect their home. Do they see any similarities to the environmental problems we face today?
Finn Caspian is an 8-year-old boy aboard the Famous Marlowe 280 Interplanetary Exploratory Space Station. He and his friends Abigail, Elias, and Vale are Explorers Troop 301, taking off from the Marlowe to explore uncharted planets, help the occasional alien, and solve a mystery that threatens to destroy their space station.
Activity to try: Have students create their own illustrations of Finn’s adventures. Would they want to be among his explorer friends?
In each episode, three real middle school students team up to talk about their favorite book. Episodes also include an interview with the author, celebrity readings, and more.
Activity to try: Put your students into groups of three, and have them record their own podcast discussion about a book they all love.
This clever teen has been uncovering the mysteries of the universe in this podcast since he was 11. Several years in, he’s tackling topics like how to fix recycling, why math is so hard to love, and other subjects tweens can relate to in his educational podcasts.
Activity to try: Before listening to a podcast, pose the title question to students and ask them to think, write, or discuss their initial responses. After listening, see how their opinions stack up to Tai’s findings.
Though this podcast focuses mainly on Australian girls and women, their stories are meaningful around the world. Learn about athletes, scientists, adventurers, and more.
Activities to try: Challenge students to try to find girls or women in their own lives who have had similar experiences to the ones featured in this podcast.
Listen as world-famous radio reporter Eleanor foils devious plots, outwits crafty villains, and goes after the Big Story. Eleanor’s pursuit of truth takes her into orbit, out to sea, and even to the halls of Congress! Her adventures are entertaining and informative.
Activity to try: Have a discussion about Eleanor and her values, especially the importance of access to information, being inclusive to different points of view, and telling the truth. Then have your students write about what their values are.
If you’re looking for podcasts for kids who are into hip-hop, this one for tweens might be just their speed. Episodes follow the main character, Antoine, a boy who is bullied and finds a magical book that transports him to another world.
Activity to try: Have students create an illustrated version of the story as they follow along with the podcast.
Famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about all things space: stars, planets, humans in space, and so much more. He also interviews a lot of amazing people, from astronaut Buzz Aldrin to actress Olivia Munn to former president Jimmy Carter.
Activity to try: Have students research the science topic covered in a given episode, learning more about the topic and sharing their findings.
Explore all of the oddities of the English language! Filled with good humor and levity, this podcast will help students explore the roots of words and phrases that we use every day.
Looking for educational podcasts about history for kids? This title speaks for itself. Learn about people and events that are often overlooked in a typical history class.
Activity to try: Choose a popular unit of historical study, like the Civil War or Great Depression, then have students research the little-told stories related to it. They could even write a readers theater based on their findings.
This is an award-winning listening-skills platform, searchable by topic area or school subject. It advances classroom learning by providing additional content and building listening skills. There is also a focus on current events that helps keep the learning tied to the real world.
Activity to try: Each episode comes equipped with teaching resources, so pick the topic that is best for your class and get listening.
Humans are a curious lot as this educational podcast attests to in its mission statement: “True stories of inspiration, humor, and the incredible achievements of all types of people, many of which are sadly under-shared.”
Activity to try: Have your students reach out to relatives, friends, or neighbors and ask them to share stories from their past.
This thought-provoking podcast tells the origin story of middle schoolers Marcus Aronson and Mondo Ramirez, also known as Cupid and the Grim Reaper. Can these two mismatched heroes overcome their differences and learn to harness the powers of life, death, and love?
Activity to try: Start a conversation about what it would be like to be a teen with superpowers. Discuss the perspectives of the main characters. How would students feel if they were 13 years old and found out they are Cupid or the Grim Reaper?
This inspiring podcast celebrates all the teens and tweens who are innovating, inventing, and making the world a better place. Listening to these episodes will remind students that they can accomplish great things at any age.
Activity to try: Do some research to find more inspiring teens and tweens, locally or around the world. Ask students to create their own podcast episode about their amazing finds.
Music-loving teens will be fascinated by this podcast in which musicians talk about the songs they’ve written, telling the stories of their creation. With guests that range from Billie Eilish to Yo-Yo Ma, everyone will find music they love here.
Activity to try: Have students choose a song they love, and see if they can find out more about the story of its creation and recording. They can record their own podcast or write an article about their discoveries.
We all have moments in our lives that we’d rather forget, but there’s something reassuring about knowing other people feel the same way. This podcast invites adults (including celebrities) to share embarrassing things they wrote as kids. Teens will feel a real connection and also get an important reminder that we really do live down even the most embarrassing things.
Activity to try: Invite students to write a journal entry or letter to themselves about an embarrassing time in their lives. Encourage them to return to it in a few years to see if they still feel the same way.
Ever wanted to know more about your subconscious, the part of your brain that influences and manipulates you without your even knowing it? This podcast dives deep into exactly that topic.
Activity to try: Encourage students to take some time to reflect on their own subconscious, perhaps in a journal entry. Can they identify times when it had a real influence on their actions?
This long-running NPR favorite is one of the best educational podcasts for kids in high school. They’ll get a chance to challenge their own knowledge of news and current events while laughing at the show’s guests as they try to do the same.
Activity to try: Host your own segment of the show each week, with one student responsible for coming up with a series of current events questions to test their classmates.
Help students connect with this centuries-old play using this new bilingual podcast version. It’s ideal for schools where Spanish is just as prevalent as (or even more common than) English.
