Recently, I joined a group of volunteers who write to immigrant detainees in Otay Mesa Detention Center. A quiet kind of connection that forms when I write to someone I may never meet—someone whose world has been reduced to walls, routines, and long stretches of waiting. Writing to detainees is, on the . . .
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One morning, as I sat on the beach near the displacement camp where I live, I was scrolling through my phone when I came across a post about my city, Rafah. It was written in the past tense, as if the city no longer existed. I reached into my bag and touched . . .
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Photo credit: “2015 Dron DJI Phantom 3 Advanced,” from Wikimedia Commons. I have become an expert in distinguishing the sounds of Israeli death blasts. The roar of warplanes. The relentless thump of shelling. Each day in Gaza is a new battle to navigate the different cacophonies of Israel’s massacres. But it’s the . . .
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Photos of Muzan Alneel, photographed and shared by her husband Ahmed Mahmoud. Wednesday April 15, 2026, the third anniversary of the outbreak of Sudan’s counterrevolutionary war, was also marked by news of the death of Sudanese engineer, activist, intellectual, and visionary Muzan Abuobaida Alneel. Born in Omdurman, Sudan in 1986, Muzan was . . .
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Since 2014, Ramadan in Gaza has repeatedly arrived under the shadow of war. From Israel’s attack in 2014, to the escalation in 2021, and the ongoing genocide that has cast its shadow over the holy months of 2024, 2025, and 2026, for more than a quarter of the past decade the sacred . . .
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Destruction in Khan Younis, Gaza. Gaza today appears like a place where crises are not managed but accumulated, where collapse is not accidental but deliberately engineered—in full view of the world. Between the warnings of yesterday and the realities of today, a more unsettling question emerges: are we witnessing the early stages . . .
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Dany Díaz Mejía writing in his village, Nueva Esperanza, Honduras Two weeks before the November 30, 2025 elections took place in Honduras, I traveled to Washington, DC for the largest Catholic social justice gathering in the U.S. I had been invited by the Ignatian Solidarity Network to give a talk about how . . .
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Photo by Hossein Zohrevand.“Attack on Gandhi Hospital,” (#15) courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. What is unfolding across West Asia is a colonial project that, if allowed to continue, will ultimately pave the way for a Greater Israel and end any prospects for Palestinian freedom. In October 2003, the recently assassinated Ali Khamenei declared . . .
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Amna (left) and Alaa (right). Note: This is the second of two Public Affairs posts by twin sisters in Gaza, Alaa and Amna Dmeida. The first, by Amna Dmeida, Gaza in the New Year: Countdown to Death, Not Celebration, was published on February 13th. Today we bring you Alaa Dmeida’s powerful memories . . .
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Rubble in Gaza, taken by Farah Rebhy. Our next two public affairs posts, for today and on February 27th, are written by twin sisters in Gaza, Amna and Alaa Dmeida. As Israel’s ongoing genocide continues to sever Palestinian kinship with unfathomable cruelty, Palestinian writers continue to share their stories with heartbreaking courage. . . .
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