Iran’s supreme leader has been enjoying himself lately on X, Elon Musk’s social media platform. In one post, he delighted at pro-Palestinian protests on US campuses; in another, it was someone waving the flag of Hezbollah, his proxy militia in Lebanon. Here was proof, said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that even in the Great Satan itself the world is waking to the evils of America and Israel, and backing his “resistance” movement against oppression.

Khamenei’s gloating is understandable; he’s surely right about the damage that the war is causing to the international reputations of the US and Israel. But his hypocrisy is mind-melting. One of the great ironies of the war in Gaza is that it has given a free pass for repression to one of the world’s ugliest regimes — Khamenei’s.

Iran’s 85-year-old leader has, of course, been leading chants of death to America and Israel since long before he reached the pinnacle of power, in 1989. His government became a key supplier of cash and weapons to Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, President Bashir al-Assad in Syria, the Houthis in Yemen and a rash of militias in Iraq. They back Iran in wanting to oust the US and Israel from the Middle East.

These groups are also murderous toward their own populations. At home in Iran, Khamenei’s Islamist regime is increasingly unpopular, as attested by years of rolling street protests and record low turnout at the last presidential election, in which no regime opponent was allowed to stand. Rule by fear and repression has only intensified since Hamas invited Israel’s invasion of Gaza, by attacking Kibbutzes with calculated savagery, last October.

The regime carried out 834 executions in 2023, up 43% over the previous year, as the pace increased from two executions per day before Oct. 7 — when Hamas triggered the Gaza war — to three to four per day afterward, according to Iran Human Rights, a nonprofit that tracks Iran’s use of the death penalty. Amnesty International’s count was slightly higher. More recently, the religious police, briefly cowed in 2022 by the scale of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, have returned to the streets to crack down on women who wear their hair uncovered, or are otherwise “improperly” attired.

The methods that Khamenei’s security forces used to suppress those protests included killing hundreds and arresting thousands. For a while the world was seized with outrage at the sight of women and girls getting arrested, or in some cases beaten or even killed, for refusing to dress the way a regime of aging male religious fundamentalists thought appropriate.

But that was before Gaza seemed to suck away all available indignation, whether at the brutalizing of women in Iran, the killing or deliberate starvation of as many as 600,000 people in Ethiopia’s Tigray province or the 8 million displaced by war and now threatened with famine in Sudan.

The social media channels used by those active in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement went suddenly dark in the days after Hamas struck and Israel began its retaliation. They’ve resumed since, but the attention — especially from the West — never really returned.

“It’s the government’s aim to do this, to completely kill the movement and get the entire world fixated on Gaza. In the meantime, they have been arresting girls who still go out in the street without a headscarf, and executing people,” says Koushna Navabi, an Iran-born artist in London who was driving a poster campaign to raise awareness across Europe. “Even we ourselves went quiet.”

It isn’t only Iran that’s benefiting from the horrors of Gaza to bury their own gruesome records of slaughter and repression. Its friends in the so-called axis of resistance are too.

From 2007 until last October, Hamas ran Gaza alone. Its rule was marked by summary executions of Palestinian opponents, repression and the criminalization of same-sex relations. When I see “Free Gaza” placards on U.S. campuses, I can only ask, from whom? The Israel Defense Forces, for sure, but Palestinians also need liberation from Hamas. Yes, they won a round of legislative elections by 45% to 41% in 2006, but the group then seized executive power in a bloody coup and never had a vote since. What polling we have suggests the war has boosted Hamas’s standing in Gaza, which is hardly surprising, but also that given an alternative to the current crop of Hamas and Palestinian Authority leaders, Gaza’s voters would choose it.

Assad’s crimes seem forgotten, but they included the use of chemical weapons and barrel bombs dropped on his own people, as well as torture, execution and ethnic cleansing on an industrial scale. Hezbollah has used terrorist tactics such as suicide bombing, assassination and abduction to achieve its war aims. Its arsenal of rockets and missiles is entirely devoted to hitting Israel, an obsession that has brought Lebanon as a whole close to ruin.