Activity to try: Ask students to select a passage from the original play and translate it into another language. Rather than insisting on word-for-word translation, encourage them to rewrite the passage in a way that captures the rhythm and emotion of the original.
Teens will especially enjoy Adult ISH, a culture, advice, and storytelling podcast produced entirely by youths who are almost adults. They tackle a wide variety of topics from a late-teens point of view.
Activity to try: Have your students select a topic in the news today and write their own podcast that shares their take on the news.
A podcast created by the co-author of Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics, Stephen Dubner, invites listeners to explore the hidden sides of everything. And given his almost 300 episodes on topics ranging from “Millionaires vs. Billionaires” to “How To Win a Nobel Prize,” he is well on his way to talking about everything.
Activity to try: Have students pick an episode and find how it affects their everyday lives. These can be written or presented to the class, allowing for discussion and questions.
Tune in to the community radio of this desert town for the news on local weather, the mysterious lights overhead, announcements from the Sheriff’s Secret Police, a dog park that prohibits dogs, and dark-hooded figures with unknowable powers.
Activity to try: Challenge students with this prompt: You have been hired by Night Vale Community Radio to write a segment. It could be a continuation of a segment that already exists, like “The Children’s Fun Fact Science Corner” or “Community Calendar,” or a report of a strange happening in the town, told in Cecil-fashion. These could be performed in front of the class, written, or put in podcast form.
This podcast brings you the “ins and outs of everyday things,” from the “Pledge of Allegiance” to Mexican jumping beans to “Your Limb Is Torn Off” (obviously for teens and older!).
Activity to try: Ask each student to give a short presentation on something they think all their classmates should know about—whatever they find fascinating!
Sarah Koenig tells one story week by week. The first season covers the true story of Adnan Syed, convicted for the murder of his ex-girlfriend in Baltimore. The problem: Adnan cannot remember what he was doing the day of the murder. And as if that weren’t bad enough, there’s someone claiming that he helped Adnan hide the body.
Activity to try: Have students find a famous crime in history and write a dialogue between themselves and the accused, having the accused tell their side of the story. These projects can be handed in, performed in front of the class, or put into podcast format.
The incredibly popular Radiolab is a show about curiosity, where sound illuminates ideas, and the boundaries blur between science, philosophy, and human experience.
Activity to try: Listen to the episode Sight Unseen about a soldier’s last moments and the photographer who captured them. Divide the class in half, and have them prepare and then conduct a debate on whether or not the photographer has the right to publish the photos.
Stories of people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Phoebe Judge explores topics from owls killing people to how to fake your death to the life of a police dog.
Activity to try: Have students pick an episode that interests them and do more in-depth research on the topic, presenting their findings to the class.
Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers and The Tipping Point, looks back through the overlooked and misunderstood in history, reexamining the past and asking whether we got it right the first time.
Activity to try: Listen to the three-part series on college (season one, episodes 4-6), and have a class discussion. Trust me, there will be plenty to talk about.
Each episode of This American Life centers around a theme. Most are journalistic at the core, but some are comedic. This podcast is hard to generalize, especially after hundreds of episodes. But the number of episodes and the podcast’s massive popularity should speak for themselves.
Activity to try: Have students take a theme from an episode and write their own report or story surrounding that theme.
Hosted by Roman Mars, 99% Invisible is a narrative podcast about all the thought that goes into the things we don’t think about—the unnoticed architecture and design that shape our world.
Activity to try: Ask students to pay closer attention to the buildings and infrastructure in their town or city. Have them make a list of things they had never noticed before.
Covering the outer reaches of space to the tiniest microbes in our bodies, Science Friday shares news about science, technology, and other cool stuff. Host Ira Flatow mixes it up by featuring people in the know and those who want to be. The podcast frequently features listeners that call in with their most riveting science questions. If you’re looking for the best science podcasts for kids in high school, this is a winner.
Will and Mango have lots of questions. Will we ever live without sleep? How do rats keep outsmarting humans? Where are the sunniest tax havens to hide your money? Join these Part-Time Geniuses as they dive into ridiculous topics and discover some pretty smart stuff along the way.
Activity to try: Ask students to come up with an interesting question. Then, once their topic is approved, have them share the answer with their classmates.
This highly acclaimed podcast is one of the best podcasts for kids because it delivers honest and unfiltered conversations with celebrities, activists, athletes, and influencers focusing on real-life issues—from mental health and political activism to pop culture and more.
Activity to try: At 18, Sammy Jaye became the youngest person to host her own podcast on iHeartRadio. Have students write a short paper on whether they’d want to have their own podcast while reflecting on the challenges they might face.
It’s as if one front in the Israel-Hamas war is playing out on the streets of Berlin.
The main battleground has been an avenue lined with chicken and kebab restaurants in Neukölln, a neighborhood in the south-east of the city that’s home to many Middle Eastern immigrants. Some pro-Palestinian activists have called for demonstrators to turn out almost nightly, and, as one post put it, turn the area “into Gaza.”
On October 18, hundreds of people, many of them teenagers, answered the call.
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” chanted many in the crowd as a phalanx of riot police closed in on them. Berlin public prosecutors say the slogan is a call for the erasure of Israel, and have moved to make its utterance a criminal offense.
While similar scenes have played out across much of the world, for Germany’s leaders, they are profoundly embarrassing and strike at the heart of the nation’s identity, on account of the country’s Nazi past.
