The Real Outrage in Yemen
As Democrats decry the Trump Administration’s national security lapse, the United States is engaged in an actual killing campaign. Beginning in March of 2017 and for the following eight years,…
Kathy Kelly
Resisting Riviera of the Middle East
“There is something sick and rotten about states and societies that not only support and enable mass killings but also make money off of them.” – Pankaj Mishra, January…
Martin Luther King’s Prophetic Warning, Denouncing the Merchants of Death
Over the past three years, a collective of volunteer researchers, lawyers, and commentators created The Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal, dedicated to holding accountable four weapon manufacturing corporations based…
When Will the UN General Assembly Suspend Israel?
The Biblical Book of Job chronicles a string of catastrophes relentlessly plaguing the main character, Job, who loses his prosperity, his home, his health, and his children. Eventually, an agonized…
Hanging On with Gaza
We must join with the call of the South African government which bravely upheld international law. We must clamor for the General Assembly to enact the “uniting for peace” resolution.…
We Must Oppose Israel’s Dangerous Gamble Before It’s Too Late
Failure to stop Israel’s genocide of Palestinians gambles with the fate of humanity as a whole. Following World War II, Albert Camus posed a “formidable gamble” to those who had…
Unfurling Love from the Window
A banner and a name remind student protesters for whom they are fighting. On April 30, when Columbia University student protesters took over Hamilton Hall, they renamed it “Hind’s Hall,”…
When Starvation is a Weapon, The Harvest Is Shame
In a work entitled “Irish Famine 4,” Palestinian-American journalist and artist Sam Husseini combined grass and paint to commemorate a bitter time in Irish history when starving people died with…
Israel Is Assaulting Hospitals in Gaza with Full U.S. Support
Hospitals should be places of healing, not theaters of war. Many decades ago in Chicago, my favorite of several part-time student jobs was operating the “old-style” telephone switchboard at a…
World Health Organization now says disease could be even deadlier than airstrikes in Gaza
Speaking from a hospital ward about 50 meters from where a bomb had just exploded, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder raised his voice over sounds of children screaming. In a video…
Tunnels for Safety and Tunnels for Death
An underground nuclear arsenal in Israel dwarfs the tunnels alleged at a Gaza hospital. It’s one thing to burrow beneath the ground, digging to construct a tunnel for refuge, a…
Calling for a ‘Pause’ in Israel’s Assault on Gaza Isn’t Enough
The Biden Administration must demand a full ceasefire, not a temporary pause, to stop the violence. Operation Cast Lead, an Israeli aerial assault and massacre of Gazans begun on December…
Prioritizing Human Rights in Relations with Saudi Arabia
The Saudis picked us up from the detention center in Daer and put us in a minibus going back to the Yemen border. When they released us, they created a…
The Right to Seek Safety
Through a WhatsApp message from Portugal, my friend Eunice Neves asked to share a moment with me. She was with an Afghan couple, Frishta and Mohammad, and their baby son,…
Norman Solomon’s ‘War Made Invisible’ Repudiates Collusion With War Makers
In this book, Solomon asks why people identify more with the bombers rather than the bombed. Following a string of U.S. “forever wars,” a profusion of well-written, often riveting novels,…
Brotherhood and Friendship in a time of War- Reflections on The Mercenary, by Jeffrey E. Stern
Salman Rushdie once commented that those who are displaced by war are the shining shards that reflect the truth. With so many people fleeing wars and ecological collapse in our…
To End All Wars, Close All Bases
A Gazan Ph.D. candidate studying in India, Mohammad Abunahel steadily refines and updates a map on the World BEYOND War website, dedicating a portion of every day to continue researching…
Blood Does Not Wash Away Blood
Those who have an insatiable appetite for war seldom heed the wreckage they have left behind. The extraordinary March 10, 2023 announcement that China’s top diplomat, Mr. Wang Yi, helped…
Decry the Merchants of Death
Peace activists take on the Pentagon and its corporate outposts. Days after a U.S. warplane bombed a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing forty-two people, twenty-four of…
Surviving the Killing Fields, a Worldwide Challenge
by Kathy Kelly and Nick Mottern Awaiting discharge from a hospital in Cairo, Adel Al Manthari, a Yemeni civilian, faces months of physical therapy and mounting medical bills following three…
No Starvation for Oil
As President Joe Biden embarks on his trip to the Middle East, those of us back home must acknowledge that a “sensitive” trip would visit the victims rather than the…
War Scars the Earth. To Heal, We Must Cultivate Hope, not Harm
by Kathy Kelly and Matt Gannon “No War 2022, July 8 – 10,” hosted by World BEYOND War, will consider major and growing threats faced in today’s world. Emphasizing “Resistance…
The people of Yemen Suffer Atrocities, too
The ghastly blockade and bombardment of Yemen, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, is now entering its eighth year. The United Nations’ goal was to raise more…
‘Thank You for Hearing Our Afghan Pain’
People in the United States must recognize the suffering their country continues inflicting in Afghanistan. During visits to Kabul, Afghanistan, over the past decade, I particularly relished lingering over breakfasts…
Abandoning Yemen?