In Yemen, the Houthis — an Islamist militia now basking in praise across the Middle East for their attacks on international shipping, ostensibly in protest at Israel’s killing of innocent Palestinians — press thousands of children into military service. According to the Women’s Coalition for Peace in Yemen, the Iran-backed militia also was responsible for 1,893 incidents of kidnapping, torture and rape against women from 2017 to 2022. Other reports have documented hundreds of forced disappearances and dozens of deaths in detention.

That’s quite apart from the Houthi contribution to the 377,000-plus people that the United Nations estimates to have died by 2022 as a result of its war against government forces backed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

None of this aims to belittle the suffering in Gaza, or to excuse Israeli actions, or indeed U.S. examples of hypocrisy. Rather than an exercise in “whataboutism,” it’s meant as an appeal to not treat this conflict as a simple tale of good guys and bad guys, colonial oppressors and the oppressed.

There certainly are innocent victims — far too many of them. But these are the Palestinian and Israeli non-combatants who have been killed, maimed, raped or forced from their homes. For the rest, there are no heroes to be found here. It is a rogues gallery of ruthlessly cynical ideologues using Gaza to cloak their own long record of crimes against humanity.

Marc Champion is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Europe, Russia and the Middle East. He was previously Istanbul bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal.

Related Articles

Stephen Mihm: Comparing Gaza protests to the ’60s is wrong — and dangerous

Trudy Rubin: 2024 isn’t 1968: University protesters need more clarity about their goals

Thomas Friedman: Israel and Saudi Arabia are trading places

Jonathan Zimmerman: It’s ‘academic freedom’ when you agree but not when you don’t?

Anthony Vaccaro: Does social media rewire kids’ brains? Here’s what the science really says

 

State Sen. Nicole Mitchell didn’t answer any questions about her felony burglary charge from a Senate ethics panel Tuesday night with her attorney decrying the investigation as a “witch hunt.”

The Senate Subcommittee on Ethics, meanwhile, could not reach agreement on any action late Tuesday, with the two DFL and two Republican members unable to settle on when to meet next or how to proceed with a complaint against Mitchell. As of 9:30 p.m. they were still in recess.

Mitchell, a Democratic-Farmer-Labor senator from Woodbury, allegedly broke into her estranged stepmother’s northern Minnesota home last month. Her attorney said the criminal case should be resolved before lawmakers investigate ethics violations.

Sen. Nicole Mitchell, DFL-Woodbury, looks at her computer while at her desk in the State Senate chambers at the State Capitol building on Tuesday, May 7, 2024. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

“Conducting an ethics investigation after the criminal case seems appropriate. But by conducting an ethics investigation before the criminal case, you are participating in a witch hunt,” attorney Bruce Ringstrom Jr. told the committee

Senate Republicans have been calling for Mitchell’s resignation following her April 22 arrest and filed an ethics complaint against the senator citing the felony charges, as well as contradictions between Mitchell’s alleged account of events in charges and in public statements. That, they say, could make her unfit to continue serving in office.

“This isn’t a criminal case. Those are handled by the courts, and we trust them to do their work. What we are examining today is whether the Senate will maintain its reputation and institutional integrity with its membership,” said Sen. Karin Housley, R-Stillwater, one of the GOP senators who brought the complaint. “We don’t need to wait for the criminal case to make a decision. We can review the information before us today.”

Mitchell says she won’t resign, and her fellow DFLers aren’t eager to push her out as it would end their one-seat Senate majority with just weeks of the legislative session remaining.

Demonstrators in front of the Minnesota State Senate chamber doors at the State Capitol building demand that Sen. Nicole Mitchell, DFL-Woodbury, resign on Tuesday, May 7, 2024.  (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Members of the ethics committee can take action against a senator accused of an ethics complaint, such as making them apologize for conduct or even calling for expulsion — which has never happened in the history of the Minnesota Legislature. In cases where a lawmaker is convicted of a crime, they wait for the case to be resolved before taking action.