Germany’s “history and our responsibility arising from the Holocaust make it our duty to stand up for the existence and security of the State of Israel,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said during a visit to Israel on October 17 intended to illustrate Germany’s solidarity.
The difficulty for Scholz is that far from everyone in Germany sees it his way.
German leaders across the political spectrum expressed outrage when, after the Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attack on Israeli civilians, dozens of people assembled in Neukölln to celebrate. One 23-year-old man, a Palestinian flag draped over his shoulders, handed out sweets.
A community on edge
Since then, tensions in Berlin and in other German cities have rapidly escalated. A surge in antisemitic incidents has left many in the country’s Jewish community on edge and German police have stepped up security at cultural institutions and houses of worship.
At the same time, German police have moved to ban many pro-Palestinian demonstrations, saying there is a high risk of “incitement to hatred” and a threat to public safety. Demonstrators have come out anyway, leading to violent clashes with police.
Some in Germany, particularly on the political left, have questioned whether the bans on pro-Palestinian protests are an overreach of the state, arguing that they stifle legitimate concerns about civilian casualties in Gaza stemming from Israel’s retaliatory strikes.
But Berlin authorities say, based on past experience, the likelihood of antisemitic rhetoric — even violence — at prohibited pro-Palestinian demonstrations is too high.
Protesters demanding a peaceful resolution to the current conflict in Israel and Gaza demonstrate under the slogan “Not in my name!” in Berlin | Maja Hitij/Getty Images
Many on the far-left have joined those protests that do take place.
On Wednesday night, around the same time demonstrators assembled in Neukölln, a group of a few hundred leftist activists showed up at a planned vigil for peace outside the foreign ministry.
“Free Palestine from German guilt,” they chanted in English. Germany, the argument went, should get over its Holocaust history, at least when it comes to support for Israel. The irony is that there is much sympathy for this view on the far right.
One recent poll showed that 78 percent of supporters of the far-right Alternative for Germany disagreed with the idea that the country has a “special obligation towards Israel.” Extreme-right politicians have also called on Germany to get over its “cult of guilt.”
For many in the country’s Jewish community — which in recent years has grown to an estimated 200,000 people, including many Israelis — the conflagration in the Middle East has made fear part of daily life.
Molotov cocktails
In the pre-dawn hours on Wednesday, two people wearing masks threw Molotov cocktails at a Berlin Jewish community hub that houses a synagogue. The incendiary devices hit the sidewalk, and no one was hurt. But the attack stoked profound alarm.
“Hamas’ ideology of extermination against everything Jewish is also having an effect in Germany,” said the Central Council of Jews in Germany, the country’s largest umbrella Jewish organization.
Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out, several homes in Berlin where Jews are thought to live have been marked with the Star of David.
“My first thought was: ‘It’s like the Nazi time,’” said Sigmount Königsberg, the antisemitism commissioner for Berlin’s Jewish Community, an organization that oversees local synagogues and other parts of Jewish life in the city. “Many Jews are hiding their Jewishness,” he added — in other words, concealing skullcaps or religious insignia out of fear of being attacked.
It remains unclear who perpetrated the firebombing attack and Star of David graffiti. But historical data shows a clear correlation between upsurges in Middle East violence and increased antisemitic incidents in Europe, according to academic researchers.
In the eight days following Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, there were 202 antisemitic incidents connected to the war, mostly motivated by “anti-Israel activism,” according to data compiled by the Anti-Semitism Research and Information Center.
Fears within the Jewish community were particularly prevalent after a former Hamas leader called for worldwide demonstrations in a “day of rage.” Many students at a Jewish school in Berlin stayed home. Two teachers wrote a letter to Berlin’s mayor to express their dismay that, as they put it, the school was nearly empty.
A pro-Palestinian demonstrator displays a placard during a protest against the bombing in Gaza outside the Foreign Ministry in Berlin on October 18, 2023 | John Macdougall/AFP via Getty Images
“This means de facto that Jew-haters have usurped the decision-making authority over Jewish life in Berlin,” they wrote. The teachers then blamed Germany’s willingness to take in refugees from war-torn places like Syria and Lebanon. “Germany has taken in and continues to take in hundreds of thousands of people whose socialization includes antisemitism and hatred of Israel,” they wrote.
Day of rage
Surveys show that Muslims in Germany are more likely to hold antisemitic views than the general population. Politicians often refer this phenomenon as “imported antisemitism,” brought into the country through immigration from Muslim-majority nations.
At the same time, it was a far-right attacker who perpetrated some of the worst antisemitic violence in Germany’s recent history. That came in 2019, when a gunmen tried to massacre 51 people celebrating Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism, in a synagogue in the eastern German city of Halle. Two people were killed.
German neo-Nazis have praised Hamas’s October 7 attacks in Israel. One group calling itself the “Young Nationalists” posted a picture of a bloodstained Star of David on social media next to the slogan “Israel murders and the world watches.”
During the Neukölln demonstration, officers arrested individual protestors one by one, picking them out from the crowd and dragging them off by force.
The atmosphere grew increasingly tense. Demonstrators lobbed fireworks and bottles at the police. Dumpsters and tires were set alight. By the end of the night, police made 174 arrests, including 29 minors. Police said 65 officers were injured in the clashes.
At one point amid the chaos, a 15-year-old girl with a Palestinian keffiyeh — a black and white scarf — wrapped around most of her face emerged amid the smoke and explosions to pose for a selfie in front of a row of riot police.