Monday, October 11, marked the official closure of the U.N. Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen (also known as the Group of Experts or GEE). For nearly four years, this investigative group…
To Counter Terror, Abolish War
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was among a small group of U.S. citizens who sat on milk crates or stood holding signs, across from the U.S. Mission…
Why Daniel Hale Deserves Gratitude, Not Prison
The whistleblower acted on behalf of the public’s right to know what is being done in its name “Pardon Daniel Hale.” These words hung in the air on a recent…
Art Against Drones
At the High Line, a popular tourist attraction in New York City, visitors to the West side of Lower Manhattan ascend above street level to what was once an elevated…
Hunting in Yemen
“It’s not normal for people to live like this,” says Iman Saleh, now on her twelfth day of a hunger strike demanding an end to war in Yemen. April 10,…
Blood for Oil
Amid the ongoing horror, it’s important to find ways to atone for war crimes —including reparations. Thirty years ago, when the United States launched Operation Desert Storm against Iraq, I…
About Suffering: A Massacre of the Innocents in Yemen
In 1565, Pieter Bruegel the Elder created “The Massacre of the Innocents,” a provocative masterpiece of religious art. The painting reworks a biblical narrative about King Herod’s order to slaughter…
Like a Rocket in the Garden: The Unending War in Afghanistan
People in the United States continue to pretend that the despair and futility we’ve caused isn’t our fault. Late last week, I learned from young Afghan Peace Volunteer friends in…
Reversal
With survival at stake, can weapon makers change course? Today, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the atomic attack on Hiroshima, should be a day for quiet introspection. I recall a summer…
Yemen: A Torrent of Suffering in a Time of Siege
“When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out “stop!” When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable, the cries are no longer heard. The…
Battleground States
The time for manufacturing of weapons of war has passed as a viable industry for our nation, despite the way some of our political leadership clings to economies of the…
Our Disaster
Why the United States bears responsibility for Yemen’s humanitarian crisis. An entire generation of Yemeni children has suffered the traumas of war, many of them orphaned, maimed, malnourished, or displaced.…
Beating Swords to Plowshares
“Nuclear weapons will not go away by themselves” says Plowshares activist Steve Kelly, SJ. Inscribed on a wall across from the United Nations in New York City are ancient words…
He’s Got Eight Numbers, Just Like Everybody Else
Trident nuclear disarmament activist Steve Kelly, a Jesuit priest, begins his third year imprisoned in a county jail as he and his companions await sentencing. On April 4, 2020, my…
Stop Tightening the Thumb Screws, A Humanitarian Message
U.S. sanctions against Iran, cruelly strengthened in March of 2018, continue a collective punishment of extremely vulnerable people. Presently, the U.S. “maximum pressure” policyseverely undermines Iranian efforts to cope with…
An eyewitness to the horrors of the US ‘forever wars’ speaks out
The 2003 "shock and awe" bombing of Iraq had finally stopped. From the balcony of my room in Baghdad's Al Fanar Hotel, I watched U.S. Marines moving between their jeeps,…
Camp Bucca, Abu Ghraib and the Rise of Extremism in Iraq
Yesterday morning, President Trump announced the death of Abu Bakr Al- Baghdadi and three of his children. President Trump said Al-Baghdadi, the founder of ISIS, was fleeing U.S. military forces,…
Trident Is the Crime
On October 24, following a three-day trial in Brunswick, GA, seven Catholic Workers who acted to disarm a nuclear submarine base were convicted on three felony counts and one…
Taking Next Steps Toward Nuclear Abolition
