propaganda

Hamas has rejected a statement from the United States State Department in which it cited “credible reports” indicating the Palestinian group would imminently violate the ceasefire deal with Israel.

In a statement on Sunday, Hamas said the US allegations were false and “fully align with the misleading Israeli propaganda and provide cover for the continuation of the occupation’s crimes and organised aggression against our people”.

The US State Department had claimed that Hamas is planning an attack against civilians in Gaza “in grave violation of the ceasefire” and called on mediators to demand that the group uphold its obligations under the US-backed peace deal.

In a statement late on Saturday, the State Department said it had obtained “credible reports indicating an imminent ceasefire violation by Hamas against the people of Gaza”.

“Should Hamas proceed with this attack, measures will be taken to protect the people of Gaza and preserve the integrity of the ceasefire,” it said, without giving specific details on the planned attack.

The United States has informed the guarantor nations of the Gaza peace agreement of credible reports indicating an imminent ceasefire violation by Hamas against the people of Gaza.  

This planned attack against Palestinian civilians would constitute a direct and grave violation…

— Department of State (@StateDept) October 18, 2025

Hamas called on the US to “stop repeating the [Israeli] occupation’s misleading narrative and to focus on curbing its repeated violations of the ceasefire agreement”.

“The facts on the ground reveal the exact opposite, as the occupation authorities are the ones who formed, armed, and funded criminal gangs that carried out killings, kidnappings, theft of aid trucks, and assaults against Palestinian civilians. They have openly admitted their crimes through media and video clips, confirming the occupation’s involvement in spreading chaos and disrupting security,” it said.

Hamas said its police forces in Gaza, “with broad popular and community support, are fulfilling their national duty in pursuing these gangs and holding them accountable according to clear legal mechanisms, to protect citizens and preserve public and private property”.

‘Attempt to stoke civil conflict’

Palestine scholar and Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani described the US State Department warning as mind-boggling.

“I think this is really an attempt to stoke civil conflict within the Gaza Strip … to achieve what so far Israel has failed to achieve,” Rabbani said.

The Dutch-Palestinian analyst pointed out that Israel has already attempted to “wreak havoc” in Gaza by joining forces with “armed gangs and collaborator militias” who act as Israeli proxies in the war-torn enclave.

“To suggest that this is in any way the United States coming to the defence of those whose genocide it has unconditionally supported for two entire years just boggles the mind and defies the imagination,” Rabbani said.

Hamas and Israel have been trading blame over violations of the US-mediated ceasefire since it came into force last week, threatening the success of the week-old deal.

Gershon Baskin, an American-Israeli analyst, told Al Jazeera that throughout the history of agreements between Palestinians and Israelis, all of them have been “breached” one way or another.

“If the Americans are serious that they want this to work, they have to be engaged every single day and several times a day” to make sure the steps agreed on are carried out on the ground, he said.

The Gaza Government Media Office said on Saturday that it had counted almost 50 Israeli violations of the peace deal, resulting in 38 Palestinian deaths and 143 injuries since the ceasefire took hold.

It called Israel’s actions “flagrant and clear violations of the ceasefire decision and the rules of international humanitarian law”.

According to the office, Israeli forces in Gaza fired directly at and bombed civilians, attacks that reflected Israel’s “continued aggressive approach despite the declaration of a ceasefire”.

Israel has also been accused of failing to comply with the ceasefire deal by continuing to block efforts to reopen the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt.

The opening of Rafah has been called for in order to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into the Strip and to allow Palestinians to travel abroad.

Amid growing frustration with Israel’s refusal to open the Rafah crossing, Rawhi Fattouh, the president of the Palestinian National Council – the Palestine Liberation Organization’s legislative body – urged the international community on Saturday to deploy international forces in Gaza to protect Palestinians and ensure the ceasefire deal is implemented.