She said she was there to demonstrate for “peace.” When asked how peace would be achieved, she replied: “When the Israeli side pisses off our land, there will be peace. Won’t there?”
In the wake of the protest, Smith and Carlos were vilified by much of the media and shunned by the US sporting establishment. In the years that followed, they were subjected to abuse and death threats. Smith attributed the break-up of his marriage to the stress of dealing with the fallout. When he should have been at the peak of his career, the US Olympic committee banned him from national and international competitions. By 1972, instead of preparing for the Munich Olympics, Smith, who was still the fastest man in the world, was reduced to training schoolchildren in Wakefield in northern England to earn a living.
Sport was one of the few areas where the ability of the individual could triumph over the barriers faced by black Americans, Smith explains in this BBC archive video. “The black athlete… has grown to know that the body could be a springboard to success. I think he works doubly hard at that as he would at anything else. Because in athletics, especially track and field, nobody can say you are no good. The only person who can say that is that clock,” he says.
Newswise — The development of the earliest cities in Mesopotamia and the Middle East led to a substantial increase in violence between inhabitants. Laws, centralized administration, trade and culture then caused the ratio of violent deaths to fall back again in the Early and Middle Bronze Age (3,300 to 1,500 BCE). This is the conclusion of an international team of researchers from the Universities of Tübingen, Barcelona and Warsaw. Their results were published on Monday in Nature Human Behaviour. The researchers examined 3,539 skeletons from the region that today covers Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Turkey for bone trauma which could only have occurred through violence. This enabled them to draw a nuanced picture of the development of interpersonal violence in the period 12,000 to 400 BCE. The period was characterized by such fundamental changes in human history as the development of agriculture, leaving behind the nomadic lifestyle, and the building of the first cities and states. “The ratio of interpersonal violence – i.e. of murder – peaked in the period of 4,500 to 3,300 years BCE and then fell back again over the course of the next 2,000 years,” says Joerg Baten from the Chair of Economic History at the University of Tübingen, who is the study’s project manager. “With the climate crisis, growing inequality and the collapse of important states in the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age (1,500 – 400 BCE), violence increased once more.” The proportion of violent deaths, identifiable by cranial trauma and injuries from weapons (e.g. arrow heads in skeletons), is a common benchmark used to assess interpersonal violence. Until now, research into this has divided into two camps. One, epitomized by American psychologist Steven Pinker, claims a steady reduction in the use of violence over the millennia from the era of hunter-gatherer societies to today. The other regards the development of cities and a central power as the precondition for wars and massive use of violence, which has continued since then. The study produced by Tübingen, Barcelona and Warsaw now gives a more nuanced picture. The researchers put the increase in violence in the 5th and 4th millennia BCE down to the agglomeration of humans in the first, still poorly organized, cities. The rate of violence only reduced significantly once legal systems, a centrally controlled army, and religious institutions (for example, religious festivals) developed. Trade also increased in the eastern region of the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia in the Early and Late Bronze Age, as can be seen from clay tablets with cuneiform script, which were used as delivery notes and invoices. “The greater security in this period was initially possible even despite declining agricultural yields and a growing inequality in incomes in the Middle Bronze Age,” says Giacomo Benati from the University of Barcelona, co-author of the study. Another turning point was the collapse of many advanced civilizations in the Late Bronze Age. At this stage, around 1,200 BCE, there was also a climate catastrophe lasting 300 years, associated with migratory movements. This again led to an increase in the ratio of violent deaths. The study arose as part of the DFG funded SFB 1070 ResourceCultures at the University of Tübingen.
Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
The massive assault on Israel by Iran-backed Hamas militants is as bad an intelligence fiasco for the country as 1973’s Yom Kippur War, when Egypt and Syria launched a joint offensive unforeseen by Israel’s vaunted intelligence services.
No doubt Hamas commanders chose to launch their astonishing breakout from Gaza — the 140-square-mile coastal enclave Israel closely monitors with multiple layers of surveillance — on the war’s 50th anniversary for theatrical effect.
But despite such intense digital and satellite monitoring, as well as the use of predictive and facial-recognition technologies, Hamas caught Israel’s security services as off-guard as Egypt and Syria did half a century ago.
Back then, Western intelligence services seem to have been wrong-footed just as they are now — perhaps because they’re so focused on Ukraine and Russia.
But the Yom Kippur War left a legacy of recrimination surrounding Israel’s intelligence services, with the country’s defense forces and government all eager to pass the buck. Israel’s leadership had ignored clear signs of a coming attack, erroneously believing then Egyptian leader Muhammad Anwar el-Sadat wouldn’t elect to strike because he didn’t have control of the skies.
On the eve of the offensive, the head of Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate Eli Zeira had even written a memo to then-Prime Minister Golda Meir, stating, “I think they aren’t about to attack; we have no proof. Technically, they are able to act. I assume that if they are about to attack, we will get better indications.”
In the years to come, we will no doubt get a better understanding of what went wrong this weekend, when Hamas militants broke through the border fence demarcating Gaza and southern Israel, allowing Iran-aligned militants to overrun Israeli military positions, abducting and slaughtering civilians as they went.
The images of Israel’s Iron Dome being overwhelmed by thousands of Hamas-fired rockets, as well as the scenes of Hamas assault teams swarming Kibbutzim and wracking passing cars with gunfire, will leave a traumatic legacy likely to shape Israeli politics for decades to come.