My friend Marianne Goldscheider, who is 87, suffered a broken hip in July, 2018 and then, in June 2019, it happened again. When she broke her hip the first time,…
Death, Misery and Bloodshed in Yemen
“Strike with Creativity” proclaims Raytheon. Writing about his visit to the world’s largest weapons bazaar, held in London during October, Arron Merat describes reading this slogan emblazoned above Raytheon’s stall:…
The Wounds of War in Afghanistan
Recovering from a broken hip, peace activist Kathy Kelly reflects on her experiences with people disabled and traumatized by war. Its economy gutted by war, Afghanistan’s largest cash crop remains…
A Morning in Afghanistan
Amidst political posturing, aerial terrorism and street bombings, Afghan citizens pursue their daily work toward peace. On a very warm September morning in Kabul, several dozen men, women, and children…
The Ongoing Dread in Gaza: So Many Names, So Many Lives
“I felt shaky and uneasy all day, preparing for this talk” – Jehad Abusalim, a Palestinian from the territory of Gaza Jehad Abusalim, a Palestinian now living in the United…
Remnants of War
Intense fighting and hideous attacks battered Afghans throughout their country last week as negotiators in Qatar weighed the benefits and costs of a peace agreement that might stop the bloodshed.…
An Honorable Course in Iran: End Sanctions, Resume Dialogue
The greatest outlier in terms of possessing nuclear weapons is the U.S. Last week, Elham Pourtaher, an Iranian graduate student at the State University of New York in Albany, wrote…
Judging U.S. War Crimes
Chelsea Manning, who bravely exposed atrocities committed by the U.S. military, is again imprisoned in a U.S. jail. On International Women’s Day, March 8, 2019, she was incarcerated in the…
Can We Divest from Weapons Dealers?
Impoverished people living in numerous countries today would stand a far better chance of survival, and risk far less trauma, if weapon manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics,…
What it Really Takes to Secure Peace in Afghanistan
Constant military surveillance of Afghans yields almost no real intelligence about the problems they face each day. An unusual group of volunteers uses a far different approach. Hossein, a member…
Defying War and Defining Peace in Afghanistan
On January 27th, 2019, the Taliban and the U.S. government each publicly stated acceptance, in principle, of a draft framework for ongoing negotiations that could culminate in a peace deal…
A Shift: Repudiating War on Yemen
The horror of the Yemen War is changing minds at last Twenty years ago, a small delegation organized by Voices in the Wilderness lived in Baghdad while U.S. cruise missiles…
Seeing Yemen from Jeju
Several days ago, I joined an unusual skype call originated by young South Korean founders of “The Hope School.” Located on Jeju Island, the school aims to build a supportive…
The Long, Brutal U.S. War on Children in the Middle East
On November 28, sixty-three U.S. Senators voted in favor of holding a floor debate on a resolution calling for an end to direct U.S. Armed Forces involvement in the…
U.S. Is Complicit in Child Slaughter in Yemen
On August 9, a U.S.-supported Saudi airstrike bombed a bus carrying schoolchildren in Sa’ada, a city in northern Yemen. The New York Times reported that the students were on…
God Only Knows
“If they would just confirm to us that my brother is alive, if they would just let us see him, that’s all we want. But we can’t get anyone to…
On Purpose, In Kabul
Writing this week for the Chicago Tribune, Steve Chapman called a U.S. Government report on the war in Afghanistan “a chronicle of futility.” "The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction" report…
Hungering for Nuclear Disarmament
In the state of Georgia’s Glynn County Detention Center, four activists await trial stemming from their nonviolent action, on April 4, 2018, at the Naval Submarine Base, Kings Bay. In…
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