Monday

My goodness, is it time for the Cambridge Dictionary’s annual release of the new words that have made it into its hallowed listings already! It seems to come round quicker every year. Possibly that should be “more quickly”. Their grammarian splinter group will let me know.

Far more so than birthdays or adventures in HRT, this event is a great measure of how functionally old you are. How much of the world do you, quite literally, still understand? I have heard of, and indeed enjoy though have never personally deployed, “delulu” – a play on “delusional”. “Tradwife”, too – which is the practice of monetising all the most boring bits of motherhood and domesticity on Instagram, under the guise of upholding conservative tradition. I like to think that among tradwives themselves it also carries the meaning of “socking all the proceeds away in a secret bank account and taking off for Costa Rica the minute the last child turns 18”, but I have yet to confirm.

Then things get harder. “Mouse jiggler” is more innocuous than I first feared and just about inferable (software that makes it look like you are still working if you are not in the office but likely to be remotely observed) but “skibidi” defeated me. It’s a YouTuber’s coinage, and seems to mean everything and nothing. Only those born to the skibidi can use it properly. And that is as it should be. The words “bath chair”, “tartan rug” and “Werther’s Originals” remain for the rest of us.

Tuesday

Spare a thought for the poor Prince and Princess of Wales, soon to be up to their eyes in packing tape and cardboard boxes as they prepare to move from Adelaide Cottage on the Windsor Great Park estate to Forest Lodge on … the Windsor Great Park estate.

Nothing says “I live a life unimaginably distant from yours” than a) the ability to move house at whim and b) to one that’s essentially in the same garden. Yes, there’s an extra four bedrooms in it for them (otherwise it’d just be another cottage, not a lodge, duh!), but imagine a normal doing the equivalent and going to all the expense and stress to move a few doors up the road. Although take away the stamp duty, the unreliable movers, the crippling solicitor’s fees, the dealing with utility companies and estate agents – oh, and the sale price, which I didn’t so much forget as find myself unable to conceive of living a life without – and the whole thing becomes instantly feasible. Who knew? Who knew?

Wednesday

Another new word is upon us! What a week we’re having! This time it is “otrovert”. I thought at first it might be something to do with non-innocuous mouse-jiggling, but no. It is a term coined by the American psychiatrist Rami Kaminski for people “whose fundamental orientation is defined by the fact that it is rarely the same direction that anyone else is facing”. (He’s written a book about them.) Oh, for heaven’s sake. That’s mostly just your common-or-garden introvert in a world that’s largely extrovert and they’re just facing into a book – leave them alone. The remainder are simple contrarians, the most wearisome people in the world. They see a received opinion and immediately set themselves mindlessly up against it.

Thursday

Speaking of Jungian archetypes as we tangentially were, researchers are claiming that almost every activity is more enjoyable in company – even reading. Which is just more blatant propaganda from Big Extrovert bent on destroying the last havens of peace for those who don’t follow their busy, cacophonous lead.

We have to start pushing back at this point. We can attack the new contention on any number of grounds. On the practical: is farting better in company? It’s funnier, sure, at least for the farter – but beyond that? And even for the detonator, the law of diminishing returns sets in pretty quickly. On the philosophical: can masturbation, for example, truly be said to be taking place in company? Does it not become subsumed within exhibitionism? And on the methodological: this study was carried out using only American subjects, citizens of the most extrovert, camera-ready nation on earth. To take them as representative samples of humanity is a very great mistake.

Friday

Common sense and a small understanding of probability theory tells us it is technically possible – but still. No one really thinks they will live to experience it but on the way back from Edinburgh, where I’d been talking about my new book (Bookish – available in all good bookshops and maybe some bad ones too, if there is such a thing), I did. I had a perfect train journey.

No, honestly. I’ve no reason to lie. I thought all my travel luck had been used up when the 11.05 arrived on time. But then I got on and reservation screens were working and my seat had not been taken. The lady next to me was a reader and knitter. We smiled at each other as I sat down, and that was the full extent of our interaction over the next three and a half hours. During which: nobody yelled into a phone; the few children there played quietly together at their tables; the air conditioning worked and kept us at a comfortable instead of sub-arctic temperature. And the buffet was open.