But the committee is split between two Democrats and two Republicans, so unless one member joins the opposite party in a decision, ties would prevent any action. Members include the chair, Sen. Bobby Joe Champion, DFL-Minneapolis, Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, Sen. Jeremy Miller, R-Winona, and Sen. Andrew Mathews, R-Princeton.

Mitchell is next expected to appear in Becker County District Court on June 10.

Champion made an argument similar to Ringstrom’s. He said the charging document and media reports are not proof of any wrongdoing on Mitchell’s part, and that the committee wouldn’t be able to take action until more facts emerge. He wants the committee to meet again sometime after Mitchell’s next court date.

Mitchell’s arrest and charges have been disruptive in the final weeks of the legislative session, as her party controls a one-seat majority in the Senate. If they’re one member short, the DFL will not be able to pass partisan legislation as bills would likely stall in 33-33 ties.

Votes on major bills already got delayed the week of Mitchell’s arrest, though the senator has since returned to the Legislature and has voted on bills and other measures — including measures advanced by Republicans to strip her of the ability to vote.

Republicans want to see her resign or removed from office, but for now at least, that’s unrealistic as there’s a two-thirds majority threshold to oust a senator. Some of Mitchell’s DFL colleagues have suggested she resign.

Mitchell, a first-term senator and former broadcast meteorologist who is a lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard, was elected in 2022 and is in the second year of her four-year term. If she remains in office, she won’t face election again until 2026.

Mitchell, 49, faces a felony burglary charge after police found her in her stepmother’s Detroit Lakes home last month. Mitchell told police she had broken into the house to retrieve her father’s ashes and other sentimental items since her stepmother was no longer talking to her, according to charges.

But Mitchell later offered a contradicting account of events following her release from jail. In a post on social media, she said she had entered the house to check on her stepmother, who had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. The stepmother has obtained a restraining order against Mitchell and told multiple media outlets she fears her stepdaughter.

Gender-transition surgery video complaint

Sen. Glenn H. Gruenhagen, R-Glencoe. (Courtesy of the Minnesota Senate)

Mitchell’s complaint wasn’t the only ethics matter before the committee on Tuesday. Before taking up her case, the panel heard a complaint from last year by Sen. Erin Maye Quade, DFL-Apple Valley, against Sen. Glenn Gruenhagen, R-Glencoe. Maye Quade filed a complaint last year after Gruenhagen emailed a link to Senate colleagues with what he called “graphic” videos of gender-transition surgery.

Testimony and debate on that issue lasted about two hours, with Gruenhagen arguing he had shared the video because the Senate had planned to take up a bill related to transgender medicine for youth. Maye Quade said the content was inappropriate regardless of the context and did not have a direct relation to the bill.

A committee vote initiated by Republicans to dismiss the complaint failed on a 2-2 partisan tie, though they agreed to meet again on Wednesday.

Related Articles

Walz signs ‘Taylor Swift bill’ … at First Avenue nightclub in Minneapolis

Minnesota ethics panel to consider how to deal with senator charged with burglary

Dwindling timeline, ethics probe test Minnesota lawmakers’ ability to complete their work

Uber, Lyft say they’d leave Minnesota under ‘compromise’ rideshare wage bill

Minnesota lawmakers debate constitutional amendment to protect abortion and LGBTQ rights

Diversity was a theme for the 2024 Minnesota Book Awards, announced Tuesday evening at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in St. Paul during a program emceed by Nur-D, presented by Friends of the St. Paul Public Library, sponsored by Education Minnesota.

