内容摘要：Likewise, President Biden – who formerly served as Obama’s vice president – removed Cuba from the US’s list of “state sponsors of terrorism” in the waning days of his term in January.

Likewise, President Biden – who formerly served as Obama’s vice president – removed Cuba from the US’s list of “state sponsors of terrorism” in the waning days of his term in January.

And on Monday, thousands of Israelis led by the country’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir,rampaged through occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City

, chanting “death to Arabs” and attacking anyone perceived to be either Palestinian or defending them.Also addressing the crowd at the “Jerusalem Day” march was the country’s ultranationalist finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who has been vocal in his push for the annexation of the occupied West Bank, and the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza.Smotrich asked the crowd: “Are we afraid of victory?”; “Are we afraid of the word ‘occupation?’” The crowd – described as “revellers” within parts of Israeli media – responded with a resounding “no”.

“There’s a cohort of the extreme right who feel vindicated by a year and a half of war,” the former Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas told Al Jazeera. “They think their message that, if you blink you lose; if you pause, you lose; if you waver, you lose, has been borne out.”Alongside the intensifying of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, which has now killed more than 54,000 Palestinians, voices of dissent have grown louder. In April, more than 1,000 serving and retired pilots issued an open letter protesting a war they said served

“political and personal interests”

rather than security ones. Further letters, as well as anRussia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine prompted an international backlash that, by some estimates, resulted in the country becoming the most sanctioned in the world.

Russia also experienced a huge voluntary exodus of brands, comparable in scale only to the boycott of South Africa that was credited with hastening the fall of apartheid.More than 1,300 companies announced they would exit Russia or curtail their operations there, according to a tally by the Yale School of Management.

Russia’s economy, however, has weathered the pressure campaign better than expected and there is a growing acknowledgement that the expectations sanctions would bring Moscow to heel were misplaced.Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) declined by only 2.1 percent in the first year of the war, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – compared with a predicted 8.5 percent contraction – and has been growing ever since.