This really happened. I feel I am going to pay for it somehow in the next few days – I am constantly checking the cats for signs of illness and my bank account for fraud – but until then, I shall revere the memory.

Aug. 9 (UPI) — North and South Korea have begun removing some loudspeakers that were used to broadcast propaganda across the demilitarized zone at the 38th parallel.

The South Korean military on Saturday reported North Korea‘s removal of some of the loudspeakers, but it’s unknown if all of them will be taken away, the BBC reported.

The South Korean military “detected North Korean troops dismantling propaganda loudspeakers in some parts along the front line,” its leaders said in a prepared statement on Saturday.

“It remains to be confirmed whether the devices have been removed across all regions,” the statement said, adding that the South Korean military will continue monitoring the situation.

The BBC’s report suggested removing some of the loudspeakers might be North Korea’s way of responding positively to South Korean President Lee Jae Myung’s recent election win.

Lee became president in June and had campaigned on a platform that included improving relations with North Korea.

South Korea stopped broadcasting its own propaganda over loudspeakers positioned at the 38th parallel after Lee took office and earlier this week dismantled its loudspeakers.

South Korea often broadcast content that included news and K-pop music, but those broadcasts ended in June, and its military began removing its loudspeakers on Monday.

North Korea’s loudspeakers often aired annoying sounds, including the howling of wild animals.

North Korea has not confirmed its troops removed some of the loudspeakers at the demilitarized zone separating the two nations, The Independent reported.

North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un seeks to eliminate the influence of South Korean culture, including language and pop music, to help preserve his standing as the nation’s supreme leader, according to The Independent.

South Korea had ceased its broadcasts at the 38th parallel for several years, but former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s administration resumed the broadcasts in June 2024.

Those broadcasts ended after Lee became president.

SEOUL — South Korea has begun dismantling loudspeakers that blare anti-North Korean propaganda across the border, as President Lee Jae Myung’s liberal administration seeks to mend fractured relations with Pyongyang.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the defense ministry said the removal was “a practical measure to ease inter-Korean tensions without impacting the military’s readiness posture.”

The move follows the suspension of propaganda broadcasts in June on orders from Lee, an advocate of reconciliation who has framed warmer relations with North Korea as a matter of economic benefit — a way to minimize a geopolitical liability long blamed for South Korea’s stock market being undervalued.

“Strengthening peace in the border regions will help ease tensions across all of South Korea, and increasing dialogue and exchange will improve the economic situation,” Lee said at a news conference last month.

Elementary school students watch the North Korean side from the Unification Observation Post in Paju, South Korea.

(Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press)

First used by North Korea in 1962, with South Korea following suit a year later, propaganda loudspeakers have long been a defining feature of the hot-and-cold relationship between Seoul and Pyongyang, switched on and off with the waxing and waning of goodwill.

The last major stoppage was during a period of detente in 2004 and lasted until 2015, when two South Korean soldiers stationed by the border were maimed by landmines that military officials said had been covertly installed by North Korean soldiers weeks earlier.

Played by loudspeakers set up in the DMZ, or demilitarized zone, a 2.5 mile-wide stretch of land between the two countries, South Korea’s broadcasts once featured live singing and propagandizing by soldiers stationed along the border. In recent years, however, the speakers have played pre-planned programming that ranges from outright opprobrium to more subtle messaging intended to imbue listeners with pro-South Korea sympathies.

The programming has included K-pop songs with lyrics that double as invitations to defect to South Korea, such as one 2010 love song that goes: “come on, come on, don’t turn me down and come on and approach me,” or weather reports whose power lies in their accuracy — and have occasionally been accompanied by messages like “it’s going to rain this afternoon so make sure you take your laundry in.”