“This will shake Israel to its core,” said author Jonathan Schanzer. “The majority of the defenses that Israel has relied upon for the last 20 years appear to have been penetrated. So, this obviously raises significant questions about Israeli military intelligence and Mossad, ” he told POLITICO.
For now, the country’s opposition parties are all on side, calling for unity in the face of attack. “In days like these, there is no opposition and no coalition in Israel,” their leaders said in a joint statement. We “are united in the face of terrorism” and the need to strike with “a strong and determined fist,” they added, calling for retribution.
“The State of Israel is at a difficult moment. I am wishing much strength to the IDF, its commanders and fighters and the entirety of the security and rescue forces,” President Isaac Herzog wrote on social media, referring to the Israel Defense Forces. “Together we will triumph over those who wish to harm us.”
But as Israel fights back, questions are already snowballing.
IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters that over 2,200 rockets were fired into Israel during the first few hours of the assault. Hamas infiltrated from land, sea and air, with clashes between the militant group and Israeli soldiers in over half-a-dozen areas.
So, how was none of the preparation for this assault picked up on? Hamas would have used its vast network of tunnels that link the enclave to Egypt, but how did it smuggle in the materials needed for such a huge attack without Israel catching wind of the traffic? And how did Israeli intelligence fail to notice Hamas was making and assembling thousands of home-grown Qassam rockets?
“The last time Israel was blindsided this badly was the ’73 war,” noted miliary analyst Patrick Fox. “The scope of this infiltration attack indicates a huge level of planning and preparation spanning months or years,” he added.
In some ways, it seems Israel was looking in the wrong direction. According to Jacob Dallal, an Israeli reserve officer and former IDF spokesperson, this kind of attack was expected to be mounted from Lebanon by Iran-backed Hezbollah.
“The military scenario envisioned Hezbollah attacking from the north, not Hamas from Gaza. No one thought Hamas had such capacity, especially with the intelligence coverage by Israel’s Shabak and IDF Intelligence,” he wrote in the Times of Israel newspaper.
However, some now fear an attack by Hezbollah might still come, and that Israel might be facing a wider war.
Historically, most of the wars Israel has had to fight have involved battles on several fronts at once. But if Hezbollah were to launch cross-border raids from southern Lebanon while Hamas presses from Gaza, according to Schanzer and others, this would mark a far more ambitious strategic endeavor by Iranian proxies, likely orchestrated by Tehran.
So far, Hezbollah hasn’t heeded the call, with the group’s leaders saying they’re monitoring the situation. Yet on Sunday, Hezbollah launched a strike, using artillery and guided missiles on Israeli positions in a disputed area along the border with Syria’s Golan Heights — and Israel’s military responded. Senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine, a cousin of the secretary general of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, said the artillery attack was a warning. “We tell the Israelis and the U.S. to stop this ‘stupidity’ or the whole region will be involved in the war,” he said.
However, as Israel battles Hamas and keeps a wary eye on Hezbollah, queries about how this came to pass and how Israeli intelligence got it wrong will continue to niggle away. And as in 1973, there’s likely to be a political and intelligence reckoning once the guns fall silent.
The Yom Kippur War shook Israeli’s faith in their leaders, sparking a protest movement accusing Meir’s Labor government of mismanagement. And it ultimately led to her departure from politics when her coalition lost seats and was unable to form a majority.
Will this now be the fate awaiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu too?
BERLIN — The political maneuver shaking Germany’s postwar democratic order involves a piece of legislation that is about as mundane as it gets.
Center-right legislators in the eastern German state of Thuringia wanted to cut a local property tax by a small amount — and did so with the support of the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD.
The move broke with years of tradition in which mainstream parties have vowed to maintain a Brandmauer, or firewall, between themselves and the AfD, a party many in a country alert to the legacy of Nazism see as a dire threat to democracy. Even accepting the party’s support, the thinking goes, would legitimize far-right forces or make them salonfähig — socially acceptable.
And so, when parliamentarians from the conservative Christian Democratic Union, or CDU, passed the tax reduction on a late afternoon in September with AfD votes, it sent tremors across the country’s political landscape that still are reverberating.
“For me, a taboo has been broken,” Katrin Göring-Eckardt, a leader of the Greens who hails from Thuringia, said after the vote. “It shows me not only that the firewall is gone, but that there is open collaboration.”
For mainstream parties, and the CDU in particular, the question of how to handle the growing presence of far-right radicals in governing bodies from federal and state parliaments to local councils is likely to grow only more vexing.
That especially is the case in the states of the former East Germany, where the AfD now leads in polls at around 28 percent. Next year, the eastern states of Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg will all hold parliamentary elections. Polls show the party leading in all three states.
The AfD is likely to expand its presence in the parliaments of Bavaria and Hesse when those states vote on Sunday. In Hesse, the AfD is coming close to overtaking German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party, according to the latest polls.
The dilemma facing mainstream parties is clear. To work with the AfD means to normalize a party that many believe seeks to subvert the republic from within. But to ostracize the party only alienates its many voters.
The firewall also serves as an unintended political gift, allowing the AfD to depict itself — at a time of high dissatisfaction with mainstream parties — as the clear choice for those who want to send a burn-it-down message to the country’s political establishment.
At the same time, the controversy over the latest vote in Thuringia seems to have played into the AfD’s hands, allowing the party to depict itself as seeking to uphold rather than undermine democracy.
The “‘firewall’ is history — and Thuringia is just the beginning,” AfD party leader Alice Weidel posted on X, formerly Twitter, after the vote. “It’s time to respond to the democratic will of citizens everywhere in Germany.”