Here are the winners:

Children’s literature (sponsored by Red Balloon Bookshop)

“Beneath” by Cori Doerrfeld (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers/Hachette Book Group): Finn is in a horrible mood, but they agree to go for a hike with Grandpa. Throughout their walk, they see strong trees with networks of roots underneath, still water with schools of fish swimming below, and an expectant bird with eggs nestled under her. Grandpa explains that sometimes beneath a person who seems like they won’t understand is someone feeling the exact same way. Doerrfeld is the award-winning author/illustrator of many children’s books, including “The Rabbit Listened,” a Minnesota Book Award winner. She received her undergrad degree in studio art from St. Olaf College and her post-baccalaureate from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

General nonfiction (Loren & Christine Danielson)

“Lessons on the Road to Peace” by John Noltner (self-published): In the fall of 2020, Noltner and his wife, Karen, sold their Minnesota home and hit the road to live small, listen deeply, and learn about who we are as a country. Over the next 900 days, they drove 93,000 miles across America and gathered hundreds of stories with one goal: in a divided world, to rediscover what connects us. Noltner is an award-winning photographer and author and the founder and executive director of A Peace of My Mind, a nonprofit that uses storytelling and art to bridge divides and build community. He has produced projects for national magazines, Fortune 500 companies and nonprofit organizations.

Genre fiction (Macalester College)

“Ink Blood Sister Scribe” by Emma Törzs (William Morrow/HarperCollins Publishers): Two estranged half-sisters tasked with guarding their family’s library of magical books must work together to unravel a deadly secret at the heart of their collection. In the process, they uncover a world of magic far bigger and more dangerous than they ever imagined. Törzs is a writer, occasional translator and teacher at Macalester College. Her fiction has been honored with an NEA fellowship in prose, a World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction, and an O. Henry Prize. Her stories have been published in journals such as Ploughshares, Uncanny Magazine, Strange Horizons, and American Short Fiction.

Memoir & creative nonfiction (Bradshaw Celebration of Life Centers)

“Half-Life of a Secret: Reckoning with a Hidden History” by Emily Strasser (University Press of Kentucky): In 1942, the U.S. government constructed a 60,000-acre planned community in rural Tennessee. Oak Ridge attracted more than 70,000 people eager for high-paying wartime jobs, who didn’t know it was one of three secret cities constructed by the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb. Strasser exposes the toxic legacy that forever polluted her family, a community, the nation  and the world. Strasser’s award-winning essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Colorado Review, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and elsewhere. She earned her master of fine arts in creative writing from the University of Minnesota.

Middle-grade literature (Education Minnesota)

“Shannon in the Spotlight” by Kalena Miller (Delacorte Press/Penguin Random House): Shannon Carter never considered herself much of a theater person. As a 12-year-old with obsessive-compulsive disorder, she depends on routine. But when she braves the audition, she discovers that center stage is the one place where she doesn’t feel anxious. As opening night approaches, Shannon feels pressure to save her friendships, manage her family and to follow the old theater adage: The show must go on. Miller is also the author of “The Night No One Had Sex,” a Minnesota Book Award winner. She received her master of fine arts in creative writing at Hamline University.

Emilie Buchwald Award for Minnesota Nonfiction (Annette and John Whaley)

“Making the Carry: The Lives of John and Tchi-Ki-Wis Linklater” by Timothy Cochrane (University of Minnesota Press): John Linklater, of Anishinaabeg, Cree, and Scottish ancestry, and his wife, Tchi-Ki-Wis, of the Lac La Croix First Nation, lived in the canoe and border country of Ontario and Minnesota from the 1870s until the 1930s. This illustrated biography follows the couple as they navigate great changes in their homeland along the U.S.–Canada border in the early 20th century. Cochrane was superintendent at Grand Portage National Monument for 20 years, where he worked closely with the Grand Portage Band of Anishinaabeg and the tribal council. His books include “A Good Boat Speaks for Itself: Isle Royale Fishermen and Their Boats” and “Gichi Bitobig, Grand Marais: Early Accounts of the Anishinaabeg and the North Shore Fur Trade” and “Minong: The Good Place — Ojibwe and Isle Royale.”