With a maximum range of around 19 miles that makes them unlikely to reach major population centers in North Korea, the effectiveness of such broadcasts has come under question by some experts.

Still, several North Korean defectors have cited the broadcasts as part of the reason they decided to flee to South Korea. One former artillery officer who defected in 2013 recalled being won over, in part, by the weather reports.

“Whenever the South Korean broadcast said it would rain from this time to that time, it would always actually rain,” he told South Korean media last year.

South Korean army K-9 self-propelled howitzers take positions in Paju, near the border with North Korea.

(Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press)

North Korea, however, sees the broadcasts as a provocation and has frequently threatened to retaliate with military action. In 2015, Pyongyang made good on this threat by firing a rocket at a South Korean loudspeaker, leading to an exchange of artillery fire between the two militaries.

Such sensitivities have made the loudspeakers controversial in South Korea, too, with residents of the border villages complaining about the noise, as well as the dangers of military skirmishes breaking out near their homes.

“At night, [North Korea] plays frightening noises like the sound of animals, babies or women crying,” one such resident told President Lee when he visited her village in June, shortly after both sides halted the broadcasts. “It made me ill. Even sleeping pills didn’t work.”

But it is doubtful that the dismantling alone will be enough for a diplomatic breakthrough.

Relations between Seoul and Pyongyang have been in a deep chill following the failure of the denuclearization summits between Trump and Kim Jong Un in 2018, as well as a separate dialogue between Kim and then-South Korean president Moon Jae-in.

Tensions rose further during the subsequent conservative administration of Yoon Suk Yeol, who was president of South Korea from 2022 until his removal from office earlier this year. Yoon is currently being investigated by a special counsel on allegations that he ordered South Korean military drones to fly over Pyongyang last October.

Ruling party lawmakers have alleged that the move was intended to provoke a war with North Korea, and in doing so, secure the legal justification for Yoon’s declaration of martial law in December.

During Yoon’s term, Kim Jong Un formally foreswore any reconciliation with Seoul while expanding his nuclear weapons program.

That stance remains unchanged even under the more pro-reconciliation Lee, according to a statement by Kim Yo Jong, the North Korean leader’s younger sister, published by state news agency KCNA last month.

“No matter how desperately the Lee Jae Myung government may try to imitate the fellow countrymen and pretend they do all sorts of righteous things to attract our attention, they can not turn back the hands of the clock of the history which has radically changed the character of the DPRK-ROK relations,” she said.

Thanks to a lazy pun that’s as uninspired as the jeans it’s meant to sell, a series of American Eagle Outfitters ads starring 27-year-old actor Sydney Sweeney have sparked a culture war.

In one of several videos associated with the retailer’s campaign, the accomplished performer who also happens to be a blond bombshell says, “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue,” she says, as the camera pans from her blue denim outfit to her blue eyes.

In another video, Sweeney defaces an American Eagle billboard that reads “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans,” crossing out the word “jeans” and replacing it with “genes.”

Jeans. Genes. Get it? Of course you do. It’s as basic as it gets. But that didn’t stop folks from assigning incredible complexity to the ads.

American Eagle Outfitters is accused of leaning into the language of eugenics to sell its mall wear. Eugenics is the absurd and bigoted theory that the human race can be perfected (i.e. made more Caucasian) through selective breeding. Eugenics gained traction in the early 20th century, most notably in Nazi Germany, where Hitler sought to create a master Aryan race, perpetrating unspeakable atrocities including the Holocaust.

Now there’s an argument across social media: Did Sweeney and the retailer play fast and loose with eugenics to sell jeans? Or is it just another distraction from a much scarier reality that “the great replacement theory” — a touchstone conspiracy among white supremacists that an “inferior” non-white population will displace them — is driving American policy and state-sanctioned actions? I pick Option 2.

Sleuthing for hidden white-power messaging in an otherwise playful commercial is easier than contending with the militarized xenophobia right in front of us. It’s happening on our streets, where immigrants with no criminal record are being kidnapped, then locked up and, in many cases, deported with no due process.

