Irena Sendler was a Polish Roman-Catholic nurse and social worker who headed the children’s section of Żegota, an underground resistance group working against the German occupation in Warsaw. Sendler was a wartime humanitarian who smuggled around 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto. While Sendler was nominated, but was not awarded, a Nobel Peace Price, Israel and Poland have both bestowed Sendler with humanitarian awards and UNICEF acknowledged her efforts by posthumously granting Sendler the Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award in 2009. Read more about her life on the Irena Sendler website, which was started by a group of high school students in Kansas USA, who produced a play honouring her courage. Check out the PBS documentary on her life, featuring interviews with Sendler. Image: +Angela Mia via +Jeff Baker on Google+ High-res

Irena Sendler was a Polish Roman-Catholic nurse and social worker who headed the children’s section of Żegota, an underground resistance group working against the German occupation in Warsaw. Sendler was a wartime humanitarian who smuggled around 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto. While Sendler was nominated, but was not awarded, a Nobel Peace Price, Israel and Poland have both bestowed Sendler with humanitarian awards and UNICEF acknowledged her efforts by posthumously granting Sendler the Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award in 2009. Read more about her life on the Irena Sendler website, which was started by a group of high school students in Kansas USA, who produced a play honouring her courage. Check out the PBS documentary on her life, featuring interviews with Sendler.

Image: +Angela Mia via +Jeff Baker on Google+

“There is something grotesque and disturbing about two parties with a long history of conflict live-narrating the launching of bombs that kill civilians and destroy communities.”

The Israeli military and Hamas are livetweeting their war, including images of killed and wounded children. This certainly raises some questions, including for the companies whose platforms they’re using.

(The linked articles notes that the Israeli army’s Twitter account was briefly suspended. However, this is based on a report in the Daily Dot that does not cite sources for its claim, so I would treat it with caution.)

The Washington Post has more, including on a Youtube video from the Israeli military that was briefly taken down but has been reinstated.

(via curiousontheroad)

FJP: Agreeing with the next sentence: “There is no empowerment or revolution here: just a dark, sinking feeling as we watch the bloodshed unfold in real time.”

And in the things they didn’t teach you in school department, to delete the content or suspend the accounts “is not a decision a couple of hundred engineers in North California want to be making.”

Jessica Roy, BetaBeat. Social Media Companies Have Absolutely No Idea How to Handle the Gaza Conflict.

(via futurejournalismproject)

(via futurejournalismproject)

André Kuipers:

1. England, Paris, Belgium, The Netherlands, Denmark, Germany and the Northern Lights over the polar region. 11th February 2012.
2. “Last night”: Nile, Egypt, Israel, Arabian Peninsula, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey. Sunrise in the east. 18th of March 2012.
Via Flickr. Taken from the International Space Station, Expedition 30. 
Credit: ESA/NASA
longreads: Inside Israel’s attempts to slow Iran’s nuclear capabilities, and whether it may ultimately take military action: Matthew Kroenig is the Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and worked as a special adviser in the Pentagon from July 2010 to July 2011. One of his tasks was defense policy and strategy on Iran. When I spoke with Kroenig last week, he said: “My understanding is that the United States has asked Israel not to attack Iran and to provide Washington with notice if it intends to strike. Israel responded negatively to both requests. It refused to guarantee that it will not attack or to provide prior notice if it does.” Kroenig went on, “My hunch is that Israel would choose to give warning of an hour or two, just enough to maintain good relations between the countries but not quite enough to allow Washington to prevent the attack.” “Will Israel Attack Iran?” — Ronen Bergman, New York Times Magazine More Bergman: “Gilad Shalit and the Rising Price of an Israeli Life.” — New York Times Magazine, Nov. 9, 2011

longreads:

Inside Israel’s attempts to slow Iran’s nuclear capabilities, and whether it may ultimately take military action:

Matthew Kroenig is the Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and worked as a special adviser in the Pentagon from July 2010 to July 2011. One of his tasks was defense policy and strategy on Iran. When I spoke with Kroenig last week, he said: “My understanding is that the United States has asked Israel not to attack Iran and to provide Washington with notice if it intends to strike. Israel responded negatively to both requests. It refused to guarantee that it will not attack or to provide prior notice if it does.” Kroenig went on, “My hunch is that Israel would choose to give warning of an hour or two, just enough to maintain good relations between the countries but not quite enough to allow Washington to prevent the attack.”

“Will Israel Attack Iran?” — Ronen Bergman, New York Times Magazine

More Bergman: “Gilad Shalit and the Rising Price of an Israeli Life.” — New York Times Magazine, Nov. 9, 2011

(via longreads)