Historic fears
Germany’s political leaders are all too aware that the Nazi seizure of power began with democratic electoral success. In fact, it was in Thuringia where, in 1930, the Nazi party first took real governing power in coalition with conservative parties.
The “‘firewall’ is history — and Thuringia is just the beginning,” AfD party leader Alice Weidel posted on X, formerly Twitter, after the vote. “It’s time to respond to the democratic will of citizens everywhere in Germany” | Christof Stache/AFP via Getty Images
That fact was not lost on the CDU’s opponents.
“German conservatism has already been a stirrup holder of fascism,” Janine Wissler, a head of the Left party, told the German Press Agency after the vote. “Back then, too, it started in Thuringia,” she added. “Instead of having learned from that, the CDU is going down a path that’s as dangerous as fire.”
CDU leaders in Thuringia deny the vote on the tax reduction means the firewall is crumbling. They say there was no cooperation with the AfD ahead of the vote (though AfD members say there were discussions between lawmakers).
“I cannot make good, important decisions for the state that provide relief for families and the economy dependent on the fact that the wrong people might agree,” Mario Voigt, the head of the CDU in Thuringia said after the vote.
Friedrich Merz, the national leader of the CDU, has sent mixed signals on the firewall — or at least on what exactly the firewall means. Merz says the CDU will not form coalitions with the AfD but he’s been less clear on whether the CDU will work with the party in other ways.
In a television interview over the summer, he seemed to suggest working with the AfD on the local level was all but inevitable.
Friedrich Merz, the national leader of the CDU, has sent mixed signals on the firewall | Tobias Schwarz/AFP via Getty Images
“We are of course obliged to accept democratic elections,” he said. “And if a district administrator, a mayor is elected there who belongs to the AfD, it’s natural that you look for ways to then continue to work in this city.”
After an uproar ensued, Merz walked back the comment. “There will be no cooperation between the CDU and the AfD at the municipal level either,” he posted on X, formerly Twitter.
After the vote in Thuringia, Merz stood by the CDU leadership of the state. “We don’t go by who agrees, we go by what we think is right in the matter,” he said on German television.
Even some within his own party do not see things that way. Daniel Günther, the CDU premier of the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, sharply criticized his party colleagues in Thuringia. “As a conservative, I must be able to say plainly and simply the sentence, ‘I do not form majorities with extremists,’” Günther said.
‘Cordon sanitaire’
It’s not the first time Thuringia has been at the center of a controversy over the firewall. In 2020, a little-known politician in the pro-business Free Democratic Party, Thomas Kemmerich, was elected state premier with the support of the CDU and AfD. Then-Chancellor Angela Merkel weighed in to call the vote “unforgivable.”
In the furor that followed, Kemmerich resigned as did the then-head of the CDU faction in the state. But given the AfD’s large presence in the local parliament, the issue was bound to resurface.
It’s not the first time Thuringia has been at the center of a controversy over the firewall | Christof Stache/AFP via Getty Images
The problem is far from Germany’s alone. Mainstream parties are under growing pressure due to the rise of the radical right across Europe.
In France, parties from across the political spectrum have formed a cordon sanitaire, or sanitary cordon, to keep Marine Le Pen, a leader of the far-right National Rally, out of the presidency. But with Le Pen’s party now the biggest opposition group in the National Assembly, the cordon is getting harder to maintain.
In the European Parliament, where a similar cordon has been erected, the center-right European People’s Party has been openly courting the European Conservatives and Reformists, home to Poland’s nationalist Law and Justice party and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy party.
In Thuringia, the stakes are even higher as the local branch of the AfD contains some of the party’s most extreme members. State-level intelligence authorities tasked with surveilling anti-constitutional groups have characterized the party’s local branch as extremist.
The leader of the AfD in Thuringia is Björn Höcke, who is set to face trial for using banned Nazi rhetoric. (In 2021, he closed a speech with the phrase “Alles für Deutschland!” or “Everything for Germany!” — a slogan used by Nazi stormtroopers.)
Höcke railed against Holocaust remembrance in Germany and warned of “Volkstod,” the death of the Volk, through “population replacement.” For such views, German courts have ruled that Höcke could justifiably be referred to as a fascist or Nazi.
GERMANY NATIONAL PARLIAMENT ELECTION POLL OF POLLS
In September 2019, Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote a short essay on her Facebook page after news broke that Donald Trump’s acting director of National Intelligence had withheld an urgent whistleblower complaint. It was the first domino to fall in what would later become a full-fledged impeachment probe into the former president’s now infamous call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The country was entering unprecedented political territory. And Cox Richardson’s observations left readers hungry for more.
What grew out of her pithy essay was “Letters From an American,” Cox Richardson’s daily newsletter on politics and US history that made her one of the most widely read commentary writers in the country. Now boasting over a million subscribers on Substack, Cox Richardson was named one of USA Today’s Women of the Year, and last year, was even invited to interview President Joe Biden in the White House.
But while her public persona has changed, Cox Richardson’s intellectual goals have not. She aims to historicize America’s political absurdities with a fundamental question: Whether, as she wrote recently, “the rule of law on which the United States of America was founded will survive.” This question lies at the heart of her latest tome, Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America, which bookends the Trump years with two sweeping, methodical accounts of US history: While one traces attempts to undermine democracy, the other chronicles attempts to protect and expand it. “Once again, we are at a time of testing,” she writes. “How it comes out rests, as it always has, in our own hands.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Vanity Fair:The middle third of your book offers a blow-by-blow account of the Trump years. Reading it, I realized how many specific episodes or scandals I’d already forgotten. Are there any events or moments from Trump’s time in office that you wish were more widely remembered than they are?