Too heavy? Let’s get back to the jeans/genes (again, who thought this pun was clever?). Commentary about the ad has proliferated across social media, where lefties, MAGAs and nondenominational Sweeney haters are chiming in, calling the ad a “Nazi dog whistle,” an excuse for a “woke freak out,” more evidence that “Western ideals of beauty” still dominate, and indisputable proof that Sweeney should remain a perennial target for those who still can’t separate the actor from the insufferable characters she played so well on “Euphoria” and “White Lotus.”

The American Eagle Outfitters’ fall campaign features “the Sydney Jean,” which was created in partnership with Sweeney, and revenue from sales of the jeans will be donated to the Crisis Text Line. According to its website, it’s a “nonjudgmental organization that champions mental well-being and aims to support people of every race, ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, socioeconomic status, and other backgrounds.”

Hardly Third Reich fare.

Yet the clothing line’s ad has been called “regressive” and racist, and one critic wrote in Slate: “These days, a blond, blue-eyed white woman being held up as the exemplar of ‘great genes’ is a concept that maybe shouldn’t have made it past the copywriters room.”

Never missing a chance to complain about complainers, White House communications manager Steven Cheung posted: “Cancel culture run amok. This warped, moronic and dense liberal thinking is a big reason why Americans voted the way they did in 2024. They’re tired of this bull—.” Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly took the opportunity to troll the opposition when she wrote Tuesday on X, “I love how the leftist meltdown over the Sydney Sweeney ad has only resulted in a beautiful white blonde girl with blue eyes getting 1000x the exposure for her ‘good genes.’”

American Eagle posted on Instagram Friday that it stands by its campaign. “‘Sydney Sweeney has great jeans’ is and always was about the jeans. Her jeans. Her story,” said the statement. “We’ll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence, their way. Great jeans look good on everyone.”

It’s not the first time Sweeney’s actions have been used as fodder in a culture war. Her 2024 hosting gig on “SNL” included a sketch where she was dressed as a Hooters waitress, complete with ample cleavage. The skit satirized her standing as a sex symbol. MAGA bros saw it as the end of woke because Sweeney is “hot” and she made a joke about her boobs. Yes, even that was politicized.

So now that I’ve spent all this space explaining the unnecessary freak-out over a jeans ad, can we focus on a campaign that should spur just as much, if not more, condemnation?

The Department of Homeland Security has been posting images on its X account with captions that the father of eugenics, Sir Francis Galton, would have approved. On July 23, the DHS posted an image of a 19th century painting titled “American Progress” depicting Manifest Destiny, the religious belief that it was the right and duty of the United States to expand from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. The DHS caption (with its curious usage of uppercase letters): “A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending.” If you aren’t Indigenous, of course.

A week or so before that, “A Prayer for a New Life,” artist Morgan Weistling’s westward-expansion-era scene featuring a white family in a covered wagon making their way across golden plains. The DHS shared the image with the caption, “Remember your Homeland’s Heritage.” Aside from getting the name of the painting wrong, they inferred that this was the heritage we all share. There was no footnote for First Lady Melania Trump, Sen. Marco Rubio, Trump advisor Stephen Miller, Vice President JD Vance’s wife, Usha, SCOTUS’ Clarence Thomas and millions more whose American origin story doesn’t resemble “Little House on the Prairie.” So can we freak out about that, instead?

Apparently not, because now armchair Nazi hunters are pivoting to a Dunkin’ Donuts ad featuring “The Summer I Turned Pretty” star Gavin Casalegno, who delivers a tongue-in-cheek monologue about his role as the “king of summer.”

“Look, I didn’t ask to be the king of summer, it just kinda happened,” he says. “This tan? Genetics.”

Maybe just stick with the Ben Affleck Dunkin’ ad, where nary a g-word is spoken.