Novel & short story (Minnesota Humanities Center)

(Mariner Books)

“A Council of Dolls” by Mona Susan Power (Mariner Books/HarperCollins Publishers): From mid-century Chicago to the ancestral lands of the Dakota people, to the bleak and brutal Indian boarding schools, this is the story of three women, told in part through the stories of the dolls they carried. The novel is ultimately hopeful and shines a light on the echoing damage wrought by Indian boarding schools, and the historical massacres of Indigenous people. Power is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. She is the author of three previously published works of fiction, “The Grass Dance,” “Sacred Wilderness” and “Roofwalker.” Power is a graduate of Harvard and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Poetry (Wellington Management)

“Wail Song: or wading in the water at the end of the world” by Chaun Webster (Black Ocean): A multi-form long poem that offers an extended contemplation on being that lays bare how the construction of the human and the animal both rely on black abjection. Readers find themselves in the belly of the whale, and in that darkness, “Wail Song” asks readers how deep they are willing to wade in the water with blackness. Webster is a poet and graphic designer whose work is attempting to put pressure on the spatial and temporal limitations of writing. Webster’s debut poetry book, “Gentry!fication: or the scene of the crime,” received the 2019 Minnesota Book Award.

Young adult literature (Minnesota Humanities Center)

“The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be” by Shannon Gibney (Dutton Books/Penguin Random House): This novel is woven from the author’s true story of growing up as the adopted Black daughter of white parents and the fictional story of Erin Powers, the name Gibney was given at birth by the white woman who gave her up for adoption. It is a tale of two girls on different timelines occasionally bridged by a mysterious portal and their shared search for a complete picture of their origins. Gibney is an author and university professor. Her novel “See No Color”, drawn from her life as a transracial adoptee, was hailed by Kirkus as “an exceptionally accomplished debut” and by Publishers Weekly as “an unflinching look at the complexities of racial identity.” Her sophomore novel, “Dream Country”, received five starred reviews and earned her a second Minnesota Book Award.

Special awards

Hognander Minnesota History Award (Hognander Family Foundation)

“Minescapes: Reclaiming Minnesota’s Mined Lands” by Pete Kero (Minnesota Historical Society Press): These stories from Minnesota’s Iron Range highlight the challenges of competing needs on lands that offer opportunities for both mining and recreation. Kero explores the record that is written on Minnesota’s mined lands – and the value systems of each generation that created, touched, and lived among these landscapes. His narratives reveal ways in which the mining industry and Iron Range residents coexist and support each other today, just as they have for more than a century. Kero is an environmental engineer practicing at Barr Engineering Co. in Hibbing, Minn. For more than 25 years, he has consulted with public agencies, mining companies, and communities who are reclaiming and repurposing the mining landscape of the Midwest.

Book artist award (Lerner Publishing Group)

Vesna Kittelson (previously announced): Kittelson’s “Letters to AmeriKa” is based on a decades-long imaginary conversation between Kittelson and American “culture.” As described by the artist, “the dialogue has been about everything, but especially my trying to understand the meaning of democracy and (absence of) justice for immigrants.”

Kay Sexton Award

Bao Phi (previously announced): Phi is an author, artist, arts administrator, activist, and grass-roots organizer who has been a leader in Minnesota’s literary community for more than 25 years. He has been a featured poetry performer, children’s book reader and guest workshop leader in hundreds of organizations in Minnesota and across the United States, from colleges to community centers, to prisons, to homeless centers, and has sat on numerous panels where he’s advocated for equity for artists from underrepresented communities.

Related Articles

Literary pick for week of May 5: It’s a big week at Red Balloon Bookshop

Literary calendar for week of May 5

Readers and writers: Minnesota’s Battle Lake connects mystery writer with bookstore owner — and now a book club

Literary pick of the week: A fundraiser for Rain Taxi Review

Literary calendar for this week

The Twins and Mariners traded blows for eight innings on Tuesday, combining for 19 hits including a three-run homer by Ryan Jeffers and a grand slam from Seattle’s Cal Raleigh, to head to the ninth inning tied 6-6.