Heather Cox Richardson: The piece that I think shocked me most was how quickly in 2020, after the pandemic really began to sink its claws into society, Trump assumed the language of a strong man, of a dictatorship, and how quickly that escalated until the day he walked across Lafayette Square with the Bible in his hand. If you remember those few days, things were coming at us really quickly. There was that picture of the law enforcement officers at the Lincoln Memorial with their badges covered, and it took us a while to figure out who they even were. All that happened really, really quickly.
What really jumped out to me was how crucially important it was that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley came out afterward and said it was a real mistake for him to be there at Lafayette Square, and that the military does not stand with a person; it stands with the Constitution. And then there was a whole cascade of military leaders reaffirming that. That was incredibly important. It’s important that we know how close we came. It’s important that we know that the military—all the branches of it, really—stepped forward and said they were not going to be part of this.
What’s so important about that moment?
People now tend to forget that after that moment, a number of figures in right-wing media—certainly people like Tucker Carlson—really started going after Mark Milley and trying to destroy him. I think that echoes in the present when you look at Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville’s refusal to allow military promotions. The unwillingness of the military to back Trump is very much in the minds of those who would like to overturn our democracy even today.
In a similar vein, the last few years have seen many attempts to mine American and even world history for moments that can help us understand both Trump’s presidency and the small-D democratic resistance to it. Are there any historical moments you returned to for the book that you feel are underappreciated as guides to the present?
The answer is an emphatic yes, and that is the creation and the tactics of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). What really jumped out at me in this book is no matter where I was digging after 1909, which is when the NAACP officially organizes, I found the NAACP.
What was fascinating about the NAACP is that they were multifaith, multiracial, and multipolitical, if you will, from the very beginning. And while they certainly challenged segregation through the law, they also recognized very early on that in order to change the law, you had to change public opinion. It’s no accident that W.E.B. Du Bois, who can do anything he wants with the NAACP—what does he decide to do? He decides to run TheCrisis, which is the NAACP magazine. They insisted on educating ordinary people, making clear what was really happening.
Some 5,000 people disappeared behind its walls. Many were never seen again.
Now, Argentina’s Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA) — a military school turned secret detention centre — has been named a United Nations World Heritage site in an effort to preserve its grisly history.
“The Navy School of Mechanics conveyed the absolute worst aspects of state-sponsored terrorism,” President Alberto Fernández told the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in a video message on Tuesday.
He thanked UNESCO for designating ESMA as a heritage site. “Memory must be kept alive,” Fernández said, referencing the “horrors” experienced at the former school.
In 1976, a military group overthrew President Isabel Perón, beginning a period of dictatorship that stretched through to 1983.
Under its leadership, widespread human rights abuses took place, as military leaders attempted to stamp out dissent, activism and left-wing political views.
As many as 30,000 people are believed to have lost their lives, with many of their fates still unknown. They simply disappeared in military custody and were never heard from again.
Up to 340 detention centres cropped up across the country. ESMA, however, was one of the earliest, with prisoners transferred there in the first days of the coup.
It would also become one of the largest such facilities in Argentina. Located in the capital Buenos Aires, the detention centre converted the school’s layout into a site of torture. Only about 200 prisoners survived.
Visitors at the ESMA Museum and Site of Memory look at photos of prisoners who disappeared under Argentina’s dictatorship from 1976 to 1983 [File: Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo]
ESMA even contained a maternity ward, where pregnant detainees saw their children taken away from them as soon as they gave birth. These children were often adopted into families aligned with the dictatorship.
Military leaders took pains to conceal the crimes unfolding at ESMA, both during and after the dictatorship.
For example, when international observers arrived in 1979 to investigate human rights claims, workers at ESMA removed the staircase leading down to the basement, where much of the torture took place. They even built a wall to disguise the stairwell.
Decades later, in 2007, ESMA would be reimagined as a site of remembrance, reopening to the public to tell the story of the human rights abuses that took place on its grounds.
Just this year, the ESMA museum acquired an aeroplane used to murder detainees held at the site, in a practice called “death flights”. Prisoners were drugged and thrown — often alive — into the sea mid-flight, as a form of execution.
Museum organisers hope the plane and similar displays will help future generations remember the tragedy that unfolded at ESMA — and underscore the importance of democracy.
ESMA was designated as a World Heritage site at UNESCO’s 45th session in Riyadh on September 19 [Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo]
UNESCO is currently holding its 45th extended session in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where it is adding more sites to its World Heritage list. Indigenous ceremonial and burial mounds in Ohio in the United States were among the new additions announced on Tuesday.
But ESMA’s inclusion on the World Heritage list underscores its importance at a time when some high-profile politicians in Argentina have been accused of denying the brutality of the military dictatorship.
Victoria Villarruel, the vice presidential candidate to leading presidential contender Javier Milei, is among the politicians criticised for downplaying the violence during that time.
Milei, a right-wing populist, emerged as the frontrunner in August’s primary elections, surging past establishment candidates.
But Argentina’s Human Rights Secretary Horacio Pietragalla Corti said UNESCO’s decision serves as a rebuke to those who seek to ignore the human rights abuses that took place at sites like ESMA.
“This international recognition constitutes a strong response to those who deny or seek to downplay state terrorism and the crimes of the last civil-military dictatorship,” Corti said.
President Fernández likewise applauded the UNESCO designation as a bulwark against denialism as he took the stage at the UN General Debate in New York on Tuesday.
“By actively preserving memory that the deniers want to conceal, we will make sure that this pain will never again be repeated,” he said. “In the face of these crimes against humanity, our solution is not revenge but justice, precisely because we know the horror represented by the disappearance of 30,000 human beings.”
Newswise — The passenger pigeon. The Tasmanian tiger. The Baiji, or Yangtze river dolphin. These rank among the best-known recent victims of what many scientists have declared the sixth mass extinction, as human actions are wiping out vertebrate animal species hundreds of times faster than they would otherwise disappear.
Yet, a recent analysis from Stanford University and the National Autonomous University of Mexico, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows the crisis may run even deeper. Each of the three species above was also the last member of its genus, the higher category into which taxonomists sort species. And they aren’t alone.
Up to now, public and scientific interest has focused on extinctions of species. But in their new study, Gerardo Ceballos, senior researcher at the Institute of Ecology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and Paul Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies, Emeritus, in the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences, have found that entire genera (the plural of “genus”) are vanishing as well, in what they call a “mutilation of the tree of life.”
“In the long term, we’re putting a big dent in the evolution of life on the planet,” Ceballos said. “But also, in this century, what we’re doing to the tree of life will cause a lot of suffering for humanity.”
“What we’re losing are our only known living companions in the entire universe,” said Ehrlich, who is also a senior fellow, emeritus, by courtesy, at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
A ‘biological annihilation’
Information on species’ conservation statuses from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, Birdlife International, and other databases has improved in recent years, which allowed Ceballos and Ehrlich to assess extinction at the genus level. Drawing from those sources, the duo examined 5,400 genera of land-dwelling vertebrate animals, encompassing 34,600 species.
Seventy-three genera of land-dwelling vertebrates, Ceballos and Ehrlich found, have gone extinct since 1500 AD. Birds suffered the heaviest losses with 44 genus extinctions, followed in order by mammals, amphibians, and reptiles.
Based on the historic genus extinction rate among mammals – estimated for the authors by Anthony Barnosky, professor emeritus of integrative biology at UC Berkeley – the current rate of vertebrate genus extinction exceeds that of the last million years by 35 times. This means that, without human influence, Earth would likely have lost only two genera during that time. In five centuries, human actions have triggered a surge of genus extinctions that would otherwise have taken 18,000 years to accumulate – what the paper calls a “biological annihilation.”
“As scientists, we have to be careful not to be alarmist,” Ceballos acknowledged – but the gravity of the findings in this case, he explained, called for more powerful language than usual. “We would be unethical not to explain the magnitude of the problem, since we and other scientists are alarmed.”
Next-level loss, next-level consequences
On many levels, genus extinctions hit harder than species extinctions.
When a species dies out, Ceballos explained, other species in its genus can often fill at least part of its role in the ecosystem. And because those species carry much of their extinct cousin’s genetic material, they also retain much of its evolutionary potential. Pictured in terms of the tree of life, if a single “twig” (a species) falls off, nearby twigs can branch out relatively quickly, filling the gap much as the original twig would have. In this case, the diversity of species on the planet remains more or less stable.
But when entire “branches” (genera) fall off, it leaves a huge hole in the canopy – a loss of biodiversity that can take tens of millions of years to “regrow” through the evolutionary process of speciation. Humanity cannot wait that long for its life-support systems to recover, Ceballos said, given how much the stability of our civilization hinges on the services Earth’s biodiversity provides.
Take the increasing prevalence of Lyme disease: white-footed mice, the primary carriers of the disease, used to compete with passenger pigeons for foods, like acorns. With the pigeons gone and predators like wolves and cougars on the decline, mouse populations have boomed – and with them, human cases of Lyme disease.
This example involves the disappearance of just one genus. A mass extinction of genera could mean a proportional explosion of disasters for humanity.
It also means a loss of knowledge. Ceballos and Ehrlich point to the gastric brooding frog, also the final member of an extinct genus. Females would swallow their own fertilized eggs and raise tadpoles in their stomachs, while “turning off” their stomach acid. These frogs might have provided a model for studying human diseases like acid reflux, which can raise the risk of esophageal cancer – but now they’re gone.
Loss of genera could also exacerbate the worsening climate crisis. “Climate disruption is accelerating extinction, and extinction is interacting with the climate, because the nature of the plants, animals, and microbes on the planet is one of the big determinants of what kind of climate we have,” Ehrlich pointed out.
A crucial, and still absent, response
To prevent further extinctions and resulting societal crises, Ceballos and Ehrlich are calling for immediate political, economic, and social action on unprecedented scales.
Increased conservation efforts should prioritize the tropics, they noted, since tropical regions have the highest concentration of both genus extinctions and genera with only one remaining species. The pair also called for increased public awareness of the extinction crisis, especially given how deeply it intersects with the more-publicized climate crisis.
“The size and growth of the human population, the increasing scale of its consumption, and the fact that the consumption is very inequitable are all major parts of the problem,” the authors said.
“The idea that you can continue those things and save biodiversity is insane,” Ehrlich added. “It’s like sitting on a limb and sawing it off at the same time.”
Paul Ehrlich is also president of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford.