The Mariners, however, didn’t stop there.

In the ninth, Dylan Moore hit a leadoff triple off the wall in left field off Jorge Alcala, the first of four consecutive batters to reach base, as Seattle pulled away with four ninth-inning runs for a 10-6 victory over the Twins in front of 14,710 at Target Field.

Seattle evened the four-game series at a game apiece and pulled into a first-place tie with Texas in the American League West. The Twins lost for the second time in three games for the first time since April 19-21.

Margot, Kyle Farmer and Austin Martin each drove in a run, and starter Bailey Ober left after five innings with a 4-2 lead. He was charged with two runs on three hits and a walk and fanned seven.

Jorge Alcala, who pitched a scoreless eighth inning, faced eight batters in the ninth and was charged with four earned runs on four hits and a pair of walks.

Jeffers hit a towering, three-run home run as the Twins rallied from a two-run deficit to give the Twins a 4-2 lead in the third, but Raleigh did him one better, hitting a mammoth, pinch-hit grand slam off reliever Steven Okert in the seventh inning to put the Mariners up 6-4.

Mariners manager Scott Servais sent Raleigh to the plate as a pinch-hitter for Seby Zavala afterTwins manager Rocco Baldelli replaced right-hander Jay Jackson with lefty Okert.

Raleigh hammered a hanging curveball deep into the second deck, where all three of the night’s three home runs landed — although this one was the biggest, in length and importance.

The Twins got one back when Jose Miranda and Kyle Farmer started their half of the seventh with consecutive doubles, but Manny Margot couldn’t move him to third — he grounded out to third — and Farmer was caught trying to steal third as Jeffers struck out to end the inning.

After a strong first inning that included a 5-4-3 double play, Ober ran into issues in the second.

Leadoff hitter Mitch Haniger hit an 0-2 pitch into the second deck in left field, and after Ober retired Mitch Garver on a grounder and struck out Ty France, he hit Luis Urias in the shoulder. Dylan Moore, the No. 8 hitter, then hit a double into the left-center gap that scored Urias from first for a 2-0 lead.

The Twins went down in order in their half of the inning but their bats came alive for a four-run, two-out rally in the third off Seattle starter Emerson Hancock.

After Willi Castro and Carlos Santana each flied out to center, Jose Miranda reached on a single to right. Edouard Julien then walked, and Trevor Larnach brought Miranda home from second with a sharp single to right to cut the Mariners’ lead in half.

The next batter was Jeffers, and he hit the first pitch he saw from Hancock into the second deck in left — on a rope — to make it 4-2. The homer was Jeffers’ seventh, tying him with Julien for the team lead.

After Cole Sands pitched a 1-2-3 sixth, the Mariners made some hay against right-hander Jay Jackson.

Mitch Garver started the inning by beating out a slow grounder to short for a single, and after Jackson got Ty France looking, Moore hit a sharp single to left, and Garver went first to third.

That brought pitching coach Pete Maki to the mound, and Jackson got a high popup behind the plate from Moore. But Jeffers never got a good look at it, and it fell harmlessly in the warning track with Santana giving chase. That made the count full, but Moore took the next pitch for a ball to load the bases with one out.

Twins manager Rocco Baldelli replaced Jackson with lefty Steven Okert, and Mariners manager countered with pinch-hitter Cal Raleigh, who cleared the bases with a no-doubter that traveled an estimated 445 feet before landing near the back of the second deck in left for a 6-4 lead.

Related Articles

Twins’ record-breaking 2019 unlikely to be matched again anytime soon

Twins bounce back with 3-1 victory over AL West-leading Seattle

Twins’ Trevor Larnach puts himself back into the picture

Festa, Saints can’t build on recent success; fall to Bats 7-6

Utilityman Willi Castro doing it all for Twins right now